Page MEMOIRS AND JOURNAL OF THEOBALD WOLFE TONE..... MUSICAL REMINISCENCES RESPECTING THE ITALIAN OPERA IN ENGLAND...... 137 ....... FRENCH THEATRE IN TOTTENHAM-STREET HAMEL, THE OBEAH MAN...... HISTORIETTES, BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE ENGLISH IN ITALY.' JOURNAL OF A TRAVELLER ON THE CONTINENT MAY FAIR ALEXANDER'S JOURNEY FROM INDIA TO ENGLAND AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS DIBDIN ........ SIR JONAH BARRINGTON'S PERSONAL SKETCHES OF HIS OWN TIMES ..... 151 161 180 182 187 .. 270 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN Prices of Shares in Canals, Docks, &c.... 271-282 282 283 283 284 THE LONDON MAGAZINE. JUNE 1, 1827. MEMOIRS AND JOURNAL OF THEOBALD WOLFE TONE.* MR. PEEL Sometime ago, in the course of a debate on the Catholic Association, said that honours had been paid by the Catholics to Mr. Hamilton Rowan, not because he was a benevolent man, but because he had been an attainted traitor. Some of the Irish patriots howled at this assertion. It would have been much better, as the fact is undoubtedly true, if they had asked the well-meaning gentleman, whether that was a wholesome system of government, under which treason, even when unsuccessful, was honourable and respected. The present book is the life of another Irish traitor, who would have expiated a very ardent love of his country, and a very furious hatred of oppression, on the scaffold, if he had not saved himself from the executioner by suicide. The book is amusing, and ought to be instructive even to those persons who are said to be taught by experieuce only. It ought to be instructive to Mr. Peel. It shows in a most vivid manner the danger to which this country must be exposed from Ireland, whenever we are engaged in a contest with a powerful enemy, so long as the Irish people are not united to us by some better ties than force. It shows the singular chances by which a war was prevented from being kindled in Ireland; which, if it had not ended in the political separation of that island from this, or the political destruction of both, would for difficulty and destructiveness, have been the worst in which we were ever engaged. Theobald Wolfe Tone was born in Dublin, on the 20th June, 1763, of Protestant parents: he continued a Protestant, or at least never was, or professed himself to be, a Catholic to the end of his life. † He had apparently no great store of religion of any kind. On this point we have a word to say to Mr. Peel. It must not be supposed, that if injustice be done to the great body of the people in a nation, * Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone, written by himself, comprising a complete Journal of his Negociations to procure the Aid of the French for the Liberation of Ireland; with selections from his Diary whilst Agent to the Roman Catholics. Edited by his Son, William Theobald Wolfe Tone. In Two Volumes. Colburn. 1827. + Sir R. Musgrave says he was a professed Deist. He seems from his Journal to ahve been in the ordinary religious condition of politicians-not to have spoken or thought much about the matter. JUNE, 1827. L as, for instance, to the Catholics of Ireland, those who are excepted from the operation of the injustice, will therefore be devoid of the anger which it excites. It will often happen, that even with those who may profit by this injustice, the ties of nationality will be stronger than those of interest; and that the mess of pottage which is offered to them, will not induce them to sell the best birth-right, the citizenship of a justly-governed country. It will be found, that the greater number of the leaders of the treasons of Ireland during Tone's political life, were Protestants and Dissenters; because the majority of men of property, education, and intelligence, were Protestants and Dissenters; but the man must be blind indeed, who does not perceive that the oppressions practised on the Catholics, as they certainly gave the treasons the best chance of success, were also among the chief instigations of these leaders. The wrongs done to the great body of the Irish people worked evidently on the mind of Tone and his friends, even at a time, when among these people themselves, the long continuance of their degradation had in great measure suppressed the spirit of resistance. You may do something under such circumstances, by inflaming jealousies and exciting fear; but especially, where the injustice is effected chiefly by external force, the feeling of nationality in all times of excitement must and will prevail. Tone married young; went to the bar, where he does not seem to have met with or deserved much success; and began what may be called his political life in 1789, by a pamphlet (A Review of the last Session of Parliament) which met with great encouragement. He followed it by some others; and thus, at the outset of the French Revolution, was a political writer: he soon became an active politician. The state of the parties then existing in Ireland, the number of the Established Religion, the Dissenters, and the Catholics, he describes in the following terms: "The first party, whom for distinction's sake, I call the Protestants, though not above the tenth of the population, were in possession of the whole of the government, and of five-sixths of the landed property of the nation; they were, and had been for above a century, in quiet possession of the church, the law, the revenue, the army, the navy, the magistracy, the corporations; in a word, of the whole patronage of Ireland. With properties whose title was founded in massacre and plunder, and being as it were, but a colony of foreign usurpers in the land, they saw no security for their persons and estates but in a close connection with England, who profited by their fears, and as the price of her protection, executed the implicit surrender of the commerce and liberties of Ireland. Different events, particularly the revolution in America, had enabled and emboldened the other two parties, of whom I am about to speak, to hurry the Protestants into measures highly disagreeable to England, and beneficial to their country: but in which, from accidental circumstances, the latter durst not refuse to concur. spirit of the corps, however, remained unchanged, as has been manifested on every occasion since which chance has offered. This party, therefore, so powerful by their property and influence, were implicitly devoted to England, which they esteemed necessary for the security of their existence; they adopted in consequence, the sentiments and language of the British cabinet; they dreaded and abhorred the principles of the French Revolution, and were in one word, an aristocracy, în the fullest and most odious extent of the term. The "The Dissenters, who formed the second party, were at least twice as numerous as the first. Like them, they were a colony of foreigners in their origin; but being engaged in trade and manufactures, with few overgrown landed proprietors among them, they did not like them feel that a slavish dependance on England was necessary to their very existence. Strong in their numbers and their courage, they felt that they were able to defend themselves, and soon ceased to consider themselves as any other than Irishmen. It was the Dissenters who composed the flower of the famous volunteer army in 1782, which extorted from the English minister, the restoration of what is affected to be called, the Constitution of Ireland; it was they who first promoted and continued the demand of a Parliamentary Reform, in which, however, they were baffled by the superior address and chicanery of the aristocracy; and it was they finally who were the first to stand forward in the most unqualified manner in support of the principles of the French Revolution. "The Catholics, who composed the third party, were about two-thirds of the nation, and formed perhaps a still greater proportion. They embraced the entire peasantry of three provinces; they constituted a considerable portion of the mercantile interest; but from the tyranny of the penal laws enacted at different periods against them, they possessed but a very small proportion of the landed property, perhaps not a fiftieth part of the whole. It is not my intention here to give a detail of that execrable and infamous code, framed with the art and malice of demons, to plunder, and degrade, and brutalize the Catholics. This horrible system, pursued for above a century with unrelenting severity, had wrought its full effect, and has in fact reduced the great body of the Catholic peasantry of Ireland to a situation, morally and physically speaking, below the beasts of the field. The spirits of their few remaining gentry were broken, and their minds degraded; and it was only in the class of their merchants and traders, and a few members of the medical profession, who had smuggled an education in despite of the penal code, that anything like political sensation existed."pp. 53-55. The system which had led to this state of things was bad, but consistent. Detestable in its end, but reasonable in the means. It had, as Tone says, wrought its full effect. Persecution is a medicine which does not succeed in small doses. It is safer to bind a man hand and foot, and to starve him on water gruel, than to fill his belly and tweak his nose. The folly of the present system pursued towards the Irish Catholics is, that while nothing impedes their acquiring land or knowledge, while the army and navy are open to them, while they have a better chance of acquiring wealth in the law than their Protestant brethren, while they are not excluded from the magistracy, while they are neither plundered, degraded, nor brutalized, but quite as thriving, quite as impudent, and quite as astute, as their Protestant neighbours; they are nevertheless, subjected to just as many disqualifications as are necessary to keep up political discontent among the rich, and the remembrance of old grievances among the poor. The feeling of Wolfe Tone, in the state of parties he has described, is sufficiently apparent in the description itself. He hated the English and the Protestants, not from suffering, (for he was, we have observed, of Protestant parents,) but from sympathy. "To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connexion with England, the never-failing source of our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country-these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland; to abolish the memory of all past dissensions; and to substitute the common name of Irishman in |