follows:-The next communication of City of Dublin, were the best organized; consequence was in June, 1797, when an that the Catholic priests had ceased to be accredited person went from hence to alarmed at the calumnies which had been communicate with the French Directory propagated of French irreligion, and were by their desire; he went by Hamburg, well affected to the cause; that some of where he saw the French Minister, who them had rendered great service in propahad made some difficulty about granting gating with discreet zeal the system of a passport, and demanded a memorial, the Union. It declared that the people which was written by the accredited of Ireland had a lively sense of gratitude person, and given to the French Minister to France for the part which she took, under the impression that the passport was not to be granted. It and also to Spain for the interest she took in the affairs of Ireland. It engaged on The memoir was written in English, and the part of the National Directory, to contained the objects of his mission ac- reimburse the expenses of France in the cording to the instructions which he had expedition which had failed, and of another received from the Executive. It began to be undertaken. The number of troops by stating that the appearance of the demanded was a force not exceeding French in Bantry Bay, had encouraged 10,000, and not less than 5000 men. the least confident of the Irish in the hope stated that a brigade of English artillery of throwing off the yoke of England with had been already sent over, and that a the assistance of France; that the event large body of troops would probably be of that expedition had proved the facility sent if Ireland were attacked. A conof invading Ireland; that in the event of siderable quantity of artillery and ama second expedition, if the object were to munition, with a large staff, and a body take Cork, Oyster Haven would be the of engineers, and as many Irish officers best place of debarkation; that the per- as possible, whose fidelity they were son who had been before accredited was assured of were demanded as necessary instructed to point out Oyster Haven as to accompany the expedition. A recomthe best place of debarkation; and it mendation was given to separate the Irish stated the precautions which had been seamen who were prisoners of war from taken, by throwing up works at Bantry, the British, supposing they would be Fermoy, and Mallow. It further stated, ready to join in an expedition to liberate that the system of the United Irishmen their country. It further recommended had made a rapid progress in the County a proclamation to be published by the of Cork, and that Bandon was become a French General, on his arrival there, that second Belfast; that the system had made the French came as allies to deliver the great progress in other counties, and that country, not to conquer it; it also recomthe people were now well inclined to assist mended to the Directory to make the the French; that 150,000 United Irishmen independence of Ireland an indispensable were organized and enrolled in Ulster, a condition of the treaty of peace then great part of them regimented, and one-pending; and stated that a proceeding third ready to march out of the province. so authentic could not be disguised or It detailed the number of the King's forces misrepresented, and would very much in Ulster, and their stations; recommended encourage the people of Ireland. It conLoughswilly as a place of debarkation in tained also an assurance, that the Irish the North, and stated that the people in Militia would join the French if they the peninsula of Donegal would join the landed in considerable force.* French. It stated, also, the strength of The difficulty in the way of the Batavian the garrison in Londonderry, and that expedition being removed, by the generous one regiment which made a part of it was self-abnegation of General Hoche (though supposed to be disaffected. It mentioned his heart was set upon this service), great Killybegs also as a good place of debark-activity was exerted to make everything ation, and stated that the Counties of Tyrone, Fermanagh, and Monaghan, were amongst the best affected to the cause. In case of a landing at Killybegs, it recommended a diversion in Sligo, and stated, that a force of 10,000 United Irishmen might be collected to fall upon Enniskillen, which commanded the pass of Lough Erne; that it was easy to enter the Bay of Galway, but very difficult to get out of it; that the Counties of Louth, Armagh, Westmeath, King's County, and ready. Tone was to accompany the Dutch force, with the same rank which he held in the French. What greatly increased the hopes and spirits of Tone and his allies, was the famous "Mutiny ties of harbours for invasion, must be much faciliThe topographical researches into the capabili tated by the many excellent maps of Ireland published within these last few years; some of which also afford a very perfect idea of the nature of the country inland. At the period spoken of in the text, the best map of Ireland was, perhaps, that of Beau mont, a very useless one for strategical purposes. of the Nore," on board the English fleet, tion, and so continued day after day, week after week.* During the whole of the two months of July and August the departure was postponed; the supplies put on board the fleet were nearly exhausted, and it was known that Admiral Duncan, who cruised outside, had been reinforced considerably. Changes of plan were proposed, and England or Scotland was to be the object of the attempt, not Ireland. When General Daendels mentioned these new projects to Wolfe Tone, the latter became seriously alarmed. Hs says in his journal: "These are, most certainly, very July 4th.-Instantly on my arrival I strong reasons, and, unfortunately, the waited on General Daendels, whom I wind gives them every hour fresh weight. found on the point of setting out for the I answered, that I did not see at present Texel. He read the letter, and told me any solid objection to propose to his syseverything should be settled with regard tem, and that all I had to say, was, that to my rank, and that I should receive two if the Batavian Republic sent but a cormonths pay in advance, to equip me for poral's guard to Ireland, I was ready to the campaign. His reception of me was make one. So here is our expedition in a extremely friendly. I staid with Lewins, hopeful way. It is most terrible. Twice, at the Hague, three or four days, whilst within nine months, has England been my regimentals, &c., were making up, saved by the wind. It seems as if the very and at length, all being ready, we parted, elements had conspired to perpetuate our he setting off for Paris, to join General slavery, and protect the insolence and opHoche, and I for the Texel, to join pression of our tyrants. What can I do General Daendels. at this moment? Nothing. The people of "July 8th.-Arrived early in the morn-Ireland will now lose all spirit and confiing at the Texel, and went immediately dence in themselves and their chiefs, on board the Admiral's ship, the Vryheid, and God only knows whether, if we were of 74 guns, a superb vessel. Found even able to effectuate a landing with General Daendels aboard, who presented 3000 men, they might act with courage me to Admiral Dewinter, who commands and decision." the expedition. I am exceedingly pleased with both one and the other; there is a frankness and candour in their manners which is highly interesting. In the interval of waiting at the Texel, two additional agents of the Irish Union made their appearance in Holland. These were Tennant and Lowry; with instructions to make sure, if possible, of some effectual aid, either from France or Holland. They put themselves at once into communication with Tone and Lewins. Nothing seemed immediately possible in that direction, at least until after this Dutch armament should be definitely given up, and the Batavian authorities were very reluctant to give it up. Gene "July 10th.-I have been boating about the fleet, and aboard several of the vessels; they are in very fine condition, incomparably better than the fleet at Brest, and I learn from all hands that the best possible spirit reigns in both soldiers and sailors. Admiral Duncan, who commands the English fleet off the Texel, sent in yesterday an officer with a flag of truce, apparently with a let-ral Daendels charged Tone with a mis ter, but in fact to reconnoitre our force. Dewinter was even with him; for he detained his messenger, and sent back the answer by an officer of his own, with instructions to bring back an exact account of the force of the enemy. "July 11th.-This day our flag of truce is returned, and the English officer released. Duncan's fleet is of eleven sail of the line, of which three are threedeckers." sion to the headquarters of the army of the Sambre and Meuse, in order to confer It is painful to see how Tone's fiery spirit, al ready irritated by disapointment, chafed at this cruel delay. July 17th, he says in his diary: "I foul this evening. Hang it, and damn it for me! I hope the wind will not play us a trick. It is terribly am in a rage, which is truly astonishing, and can do nothing to help myself. Well! well! "July 18th.-The wind is as foul as possible this morning it cannot be worse. Hell! Hell! Heil! Allah! Allah! Allah! I am in a most devouring rage! When both fleet and army were quite ready, by some fatality similar to that July 19th.-Wind foul still. Horrible! Horrible! Admiral Dewinter and I endeavour to pass away the which delayed the Brest fleet before, the time, playing the flute, which he does very well; wind set in steadily in an adverse direc-we have some good duets, and that is some relief." 66 with General Hoche; and when he arrived he found Hoche dying. He writes:September 18th and 19th.-My fears with regard to General Hoche were but too well founded. He died this morning at four o'clock. His lungs seemed to me quite gone. This most unfortunate event has so confounded and distressed me that I know not what to think, nor what will be the consequences. Wrote to my wife and to General Daendels instantly." Tone evidently believed that Dewinter's Dutch fleet would never sail at all; therefore, after the death of Hoche, he obtained leave to go to Paris, where he was to meet his wife and children. Lord Camperdown; and there was an end of Holland as a great naval power. Thus there was, and continued to be, a strange fatality dooming the hopes of Ireland in foreign aid to a series of painful disappointments. There were, after this, two more expeditions, on a small scale, both French, and both intended to aid the Irish insurrection. As for the "Army of England," which began to be formed in this very month of October, it is needless to enter into the detail of that operation, as it was really never intended for England at all, still less for Ireland. Napoleon Buonaparte was inade Commander-in-Chief. While there was apparently busy preparation in the Channel ports of France, Wolfe Tone was in the highest spirits; and had several interviews with the conqueror of Italy, who seemed bent at last upon the grand enterprise of going straight to London, promised Tone that he should be employed in the expedition, and requested him to make out a list of the leading Irish refugees then in Paris, who "would all," he said, "be undoubtedly employed." So passed the winter and the spring. Two passages from Tone's journal will tell all that is needful to be told of the Armée d'Angleterre :— It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of the loss which the Irish cause in France sustained in the death of General Hoche. He had thoroughly made that cause his own, through his warm admiration for his Irish aide, as well as from his settled conviction, formed on military principles, that to strike England in Ireland is the surest and easiest way to destroy her power. It is now known that Napoleon Buonaparte, then the rival of Hoche, came afterwards to entertain strongly this opinion concerning Ireland, although, unfortunately, he was not then duly impressed with its importance. At St. Helena, he said of May 19th.-I do not know what to Hoche, that "he was one of the first of think of our expedition. It is certain French generals;" and that if he had that the whole left wing of the Army of landed in Ireland he would have succeed-England is at this moment in full march ed in the great enterprise. And if he had but lived another year, his influence might have availed to direct upon the coast of Ireland that fine fleet and army which made the unavailing and disastrous invasion of Egypt. 66 back to the Rhine; Buonaparte is God knows where, and the clouds seem thickening more and more in Germany, where I have no doubt Pitt is moving heaven and hell to embroil matters, and divert the storm which was almost ready to fall on his head. 66 The genuine one I read to-day, and there are two sentences in it which puzzle me completely. In the first, at the beginning of the address, he tells the troops that they form a wing of the Army of England; in the second, towards the end, he reminds them that they have the glory of the French name to sustain in countries and seas the most distant. What does that mean? Is he going, after all, to India? Will he make a short cut to London by way of Calcutta? I begin foully to suspect it." While Tone seems to have abandoned every hope of decisive action on the part May 24th and 25th.-It is certain that of the Batavian Republic, a sudden reso- Buonaparte is at Toulon, and embarked lution was taken at the Hague. In the since the 14th; his speech, as I suspected, beginning of October, the British Com-is not as it was given in the last journals. mander quitted his station, and went to Yarmouth Roads to refit. A peremptory order was despatched by the Dutch Government to Admiral Dewinter to put to sea. On the morning of the 11th of October, Duncan, having made great haste, came in view of the Dutch fleet near the coast of Holland, off a place called Camperdown. The two fleets were nearly equal in number of ships, but the English were much superior in weight of metal. Dewinter, seeing a battle inevitable, engaged with the utmost gallantry. After a bloody fight, which the Dutch sustained with an intrepidity approaching desperation, Dewinter's ship struck a sinking wreck. Ten Dutch ships of the line and two frigates were captured; Duncan became In fact, the expedition to Egypt was already at sea; Tone remained attached to that portion of the "Army of England" which was still quartered in the North of France, and passed his time be tween Rouen and Havre; Lewins con- merely paying informers for information, tinued to represent the United Irishmen but hiring them beforehand to join illegal at Paris with great tact and honesty. societies, and there recommend and urge But in the meantime Lord Castlereagh forward the boldest and most illegal had already, by his "judicious measures," counsels, in order to betray their trusting caused the premature explosion of the confederates, is a system peculiar to the insurrection in Ireland; and the island British Government in Ireland; and not was now ringing with the combat of parallelled in atrocity and baseness by Oulart Hill and the storm of Enniscorthy. anything known to us in the functions of a French or Austrian police. During the whole year 1797 this "battalion of testimony" was in a state of high organization and efficiency; and greatly aided in causing the insurrection to burst out at the very day and hour when the Castle wished for it. It would be an endless task to recount all the oppressions which in the latter part of this year goaded the people at last to seek a remedy in desperate resistance; but the case of Orr is too remarkable and notorious to be passed over. CHAPTER XXXII. 1798. Remember Orr!"-Account of Orr.-Curran's Spies. Secret Service Money-Press Prosecution. Speech-His Description of Informers.-Arts of Government.- Sowing Dissensions. Forged Assassination List. "Union" Declines.-Addresses of "Loyalty."-Maynooth Grant Enlarged.-Catholic Bishops "Loyal "-Forcing a A prosecution was instituted against "Premature Explosion."-Camden and Carhamp- the Press newspaper in 1798, for seditious ton.-Outrages on the People, to Force Insurrec- libel on Lord Camden's Government, contion.-Testimony of Lord Meira.-Inquiry De- tained in certain letters which appeared manded in Parliament.-Repulsed and Defeated by Clare and Castlereagh.-Insolence and Un- in that paper in the latter part of 1797. limited Power of Ministers.-General Abercrombie The subject matter of the libel in the Resigns. Remarkable General Order.-Pelham Press, signed MARCUS (for the publication Quits Ireland.-Castlereagh's Secretary. The Hessians' Free Quarters.-The Ancient Britors. Proclamation of Martial Law. Grattan's Picture of the Times. Horrible Atrocities in DURING all the time of these negotiations of which the printer was prosecuted by the Government), was the refusal of Lord Camden to extend mercy to a person of the name of William Orr, of respectability, and remarkable for his popularity, who had been capitally convicted at Carrickfergus of administering the oath of the United Irishmen's Society, and was the first person who had been so convicted. Poems were written, sermons were preached; after-dinner speeches, and after supper still stronger speeches were made, of no ordinary vehemence, about the fate of Orr and the conduct of Lord Camden, which certainly, in the peculiar circumstances of this case, was bad, or rather stupidly base and odiously unjust. The scribes of the United Irishmen wrote up the memory of the man whom Camden had allowed to be executed with a full knowledge of the foul means taken to obtain a conviction, officially conveyed to him by persons every way worthy of credit and of undoubted loyalty. Dr. Madden has procured and published the accounts of this important branch of the public service for 1797-8. These spies were of all grades of society, and their functions were very various. Some, like Reynolds and Armstrong, men of education and position, were to associate with the leaders, and carry all their secrets to the Castle; others, like James O'Brien, were to foment treasons in make this cry, "Remember Orr," stir up The evident object of the efforts to public houses, and swear away at assizes the lives of those who trusted them. The record is a the people to rebellion, cannot be misvery curious one; and it may be some satisfaction taken-that object was to single out an to us, that if our country has been always bought individual case of suffering in the cause and sold for money, we can at least examine and check the accounts, and estimate with considerable of the Union, for the sympathy of the accuracy the money value of a traitor (or "loyal nation, and to turn that sympathy to the man"), according to his talents and opportunities. account of the cause. Orr's case preFor seventy years past, it has cost the treasury heavily to purchase "loyal men" in Ireland, from Reynolds down to Nagle. sented to the people of Ireland, at that period, a few extraordinary features of iniquity and of injustice. He was a noted, active, and popular country member of the society of United Irishmen. de was executed on account of the notoriety of that circumstance, not on account of the sufficiency of the evidence or the justice of the conviction that was obtained against him; for the crown witness, Wheatly, immediately after the trial, acknowledged that he had perjured himself; and some of the jury came forward likewise and admitted that they were drunk when they gave their verdict; and these facts, duly deposed to and attested, were laid before the viceroy, Lord Camden, by Sir John Macartney, the magistrate who had caused Orr to be arrested, and who, to his honour be it told, when he found the practices that had been resorted to, used every effort, though fruitlessly, to move Lord Camden to save the prisoner. held out from the forenoon till six o'clock in the morning of the day following, though, it is said, he was beaten, and threatened with being wrecked, and not left a sixpence in the world, on his refusing to bring in a verdict of guilty. Neither would they let him taste of the supper and the drink which was sent to the rest, and of which they partook to such a beastly degree. It was not, therefore, much to be wondered at, that an infirm old man should not have sufficient resolution to hold out against such treatment. (Signed) "MARY M'CRACKEN." Orr was defended by Curran and Sampson. The judges before whom he was tried were Lord Yelverton and Judge Chamberlaine. The jury retired at six in the evening to consider their verdict. They sat up, deliberating, all night, and returned into court at six the following William Orr, of Ferranshane, in the morning. The jury inquired if they county of Antrim, was charged with might find a qualified verdict as to the administering the United Irishman's oath, prisoner's guilt. The Judge directed in his own house, to a soldier of the name them to give a special verdict on the of Wheatly. He was the first person general issue. They retired again, and indicted under the act which made that returned shortly with a verdict of guilty, offence a capital felony (36 Geo. III.) and a strong recommendation of the His father was a small farmer, in com- prisoner to mercy. Next day, Orr was fortable circumstances, and the proprietor brought up for judgment, when, after an of a bleach-green. James Hope, who was unsuccessful motion in arrest of judgment intimately acquainted with all the cir- chiefly on the grounds of the drunkeness cumstances of the case, informed Dr. of the jury, which Judge Chamberlaine Madden, "that William Orr was not would not admit of being made "the actually the person who administered the foundation of any motion to the Court," oath to the soldier.. The person who ad- Yelverton pronounced sentence of death, ministered the oath was Wm. M'Keever," in a voice scarcely articulate, and at the a delegate from the city of Derry to the Provincial Committee, who afterwards made his escape to America." me. I can forgive them. I wish to say only one word more, and that is, to declare on this awful occasion, and in the presence of God, that the evidence against me was grossly perjured-grossly and wickedly perjured!" conclusion of his address burst into tears." Orr said, pointing to the jury, "That jury has convicted me of being a felon. My In a letter of Miss M Cracken, dated own heart tells me that their convic27th of September, 1797, addressed to her tion is a falsehood, and that I am not a brother, then in Kilmainham Jail, is felon. If they have found me guilty found the following reference to the re-improperly, it is worse for them than for cent trial of Orr:-"Orr's trial has clearly proved that there is neither justice nor mercy to be expected. Even the greatest aristocrats here join in lamenting his fate; but his greatness of mind renders him an object of envy and of admiration rather than of compassion. I am told that his wife is gone with a letter from Lady Londonderry to her brother on his behalf. You will be surprised when I tell you that old Archibald Thompson, of Cushendall, was foreman of the jury, and it is thought will lose his senses if Mr. Orr's sentence is carried into execution, as he appears already quite distracted at the idea of a person being condemned to die through his ignorance, as it seems he did not at all understand the business of a juryman. However, he The witness, Wheatly, made an affidavit before a magistrate acknowledging his having sworn falsely against Orr. Two of the jury made depositions, setting forth that they had been induced to give a verdict contrary to their opinion, when under the influence of liquor. Two others made statements that they had been menaced by the other jurors with denunciations and the wrecking of their properties, if they did not comply with their wishes. James Orr, in the Press Newspaper of |