PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS

ON THE

GENERAL IMPROVEMENT

OF THE

Navigation of the Shannon,

BETWEEN LIMERICK AND THE ATLANTIC;

AND MORE PARTICULARLY OF THAT PART OF IT NAMED BY PILOTS,

THE NARROWS.

WITH

SOME REMARKS

INTENDED TO

CREATE A DOUBT OF THE FAIRNESS OF NOT KEEPING FAITH

WITH THE

IRISH ROMAN CATHOLICS,

AFTER THEY HAD BEEN LURED INTO A SURRENDER OF LIMERICK,
(THEIR PRINCIPAL FORTRESS),

By a Treaty.

BY THOMAS STEELE, Esq.

ONE OF THE PROTESTANT MEMBERS OF THE IRISH CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION;
M. A. MAGDALEN COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; AND AN ASSOCIATE MEMBER
OF THE LONDON INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS.

The Greeks a kind of Eastern Irish Papists.

LORD BYRON. Childe Harold. Notes.

2-27-57

99-56296

ΤΟ

THOMAS TELFORD, Esq.

PRESIDENT OF THE LONDON INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS,

F.R.S.L. &E.

SIR,

Ennis, County Clare, Dec, 1827.

On the evening when I took my seat
as an Associate Member of the Institution of
Civil Engineers, I signed in your presence a
Declaration, that I would always, to the utmost

of
my power, endeavour to promote the objects
for which the Society had been founded; and I
now, without at all identifying you with my
Politics, beg permission to dedicate to you the
following Pages; that, at the same time when
I make an humble effort to fulfil my Pledge to
the Institution, I may, as an Irishman, have
the gratification of publicly expressing my sense
of the benefit you have conferred on my Coun-
try, by increasing, to the extent that you have
increased it, the rapidity of communication be-
tween Ireland and England.

In the progress of your Work, Sir, for drawing the two Countries by so many hours nearer

to each other than they were before, you have not only formed one of the most magnificent Roads in the world over the mountains of Wales, but you have suspended in the mid-way air-not over a river, but over a portion of the mighty deep itself a Monument to your Genius, harmonizing with the objects around, beneath, and on high; for, like the ridge of the Cambrian mountains, the ocean-tide, and the firmament of Heaven,

the Bridge over the billows of the Menai, is sublime.

INTRODUCTION,

WITH respect to the form in which I have written the Remarks in the Second Part, I wish to say a few words.

One still and solemn evening last autumn, a little after sunset, I was in a boat on the Upper Shannon, returning to Limerick. I had passed that branch of it called the Abbey River, and was observing a part of the Island, the ancient Bridge, the towers of the Castle, dark almost to blackness, by the incessant smoke of several forges which are under them-the gloomy trees in St. Munchin's Church-yard, hanging over the water, the Gothic turrets of St. Mary's Cathedral, and the City itself -combining in such a manner, by the progress of the boat, as to form what Artists call, technically, a picture. My mind being a good deal occupied at the time with the subject of the Navigation of the Shannon, I called to memory, while I was gazing on the prospect before me, the story of the loss of the Rose of Chester, by striking on one of the