ple to rebellion, and made enemies of almost every honest man. The old and respectable magistrates, men of property and reputation in the country, were struck out of the commission of the peace, and foreign mercenaries put into it. The population of whole districts were swept without remorse on board tenders and prison ships; and fathers of families torn from their poor and peaceful cottages, to be sent on board the British fleet, where the tale of their bitter and just complaint was to form the leaven of that fearful event so aptly called Carhampton's mutiny; and which was like to have cost the king of England more than the violence of a million of such men, with their strong governments, could ever do him good. Weak men, they had not minds to conceive that the only strong government is that which is strong in the confidence and security of the people governed. They called these crimes, dictated by their own petty passions, by the name of "vigor beyond the law." So Robbes, piere called his. In short, he and his associates seemed in every thing, except sincerity, to be their model. The difference was, that his cruelties fell chiefly on the rich and great; theirs afflicted the humble and the poor. The clo quence of Europe has been exhausted in reprobating his crimes. The mention of theirs, is still treason and death. Alas! the advocates of the poor are few, and their reward is ruin. To celebrate successful villany, is the sure road to gain and to preferment. Had I been capable of stooping to such baseness, instead of opposing myself to the unparalleled oppression of my countrymen, those who have persecuted me, know, in their own hearts, how open the road of fortune was to me. But nature and a virtuous education had made me differently, and if my conduct has been criminal, I own I am incorrigible; for, with all the time and reason I have

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had for sober reflection, I cannot see in what essential circumstance I could better discharge the duties I owe to God, to my fellow creatures and to myself. Prudence might possibly, were the same events to recur, dictate some safer course; but virtue could offer nothing more pure. Nor have I been the dupe of any deceitful hope or passion. I saw but too clearly from the first, how, in such a state of things, in attempting to do good, one must expose one's self to mischief; and it is to that settled principle I owe the courage which has been my safety and consolation through so many trials. If it were otherwise, and that I could suppose my conduct criminal, I know of but one way of future remedy for all such evils; that is, that we should hereafter educate our offspring in the contempt of what is generous and honest, You have children, my friend, and so have I, Shall we calculate, that the times to come, will always resemble those we have seen? Shall we, judging by such example, train up their tender minds in calculating profligacy? Shall we stifle, in its birth, every generous feeling of compassion and humanity? Shall we teach them to mock at the love of their country? Shall we teach them the cant and outward form of a pure religion of equality and justice; but at the same time inure them to plunder and to murder in the name of that religion? Shall we give them early lessons, that restraints are only for the vulgar and that he, who does not prefer his avarice and ambition to every other consideration, is a fool; and if he is inflexible against seduction, he should be hunted as a traitor?-Were these considerations rigorously pursued, how far would they not lead? further, I fear, than is for your happiness or mine. Let us rather encourage the hope, that crime will not always triumph, and justice may yet return; that our off

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spring may be honest, and yet be happy .And let me for the present resume the thread of this extraordinary narrative.

I have mentioned, that Sir Ralph Abercrombie had been obliged to abdicate the command of the army in Ireland. I am not obliged to conjecture what his reasons were. He frankly and consistently with his manly character published them in one short sentence, where he said that this famous army of Carhampton "had become contemptible to its enemies, and formidable only to its friends." And true his words did prove, when the half naked peasants of a few counties of Ireland, without arms or ammunition, or any other leaders than those there was not wisdom to deprive them of, their misery and their despair could wage war and gain victories over the most costly army of Europe.

Lord Cornwallis, something wiser than his predecessors, or at least unactuated by party spite, saw how nearly all was lost, and formed a better plan. He shut up the houses of torture. He forbade pitched caps to be burned on men's heads. He put an end, in a great measure, to the ravishing of women and the killing or whipping of Irishmen for sport. He interdicted half hanging to extort confessions. He put a stop to much of the petty-fogging and chicaning part of the administration; and he offered pardon and protection to such as would lay down their arms and return to their homes. But unhappily, whether it was that the faction were too strong for him and wished to blacken him as faithless and disloyal, and to gratify their jealousy by thwarting his measures, certain it is that many had no sooner laid down their arms, than they were murdered defenceless, and in one instance particularly, the massacre of Glencoe was acted over on the Curragh of Kildare.-(See Appendix, No. II.)

It was but justice, however, to this nobleman, to relate one instance in which he asserted his dignity with true energy. Two yeomen, so they called themselves, had gone to the house of a poor widow; whilst one guarded the door, the other went in, dragged a young boy from his sick bed, and in contempt even of a protection which he had received from the government, shot the son in the arms of his mother. The culprit, on his trial, avowed the fact; and audaciously called upon several officers to justify him under military orders, and to depose upon their oaths that what he did was his duty. And in their sense so it certainly was, and he was readily acquitted. But lord Cornwallis saw it differently, and ordered his disapprobation of the sen→→ tence to be read in open court, to lord Enniskellen, the president, and the other officers composing the court martial; disqualifying them forever from setting on any other court martial, and the yeoman from ever serving the king. And this, as it was strongly stated, in his order published officially in the news-papers, "for having acquitted, without any pretext, a man guilty upon the clearest and uncontradicted evidence of a wilful and deliberate murder." Perhaps you will wonder that I should state this fact as any thing extraordinary: you will be surprised, possibly, to hear that any country, where the British constitution was professed, should be in such a state of wretchedness, that an act of justice, no stronger than the punishment of murder and misprison by a reprimand, should excite furious animosity on one side, and transports of admiration on the other. But so long had the reign of terror lasted, that the very mention of bringing any of this faction to justice, was looked upon by the rest, as an insolent encroachment upon their murderous prerogatives. Nor would this story have been

ever known either to lord Cornwallis or the public, moré than to thousands of others buried with the victims in the grave, had it not been for the accidental protection afforded to this poor widow, by a lady of fortune and fashionMrs. Latouche.

LETTER IV.

Negociation Byrne—Bond.

AFTER several months of cruel and secret im prisonment, a Mr. Crawford, an attorney, was first permitted to break the spell of solitude, and enter my prison door. This gentleman had been employed in the defence of Mr. Bond, Mr. Byrne, and others, for whose fate I was much interested, and on this title introduced himself to my confidence. He descanted with ability upon the excellent views of the Marquis Cornwallis, so unlike his predeces sors. He drew a strong picture of the unhappy state of the country, and proposed to me, as to one free from even the pretence of accusation; but one, he was pleased to say, whose character might inspire confidence, to become the instrument of a pacification, and to promote a reconciliation between the government and the state prisoners; which could not fail, he said, to end in the general good of the people and save the lives of many thousands.

I, though neither chief nor leader of a party, nor in any way connected with responsibility, was yet too warm à friend to the peace and union of my country, and to gene