THE REV. WILLIAM JACKSON.

THE following notice of the Rev. William Jackson, from Walker's Hibernian Magazine, (May, 1795), is very meagre and unsatisfactory. It is, however, from contemporary authority, and contains probably as much as we now require to know of a man, who played so rash and unsuccessful a game in the politics of our country. Rash and unsuccessful, however, as his conduct was, his mission to Ireland was very important in one point of view. It indicated the quarter from which Irish disaffection might hope for aid and encouragement; and though he was not the first who came to Ireland to tender French assistance, his were the first offers of which the people of Ireland became aware, through the events of his singular and most tragic trial.

"This unfortunate man having been convicted by a jury of his countrymen, of an offence of so unpardonable a nature as high treason, would, most undoubtedly, have suffered the sentence which the law pronounces on so henious a crime, had it not been for the sudden and premature manner of his dissolution; upon the true cause of which doubts have arisen, even in the minds of medical men. His melancholy catastrophe, and the crime for which he was found guilty having been so uncommon in this country, (no person having been indicted for it for upwards of a century), have justly drawn the attention of the community, in a very ample degree, on this wretched and unfortunate man. Our desire to gratify the curiosity of the public, has induced us to procure such information respecting his origin, and progress through life, as we thought would be acceptable, and which we shall now lay before them.

"The family of this man was very respectable in this country. His father was many years a proctor, and officiated in the prerogative court in Dublin, and maintained a most excellent character. His mother was the daughter of Colonel Gore, of the county Sligo. He was the youngest of four sons, the eldest of whom was Dr. Richard Jackson, an eminent civilian, vicar-general to the late archbishop of Cashel, and an intimate friend of those respectable characters, the late Dr. Ratcliffe, and the Right Hon. Philip Tisdall. At an early age he was sent to the University of Oxford, where he made a rapid proficiency in all branches of scientific and classical knowledge, and

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here he commenced a friendship with the Harvey family, which remained unbroken for a long period of time. Having entered into the service of the church, the Earl of Bristol took him into his house as his private chaplain, with a handsome salary annexed; his circumstances about this time having become much straitened.

"On the appointment of the Earl of Bristol to the Lord Lieutenancy of this kingdom, a prospect seemed to dawn on Mr. Jackson, which promised to make his future situation in life independent. The Earl sent him here as his private secretary, with a recommendation to the Hon. Barry Maxwell, now Earl of Farnham, in whose house he resided for six months, universally loved and admired for his amiable and prepossessing qualities, his rectitude of conduct, and pleasing conversation. Unfortunately for him, however, his lordship resigned the viceroyalty without once visiting the seat of his government, and Jackson, whom if his lordship came into Ireland, would undoubtedly have been promoted to a bishopric, and might probably be now, not lying in his grave convicted of high treason, but presiding, a dignified ornament to the Established Church of this kingdom, returned to England to his former humble station of private chaplain to his patron.

"He was now obliged to look to his own acquirements and literary abilities, to enable him to indulge in those luxuries which he had been used to, and could not now do without, he accordingly commenced a party writer against the then ministry. His pamphlets acquired a great deal of celebrity in the political world, and even introduced him to the notice of the late Earl of Chatham, who promised to provide for him; but it unluckily happened that it was Jackson's fate to meet with nothing but promises from the great, that always turned out abortive to him.

"He pursued this line of conduct for a number of years in London well known as an author by the name of Parson Jackson, but without ever rising in his circumstances above mediocrity, although it might have been expected from the connexions he had with the family of the noble Earl already mentioned, and, through that connexion, with the Duchess of Kingston, he might have acquired a permanency for the remainder of his life.

"This celebrated lady last mentioned, was very much attached to Mr. Jackson, and made him her confidant and secretary during her remarkable trial, in the House of Lords of England, for bigamy. He wrote the famous letters that were published in the newspapers in her contest with that Aristophanes of his age, the late Samuel Foote.

"To enter into a detail of the many vicissitudes of life he went through in the course of his literary labours, would exceed the bounds

we are necessarily prescribed to; we shall, therefore, not trespass further on the reader's patience, but refer to the trial, and conclude, by giving some particulars of the manner of his death, and the circumstances attending it.

"On the 30th of April, being brought up to court to receive judgment, his counsel moved an arrest of it, grounded on some informality in the indictment, and also some other trifling matters, which, however, after being replied to by the Attorney-General, the court did not seem to think of moment sufficient to countenance this motion. During the course of the different opinions being delivered, the prisoner appeared to be extremely ill, and verging to a state of total insensibility, and upon Lord Clonmel's proceeding to pronounce judgment, he was entirely so; his lordship then gave orders that he should be brought back to prison until further orders. However, in the course of a few minutes more he was reported to be dead. His body was not removed from its position in the dock until the next morning, when an inquisition was held on it; and the body being opened by Surgeons Hume and Adrien, the jury brought in their verdict, that his death was occasioned by some acrid and mortal matter taken into the stomach; but how, or by whom administered, they did not know."

The account of Mr. Jackson is more full in Curran's Life, by his Son; and it is peculiarly interesting from the fact stated by Dr. Madden, in his Lives of the United Irishmen, that it was the casual perusal of a critique on this work, in the Edinburgh Review, that induced Lord Holland to prepare and introduce a bill for a change in the law of treason as applicable to this country. Previous to this act, the 1st and 2nd Geo. IV., c. 24, it was held by the judges in Ireland, that one witness was sufficient to convict, in this country, of high treason. The very salutary protection of a second witness, was extended by Lord Holland's act. The following is the account given of Mr. Jackson's trial by the biographer of Curran :—

"The next state trial of importance in which Mr. Curran was engaged was that of Mr. William Jackson, a case of which some of the attending circumstances were in a high degree singular and affecting.

"Mr. Jackson was a clergyman of the Established Church; he was a native of Ireland, but he had for several years resided out of that country. He spent a part of his life in the family of the noted Duchess of Kingston, and is said to have been the person who conducted that lady's controversy with the celebrated Foote.* At the

* Foote, at the close of his letter to her Grace, observes: "Pray, madam, is not Jn the name of your female confidential secretary?" and afterwards, "That you may never want the benefit of clergy in every emergency, is the wish of Yours," &c.

period of the French Revolution he passed over to Paris, where he formed political connexions with the constituted authorities. From France he returned to London, in 1794, for the purpose of procuring information as to the practicability of an invasion of England, and was thence to proceed to Ireland on a similar mission. Upon his arrival in London, he renewed an intimacy with a person named Cockayne, who had formerly been his friend and confidential attorney. The extent of his communications, in the first instance, to Cockayne, did not exactly appear; the latter, however, was prevailed upon to write the directions of several of Jackson's letters, containing treasonable matters, to his correspondents abroad: but in a little time, either suspecting or repenting that he had been furnishing evidence of treason against himself, he revealed to the British minister, Mr. Pitt, all that he knew or conjectured relative to Jackson's objects. By the desire of Mr. Pitt, Cockayne accompanied Jackson to Ireland, to watch and defeat his designs; and as soon as the evidence of his treason was mature, announced himself as a witness for the crown. Mr. Jackson was accordingly arrested, and committed to stand his trial for high treason.

"Mr. Jackson was committed to prison in April, 1794, but his trial was delayed, by successive adjournments, till the same month in the following year. In the interval, he wrote and published a refutation of Paine's Age of Reason, probably in the hope that it might be accepted as an atonement.* He was convicted, and brought up for judgment on the 30th of April, 1795.

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Examples of honourable conduct, no matter by whom displayed, are heard with pleasure by every friend to human nature. Of such, a very rare instance was given by this gentleman during his imprisonment. For the whole of that period he was treated with every possible indulgence; a fact so creditable to the Irish government, that it would be unjust to suppress it. Among the other acts of lenity extended to him, was a permission to enjoy the society of his friends. A short time before his trial, one of these remained with him to a late hour of the night when he was about to depart, Mr. Jackson accompanied him as far as the place where the gaoler usually waited upon such occasions, until all his prisoners' visitors should have retired. They found the gaoler in a profound sleep, and the keys of the prison lying beside him. "Poor fellow!" said Mr. Jackson, taking up the keys, "let us not disturb him; I have already been too troublesome to him in this way. He proceeded with his friend to the outer door of the prison, which he opened. Here the facility of escaping naturally struck him, he became deeply agitated; but after a moment's pause, I could do it," said he, " but what would be the consequences to you, and to the poor fellow who has been so kind to me? No! let me rather meet my fate." He said no more, but locking the prison door again, returned to his apartment. It should be added, that the gentleman, out of consideration for whom such an opportunity was sacrificed, gave a proof upon this occasion that he deserved it. He was fully aware of the legal consequences of aiding in the escape of a prisoner committed under a charge of high treason, and felt that, in the present instance, it would have been utterly impossible for him to disprove the circumstantial evidence that would have appeared against him; yet he never uttered a syllable to dissuade his unfortunate friend. He, however, considered the temptation to be so irresistible, that, expecting to find the prisoner, upon farther reflection, availing himself of it, he remained all night outside the prison door, with the intention, if Mr. Jackson should escape, of instantly flying from Ireland.

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"It is at this stage of the proceedings that the case of Jackson becomes terribly peculiar. Never, perhaps, did a British court of justice exhibit a spectacle of such appalling interest as was witnessed by the King's Bench of Ireland upon the day that this unfortunate gentleman was summoned to hear his fate pronounced. He had a day or two before made some allusions to the subject of suicide. In a conversation with his counsel in the prison, he had observed to them, that his food was always cut in pieces before it was brought to him, the gaoler not venturing to trust him with a knife or fork. This precaution he ridiculed, and observed, that the man who feared not death, could never want the means of dying, and that as long as his head was within reach of the prison-wall, he could prevent his body's being suspended to scare the community. At the moment, they regarded this as a mere casual ebullition, and did not give it much attention.

"On the morning of the 30th of April, as one of these gentlemen was proceeding to court, he met in the streets a person warmly attached to the government of the day. The circumstance is trivial, but it marks the party spirit that prevailed, and the manner in which it was sometimes expressed: I have (said he) just seen your client, Jackson, pass by on his way to the King's Bench to receive sentence of death. I always said he was a coward, and I find I was not mistaken; his fears have made him sick-as the coach drove by, I observed him, with his head out of the window, vomiting violently.' The other hurried on to the court, where he found his client supporting himself against the dock. His frame was in a state of violent perturbation, but his mind was still collected. He beckoned to his counsel to approach him, and making an effort to squeeze him with his damp and nerveless hand, uttered in a whisper, and with a smile of mournful triumph, the dying words of Pierre,

"We have deceived the senate."

"The prisoner's counsel having detected what they conceived to be a legal informality in the proceedings, intended to make a motion in arrest of his judgment; but it would have been irregular to do so until the counsel for the crown, who had not yet appeared, should first pray the judgment of the court upon him. During this interval, the violence of the prisoner's indisposition momentarily increased, and the chief-justice, Lord Clonmel, was speaking of remanding him, when the attorney-general came in, and called upon the court to pronounce judgment upon him. Accordingly, the Rev. William Jackson was set forward,' and presented a spectacle equally shocking and affecting. His body was in a state of profuse perspiration; when his hat was