Revolution. All flesh moved under that inspiration; and the seed sown for the last ten years in Ireland, now germinated too fast and too rankly for the policy of her situation. Concealment or delay, compromise or temporizing, would not have been brooked, at this moment, by the fiery temperament of Ireland, but through the extraordinary composition, as well as extraordinary constitution of that secret society, into which the management of her affairs had now devolved. In the year 1792, as we are told, commenced, and in 1795 was finished, the famous association of United Irishmen. By these terms commenced and finished, we are to understand not the purposes, or the arrangements of their conspiracy against the existing government, but the net-work of organization, delicate as lace and strong as harness, which now enmeshed almost every province of Ireland, and knit the strength of her peasantry into unity and disposable divisions. This, it seems, was completed in 1795. In a complete history of these times, no one chapter would deserve so ample an investigation as this subtle web of association, rising upon a large base, multiplied in proportion to the extent of the county, and by intermediate links ascending to some unknown apex; all so graduated, and in such nice dependency, as to secure the instantaneous propagation upwards and downwards, laterally or obliquely, of any impulse; and yet so effectually shrouded, that nobody knew more than the two or three individual agents in immediate juxtaposition with himself, by whom he communicated with those above his head or below his feet. This organization, in fact, of the United Irishmen, combined the best features, as to skill, of the two most elaborate and most successful of all secret societies recorded in history; one of which went before the Irish Society, and one followed it after an interval of five-and-twenty years. These two are the Fehm-Gericht,

or court of ban and extermination, which having taken its rise in Westphalia, is usually called the secret Tribunal of Westphalia, and which reached its full development in the fourteenth century. The other is the Hetæria, [Eraigia.] a society which, passing for one of pure literary dilettanti, under the secret countenance of the late Capo d'Istria, (then a confidential minister of the Czar,) did actually succeed so far in hoaxing the Cabinets of Europe, that one-third of European Kings put down their names, and gave their aid, as conspirators against the Sultan of Turkey, whilst credulously supposing themselves honorary correspondents of a learned body for reviving the arts and literature of Athens. These two I call the most successful of all secret societies; because both were arrayed against the existing administrations throughout the entire lands upon which they sought to operate. The German Society disowned the legal authorities as too weak for the ends of justice, and succeeded in bringing the cognizance of crimes within their own secret yet consecrated usurpation. The Grecian Society made the existing powers the final object of their hostility; lived unarmed amongst the very oppressors, whose throats they had dedicated to the sabre ; and, in a very few years, saw their purpose accomplished.

The society of United Irishmen combined the best parts in the organization of both these secret fraternities, and obtained their advantages. The Society prospered in defiance of the Government; nor would the Government, though armed with all the powers of the Dublin police, and of State thunder, have succeeded in mastering this Society; but, on the contrary, the Society would assuredly have surprised and mastered the Government, had it not been undermined by the perfidy of a confidential brother. One instrument for dispersing knowledge, employed by the United Irishmen, is worth mentioning, as it is applica

ble to any cause, and may be used with much greater effect in an age when everybody is taught to read. They printed newspapers on a single side of the sheet, which were thus fitted for being placarded against the walls. The expedient had probably been suggested by Paris, where such newspapers were often placarded, and generally for the bloodiest purposes. But Louvet, in his Memoirs, mentions one conducted by himself on better principles it was printed at the public expense; and sometimes more than twenty thousand copies of a single number were attached to the corners of streets. This was called the Centinel: and those who are acquainted with the Memoirs of Madame Roland, will remember that she cites Louvet's paper as a model for all of its class. The Union Star was the paper which the United Irishmen published upon this plan; previous papers, on the ordinary plan, the Northen Star, and the Press, having been violently put down by the Government. The Union Star, however, it must be acknowledged, did not seek much to elevate the people, by improving their understandings: it was merely a violent appeal to their passions, against all who had incurred the displeasure of the secret Society. The newspapers of every kind it was easy for the Government to suppress. But the secret Society annoyed and crippled the Government in other modes, which it was not easy to parry; and all blows dealt in return were dealt in the dark, and against a shadow. The Society called upon Irishmen to abstain generally from ardent spirits, as a means of destroying the Excise; and it is certain that the Society was obeyed, in a degree which astonished neutral observers, all over Ireland. The same Society, by a printed proclamation, called upon the people not to purchase the quit-rents of the Crown, which were then on sale; and not to receive bank-notes in payment, because,

(as the proclamation told them,) a 'burst' was coming, when such paper, and the securities for such purchases, would fall to a ruinous discount. In this case, after much distress to the public service, Government obtained a partial triumph by the law which cancelled the debt on a refusal to receive the State paper, and which quartered soldiers upon all tradesmen who demurred to such a tender. But upon the whole, it was evident to all eyes, that in Ireland there were two Governments counteracting each other at every step; and that the one which more generally had the upper hand in the struggle was the secret Society of the United Irishmen; whose members and head-quarters were alike protected from the attacks of its rival, the State Government at the Castle, by a cloud of impenetrable darkness.

That cloud was at last pierced. A treacherous or weak brother, high in the ranks of the Society, and deep in their counsels, happened, in travelling up to Dublin, in company with a loyalist, to have thrown out some hints of his confidential station, perhaps in ostentation. This weak man, Thomas Reynolds, a Roman Catholic gentleman, of Kilkea Castle, in Kildare, colonel of a regiment of United Irish, treasurer for Kildare, and in other confidential stations for the secret Society, was prevailed on, by Mr. William Cope, a rich merchant of Dublin, who alarmed his imbecile mind, by pictures of the horrors attending a revolution, in the circumstances of Ireland, to betray all he knew to the Government. His treachery was first

meditated in the last week of February, 1798; and, in consequence of his depositions, on March 12, at the house of Oliver Bond, in Dublin, the Government succeeded in arresting a large body of the leading conspirators. The whole committee of Leinster, amounting to thirteen members, was captured on this occasion; but a

still more valuable prize was made in the persons of the arch-leaders and members of the Irish Directory, -Emmet, M'Nevin, Arthur O'Connor, and Oliver Bond. Their places were quickly filled up as far as names went; and a hand-bill was issued, on the same day, to prevent the effects of despondency amongst the great body of the conspirators. But Emmet and O'Connor were not men to be effectually replaced: Government had struck a fatal blow, without being fully aware at first of their own good luck. On the 19th of May following, in consequence of a proclamation, (May 11,) offering a thousand pounds for his capture, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was apprehended at the house of a Mr. Nicholas Murphy, a merchant in Dublin, after a very desperate resistance. The leader of the party, Major Swan, a magistrate, was wounded by Lord Edward; and Ryan, one of the officers, so despe rately, that he died within a fortnight. Lord Edward himself languished for some time, and died in great agony on the 3d of June, from a pistol shot, which took effect on his shoulder. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was an injured man. From the warm generosity of his temper, he had powerfully sympathized with the French republicans, at an early stage of their revolution; and having, with great indiscretion, but an indiscretion pardonable in so young a man, and of so ardent a temperament, publicly avowed his sympathy, he was ignominiously dismissed from the army. That act made an enemy of a man who certainly was not to be despised; for, though weak as respected the powers of self-control, Lord Edward was well qualified to make himself beloved: he had considerable talents; his name, alone, as a younger brother of the only ducal family in Ireland, was a spell and a word of command to the Irish peasantry; and, finally, by his marriage with a natural daughter of the then Duke of Orleans,