to the public through other lips, that is the evidence of Lawler, between whom and Smith it never was pretended there was any knowledge. Hanlon gave information against a set of people who had vowed vengeance against a respectable clergyman, Mr. Walsh, and in order to take away the testimony of Hanlon, one scheme of murder was to follow the other. Glennan had undertaken to lay hold of Smith, who at this time was in the Artillery, to which he had fled, not thinking there was assistance to be had at the Castle at that time. Glennan formed the plan so early as January, 1796, and considered Smith as a proper person to seduce the unhappy man into their power for that is one part of their execrable system, treason to be executed by murder. The mode was this:-Smith was to deliver Hanlon into their hands, they were to take him along the meadows, and put him to death and throw his body into the river, and Kane said, "as soon as it is fixed I will on the Friday after be able to march 18,000 men into Dublin." Whether he lied or not, or could do so or not, it is sworn he made the declaration. The import of the oath taken was to serve certain persons, who were named, to recover their estates, sweep clean the Protestants and leave none alive. Which of you made use of this expression constitutes no variation as to the argument that was the general purport of Defenders-it has been sworn to by great numbers of people. The impression I wish to make is, that this is not an idle tale, but that there is existing, and has been for some time, a horrid system of murder and treason, the seeds of which were sown by such men as Rowan and Tandy, who have fled from their country. I wish that masters of families were more attentive to their children and their families in the early part of their lives. I have endeavoured to save the youth of this town. By two examples I have endeavoured to save the rest.

Masters should have some care that children and apprentices be not brought to the gallows in a hurry. Every master of a family should be accountable for his family, and not suffer them to resort to punch-houses-first letting them get together, then they are infected and made authors of the worst offences. From the 3d of January down to the last day of the month, when this horrid plot was preparing against Hanlon, it appears that Glennan was the person to bring the boys about him. Smith informed Lane, and by well concerted conduct, and the spirit and vigilance of Alderman Alexander, this horrid and infamous scheme was prevented from execution, which might have been perpetrated in half an hour after.

One of the Prisoners.-My lord, there were five of us chandlers had nothing to do with the business-we had come from chapel.

Lord CLONMEL.-Five chandlers together on a Sunday evening in a punch-house! You should have been in your own places. You talk of a chapel, that brings another part of the case into my mind. Let it be recollected, that Hamilton Rowan was, or professed to be, a Protestant. Jackson was a Protestant clergyman, and, therefore, let not an expression of mine be supposed to apply to those of any persuasion. I am in too high a situation to fear any man, or class of men. I thank God, I am in a situation which puts me above politics. I have but one view-to exterminate this evil from the country, if I can.

What you have said, has not suggested any circumstance in your favour. But take it in another point of view. I suppose the persons I have named were professedly of the Protestant religion. What is doing in France? There, Roman Catholics are drowning in hundreds ; even their own clergymen are packed together and exterminated. So that religion is made a pretence. "We may begin with Protestants, but the next day we begin upon another class," and so they will proceed to a third, until they destroy each other. Let me go further, and suppose they succeed. If the streets of the city flowed with the blood of Protestants, that would answer no purpose. When the Protestants of this country were fewer and weaker, by thousands, than they are now, they were able to establish themselves, and they never can be borne down but by their own timidity and want of spirit. Would it benefit the Roman Catholics? Certainly not. They have been told so, and the oath is the ceremony which binds wicked hearts together: and if one class of men were destroyed, another would succeed, and every man, having anything to lose, would fall under the knife. Suppose them to succeed in this, and that these associated people were wicked to damnation, if they have any sense of it, would it answer them, if they had destroyed every Roman Catholic of property in the country? No. The country is a great one, and worth fighting for, and if they destroyed every man of property, the country would be conquered again. Therefore, it is a fallacious system.

God and nature have joined England and Ireland together-it is impossible to separate them, and if bands of ruffians started up in every part, they could not hold the dominion of murder for a month. I have seen with pain, that this phrenzy has got among the people of Ireland; and if it be a phrenzy, prisons are their safest mad-houses. What is the situation of Meath? Rich almost beyond any neighbouring county; the farmer happy, the peasantry, yeomen, and gentry all delighted with their situation, because all were independent. How is it altered? Whence is it, that unhappy county has become a sort of slaughter-house ? From the practices of some wicked-minded people who they are I know not-God forgive them. They will fall victims of the law, against which they are struggling. While the countries round are perishing through the horrors of war and famine, Ireland could not say, there was a creature unfed or unprovided for. Why? Because the bad are fed by the good, and the south feeds the disturbers of the north; and if the country had been left to the Defenders, and if it had not been for the industry of the south, there might have been one universal famine. What, then, are these distracted and unhappy people told? But, in truth, I early saw, and spoke of it in acts of my duty, here and elsewhere, that the mischief originated in nests of clubs in the city of Dublin. Dublin is the mint for coining treason and circulating it in small parts, and making it current. A number of young persons, with trades which might make them respectable, not in want, no appearance of it, are become the most active agents. And here I must mention a circumstance -you must feel the weight of it. There never was a time, when persons of your description had less reason to complain. Look at the canals and various public works. Thousands of the poor are employed and supplied with work, even in the time of war. Within

these five or six years past, many persons have looked to the state of the poor, and endeavoured to make them all comfortable and easy; and yet this is the time in which this phrenzy has seized such numbers. Is this an idle tale? is it not notorious that cruel and horrid murders have been committed upon witnesses, just at the eve of the commission? Is it not part of the system spread through the country to destroy witnessess? Two creatures, because they were witnesses, or supposed to be witnesses, have been brutally murdered, in the dead of the night, at the gate of a man who deserves as well from this country as any other man in it. He who has employed so many of the poor to improve and embellish the most improved place in that part of the country where he resides. Few people are willing to do as much as he did. I have known him to have two military commissions. He quieted the south without a single person falling a sacrifice, and he quieted the west with the thanks of that country. Yet two persons were murdered at his gate, because they were witnesses.

What must be the situation of persons of his description, if the country be made disagreeable to them? The land will be abandoned by all the proprietors and the tenantry will be left to be worried by tribes of agents and managers :-Their landlords will never see them.

So that taking this subject in every point of view, it is the most wicked system of murder and treason that ever was heard of in any country, that for some years past has disgraced mine own.

A very old author discoursing upon Irishmen, says, "where Irishmen are good, is it impossible to find better, where they are bad, it is impossible to find worse." I am afraid, we have got to this alternative. Treachery was never the character of Irishmen. Courage and intrepdity were their characteristics. Every creature is taught to fight, but boldly and fairly. But it was not until this system, founded upon the French mode, the total want of all principle, that we began to be disgraced.

I have gone thus far to shew the consequences of this wicked and black system by which you have been seduced, bringing destruction upon yourselves and everything dear to you. I now come to the sentence, which I am obliged to pronounce upon you.

I have received two or three petitions this morning upon this subject. I am bound by the verdict of the jury. It is a calamitous thing to think, that decent persons like you can be seduced. The witness swore that ten were equally acquainted with the intended murder. He acquitted three. But all the rest, he said, were acquainted with the design. I hope the example of this day will operate through the city, and all parts of the kingdom. You must have many relations. I will not wound them by exposing you in the streets; to send them home with sorrow and shame. For their sakes as well as your own I will not do it.

But you must be punished and therefore each of you is to be imprisoned three years, pay a fine of £50 and give security for your good behaviour for seven years commencing from the expiration of your imprisonment.

END OF THE TRIALS OF THE DEFENDERS.

INTRODUCTION

TO THE

TRIAL OF FINERTY.

SOME short account of William Orr, is the fittest introduction to the celebrated Trial of Peter Finerty, as the latter was indicted for a libel written on the subject of Orr's fate.

No incident occurred during the eight years which preceded the rebellion of 1798 so full of melancholy interest as the trial and the death of William Orr. It was pregnant with consequences of greater import than usually follow the destruction of a single victim, particularly where he is a man of humble position and of no striking talents. William Orr was a farmer, of independent circumstances, in the county of Antrim. He was a Presbyterian, and of strict religious principles. His character in every relation of life was of the most exemplary kind. He was a rough, bold man, whose courage, homeliness and warmth won love from all who knew him. In addition to his high moral qualities, his generous charity, his domestic truth and public spirit-he was blessed with a fine figure and a handsome face. Such was one of those whom a bad, immoral government selected for destruction; and succeeded in destroying, by means as foul as ever disgraced the most inhuman tyranny.

The Insurrection Act had passed (Feb. 1796). It punished with death the administering of the United Irishman's oath; and created a number of new crimes theretofore unknown to the law. Its consequences were soon felt. The country swarmed with villains of the most profligate class, swearing away the lives of men and earning the liberal blood-money which profusely flowed from the corrupt fountain-head, at the Castle. It was a crime-the administering of an oath-easy of proof; and the facility with which the sacrifice was effected, and the liberality with which it was paid for, held out irresistible temptations to a class of miscreants that is invariably called into existence by a government that will use and reward the most abandoned perfidy.