popular combinations, they adopted, and to the last persisted in the opinion, or at least in the assertion, that the whole was essentially a conspiracy of a few speculative adventurers, who had seduced the nation from its allegiance, and that all the power and wisdom of the state was to be confined to the counteraction of the malignant design; and to this notion, notwithstanding its daily refutation, they adhered, with the spirit rather of persons engaged in an acrimonious controversy, than of ministers whose duty it was to save the country from the horrors of a civil war*. It was to no purpose that the sophistry by which they defended it was exposed-it was in vain that they were told, by men who knew the state of Ire

* Even after the suppression of the rebellion, when the government possessed the fullest information regarding its origin and progress, the viceroy, in his speech to the parliament, was made to say, "the foulest and darkest conspiracy was formed and long carried on by the implacable enemy of this realm, for the total extinction of the constitution," &c.-Lord Lieutenant's Speech, October 6, 1798.

VOL. II.

D

land and the general course of the human passions as well as they did, that their reasonings would never satisfy the disaffected

that the dissatisfaction was not temporary or accidental, but radical—and that it was only a waste of time and of life to resort to unpopular laws and frequent executions, while the parent mischief remained untouched upon the statute book. The Irish ministry not only spurned those counsels, which the event proved to have been prophetic, but, superadding a farther error, they reviled the advisers with so little discretion, that they gave the real conspirators official authority for believing that the opposers of the administration were secretly the advocates of rebellion, and thus afforded them an additional incitement to persevere in their designs *

* A leading member of the minority in the Irish House of Commons was the late Mr. George Ponsonby, a gentleman, who, if the purest constitutional views and personal dignity of deportment could have saved from insults, would have escaped them; but at this period no dignity was a protection. He, among others, impressed

This glaring departure from the most obvious prudence has been variously accounted for. By many it has been attributed to incapacity. A more general opinion was, that the government was fomenting the conspiracy, in order that

upon the ministry that Ireland could be preserved from the threatened crisis by no means but by a complete reform of the parliament, by catholic emancipation, and by an equalization of commerce between England and Ireland. The following was the answer of one of the servants of the crown (the solicitor-general) to Mr. Ponsonby's opinions: What was it come to, that in the Irish House of Commons they should listen to one of their own members degrading the character of an Irish gentleman by language which was fitted but for hallooing a mob? Had he heard a man uttering out of those doors such language as that by which the honourable gentleman had violated the decorum of parliament, he would have seized the ruffian by the throat, and dragged him to the dust! What were the house made of who could listen in patience to such abominable sentiments ?-sentiments which, thank God, were acknowledged by no class of men in this country, except the execrable and infamous nest of traitors, who were known by the name of United Irishmen, who sat brooding in Belfast over their discontents and treasons, and from whose publications he could trace, word for word, every expression the honourable gentleman had used."-Irish Parl. Deb. Feb. 1797.

the excesses to which it would lead might reconcile the nation to a legislative union : and, however vulgar and improbable the latter supposition may appear, it is still perhaps the only one that can satisfactorily explain the apparent inconsistencies and infatuation of their councils.

The enemy of Great Britain had already made an abortive effort * to transport an

* In December 1796 the French fleet was dispersed by a storm. A part of it anchored in Bantry Bay, where it remained for some days; but the vessel, on board of which General Hoche (the commander of the expedition) was, not arriving, the French admiral, without attempting a landing, returned to France.

It is well known that grievous complaints were made in the English parliament against the ministry, for having left the coasts of Ireland so unprotected on this occasion. In explanation of this apparent negligence, Theobald Wolfe Tone, who had been confidentially employed in the preparations for the French expedition, (he was himself on board one of the vessels that anchored in Bantry Bay,) related the following circumstance, as having come within his personal knowledge. While this formidable armament, which had so long fixed the attention of Europe, was fitting out at Brest, various conjectures prevailed as to its probable destination. The general opinion was that the invasion of

armament to Ireland, the landing of which was to have been the signal for the intended

either Ireland or Portugal was intended. There was at this time (according to Mr. Tone's account) a secret agent of the British minister at Brest, who, having discovered that a particular printer of that town had General Hoche's proclamations in his press, privately offered him a large sum for a single copy. With this offer the printer made General Hoche acquainted, who immediately drew up a proclamation, as addressed to the Portuguese by the commander of the French invading army. A few copies of this were accordingly, by the General's desire, struck off, and handed by the printer to the agent. The latter forwarded them to Mr. Pitt, whom the receipt of such a document is said to have so completely deceived, that he directed the British squadrons to make Portugal the peculiar object of their vigilance, and, in the first instance, treated the report of an actual descent upon Ireland with derision.

Although the appearance of the French fleet in Bantry Bay produced no movements of disaffection in the vicinity, it was yet at this period, or very shortly after, that the organisation of the United Irishmen was most complete, and their prospect of success most promising. In 1797 they felt assured, that, in the event of a general insurrection, the greater number of the Irish militia regiments would have revolted. It is confidently asserted, that, an attack upon Dublin having been proposed in that year, every soldier who mounted guard in that city