The disasters of Britain, in her struggles against all Europe, instead of producing sympathy in Ireland, gave hopes to their slumbering projects. În 1795, the communications with the French Directory were assiduously carried on, and in 1796 the military organization of Ulster was reported as complete. In 1797, plans of general insurrection were drawn up, and the negotiations for foreign assistance arranged. In a memoir presented to the French minister at Hamburgh, in June, 1797, by a convention of the United Irishmen, it was stated, that the "counties of Louth, Armagh, Westmeath, King's County and Dublin were the best organized, and that the Catholic priests had ceased to be alarmed at the calumnies propagated respecting French irreligion; that the priests were all well-affected to the cause, and with discrete zeal propagated the system of the United Irishmen. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, in a despatch written by himself, stated the number of armed men in Ulster, Leinster and Munster, to be 279,896, but that the treasure in hand was only £1,485.

To aid these internal traitors, the French Directory despatched, in 1797, an immense armament for the separation of Ireland from England, and the creation of an Hibernian republic in an indivisible alliance with France. But Ireland and England were saved by the beneficent interposition of Providence (as in the case of the Spanish Armada), which in its mercy scattered over the ocean twenty-five Gallic ships of the line, fifteen large frigates, many brigs and sloops of war, and transports for 25,000 men! Then were the eyes of the government opened to the danger of the crisis, and the Irish opposition were compelled to permit the passing of the "Gunpowder Bill," by which only certain licensed persons were authorized to import Gunpowder into Ireland. Did this vigorous act bear the semblance of encouraging rebellion for the purpose of carrying the Union?

But this was not the only step undertaken by the British government, and forced from the Irish parliament, in spite of those who contended that Ireland was tranquil, while the slumbering volcano was ready to burst beneath their feet. The "Convention Bill" was passed, by which selfcreated conventions were authorized to be dissolved, and the seizure of unregistered arms effected. This bill was passed, despite of the senseless cry of those whose shout was-" Perish the Empire-Live the Constitution!" A survivorship which was more identified with the effusion of faction than the emanation of reason. By means, however, of this very bill, the government arrested, or compelled to fly, several of the ablest of the United Irishmen, and instant steps were taken for the disarming of the people. General Lake was instructed to seize arms in Ulster, and "to disperse all tumultuous assemblies of persons, though they might not be in arms, without waiting for the sanction and assistance of the civil authorities, if the peace of the realm or the safety of his majesty's faithful subjects should be endangered by waiting for such authority." Here again we may ask, did such a coercive measure look like fostering an incipient rebellion? There were in Ulster 99,400 United Irishmen ; but by the indefatigable efforts of that celebrated and humane warrior (General, afterwards created Lord Lake, for his splendid achieve

ments in India, under the statesmanlike government of the Marquis Wellesley) upwards of six thousand stand of arms, and many thousand pikes, and other formidable weapons were seized, so that when the rebellion actually broke out in the subsequent year, not 30,000 out of 90,000 men could assemble armed.

But to return to the period previous to the rebellion. The government, observing the good effects of disarming Ulster, determined also on disarming Leinster; and accordingly proclamations were issued, requiring a surrender of arms before a certain day. The proclamation was treated with contempt, and troops were marched into Leinster for the forcible seizure of arms: did this, we again say, look like conniving at rebellion and treason? The directors of the Irish union subsequently acknowledged, that the efforts of the government to disarm the people marred all their projects; and that, although they were desirous of preventing the explosion until the arrival of another expected French force, yet that the eagerness of the people, and the fear that government would succeed in disarming Leinster as effectually as it had done Ulster compelled them to give the signal for rebellion, to commence simultaneously for all Leinster, on the night of the 23d of May, 1797.

We willingly draw a veil over that terrible period, and desire not to detail atrocities which are a disgrace to human nature, and which the bigotry of religion contributed so materially to engender; suffice it to say, that never was there a more atrocious libel on the British character, than that which ascribes to Englishmen the fostering and instigation of a bloody rebellion, in order to secure a legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland.*

The calumnious assertion is not only unsupported by a shadow of proof, but directly negatived by hundreds of facts as strong, if not stronger, than those we have detailed; and those who could conjure up such a charge for the purpose of blasting the memory of the dead and of reviling the living, deserve the unutterable execration of every man who holds in estimation the unpurchasable character of a nation, as well as of an individual.

After a terrible expenditure of blood and treasure,† the rebellion of 1798 was quelled; and men of reason, who loved their country, saw that after the fifty-third‡ rebellion of hatred to England, by a party who

*The Marquis Cornwallis (then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) in a letter to the Marquis Wellesley, dated Phoenix Park, Dublin, 20th September, 1799, says: "There remains still too much disaffection and treason on the one side, and too much violence on the other; on the whole, however, we are better than we have been, and the idea of the union proves more popular, and gains ground both in and out of parliament." The writer has other private letters of the Marquis Cornwallis, which completely refute all idea of corruption.

†The property destroyed was valued at nearly one million sterling; the loss of life on the side of the crown was 20,000, and that of the rebels was computed at 50,000.

The rebellion of O'Neal cost Elizabeth £2,000,000 sterling. She forgave this chieftain five times, raised him to the rank of Earl of Tyrone, received him with distinction at her court, and so pressed her deputies in Ireland to be lenient

sought separation at every hazard, the only chance left for the peace, freedom and prosperity of Ireland was a legislative union with Great Britain; the project of 1782 was therefore revived, more particularly as the dispute between the two parliaments, on the powers with which the regent should be invested, demonstrated that there was no security to prevent disagreement of opinion on ulterior constitutional questions.

Such, indeed, was the feeling, even in the Irish parliament, on the subject of the Union, that when the question was first proposed, January 1799, barely one-half of the Irish commoners were averse to it, after twenty-two hours' debate; and a large majority of the property and rank of the country, as represented in the Irish House of Lords, were in its favor;-nay, more, so far from the Union being hurried to a conclusion before reason had time to operate, the very reverse was the case, for we find Mr. Pitt making use of the following language, in his speech of the 31st of January, 1799 (nearly two years before the Union), in the British House of Commons:

I wish that the question of the Union should be stated distinctly, temperately and fully; that it should be left to the unprejudiced, the dispassionate, the sober judgment of the Irish parliament. I wish that those, whose interests are involved in the measure, should have time for its consideration; I wish that time should be given to the landed, to the monied interest, that they should look at it in all its bearings-that they should coolly examine and sift the popular arguments by which it has been opposed-and that then they should give their final judgment.January 31st, 1799.

Mr. Pitt's advice was taken; the question was well sifted and examined in the British as well as in the Irish parliament, and by a powerful and able opposition in both legislatures; the one enlisting on their side national interests,* pride, jealousy and prejudices; the other advocating the illusory doctrines of the French revolutionists, or fearful lest the accession of Irish members in the British parliament would give too much power to the ministry. Reason, and a sound sense of mutual interests prevailed on both sides of the channel, and the legislature of Great Britain, as well as of Ireland, incorporated their separate powers, which (as Sir William Petty had long before truly observed), “instead of uniting together, often to him, that he was enabled to prosecute almost with final success his grand rebellion. Yet James I. restored Tyrone to his lands and honors, notwithstanding Elizabeth had expended £2,000.000 in suppressing his last rebellion. But Tyrone could not be at rest; he again rebelled, and, fearing he could not again expect forgiveness, fled to Rome or Spain, where he died. This does not look like tyranny in the English government.

*Among the evil effects which the Irish orators of the day declared would result from the Union, it was stated, that when the parliament was removed from Dublin, grass would be annually mown in Sackville-street, and snipes shot in College-green! Such was the language of men who, as lawyers, merchants, &c., dreaded being deprived of the means of obtaining seats in parliament, without being removed from the ordinary sphere of their vocations in Dublin. 4

VOL. II.-No. I.

crossed upon each other's trades, not only as if they were foreigners to rach other, but sometimes as enemies." Mr. Grattan's resolution for an address to the king, as a protest against the Union, was negatived by a majority of 135 to 77, on the 5th of June, 1800. The long-desired object of parliamentary reform was, to a certain extent, gained by the disfranchising of a number of nomination boroughs, the possessors of which each received £15,000; the revenue to be levied was fixed in the proportion of two to fifteen, in which ratio it was to remain twenty years, and after that period to be modified by the imperial parliament according to justice; Ireland was to send one hundred commoners to the imperial legislature, twenty peers to be elected for life, and four bishops, in rotation, to take their seats in the upper house. Thus ended what had been termed the Irish parliament, and which, the moment it arrogated to itself the powers of an independent legislature, imbibed the elements of dissolution, or separation from England; for there being no connecting link between the two islands, but the precarious prerogative of the crown, there was unavoidably a constant endeavor of the executive to maintain an authority over the legislature, prevention in Ireland being of necessity more desirable than opposition by the veto. The government had long been dependent on an oligarchy, who maintained an ascendency at their own price in Irish affairs. "The Union," as a national historian justly observes, "broke the strength of the aristocracy; it effected that which it proposed, by untying the hands of government; it loosened its dependence upon a party, and restored to the state the privilege of good government."+ Ireland, in fact, for centuries possessed but two classes of society, the rich and the poor; there was no solid bond between the crown and the people; and the feudalism, which the religion of Luther in England, and of Calvin in Scotland had tended so much to annihilate, flourished in most parts of Erin (as it still does in some places) in all its desolating vigor. Commerce, also, which so materially assists to break down the vassalage of a nation, was kept by bounties and protective duties in an unnatural state of depression and alternate excitement; and so far from considering that Ireland ceased to be a kingdom, and became a degraded province by

*The same plan of paying the proprietors of nomination boroughs was proposed in the discussion of the late reform bill, and had it been effected, no one would have said that the reform bill had been carried by bribery and corruption; yet it is asserted that the Union was carried by bribery and corruption, because the disfranchised proprietors of the Irish boroughs received £15 000 each. This is not, surely, a fair charge to make against Mr. Pitt's government as to corrupt means used in effecting the Union. It is asserted that Lord Castlereagh spent £2,000,000 in notorious and profligate bribery to carry the Union. Now the sum actually paid away to the proprietors of nomination boroughs, disfranchised at the Union, was £1,260,000, at the rate of £15,000 for each borough; and on the same principle, and at even a higher rate of payment, Mr. Fitt projected parliamentary reform in England. What he had, therefore, proposed for England, it would have been unjust to deny to Ireland, when nomination boroughs were destroyed there. When the Union was even first introduced into the Irish parliament, the proportions for and against it were 108 to 110.

† O'Driscoll's Ireland, p. 52.

*

her legislative incorporation with Britain, the reverse was actually the case; and the substantial liberties and prosperity of Irishmen may be truly dated from the period when England, Ireland and Scotland were united under one crown and one legislature.

ARTICLE III.

THE LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE.

From the London Eclectic Review.

History of the Literature of Ancient Greece. By K. O. MÜLLER, Professor in the University of Göttingen. Vol I. Published under the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. 1840.

THIS is the first volume of a work, composed by the accomplished author expressly for the Society which has laid it before the English public. The translation has been executed under the direction of the Society, and the greater part has had the advantage of the author's revision; and this, before it has appeared in its native land and language. We had at first intended to wait for the appearance of the second volume, before calling our readers' attention to this; but a fuller consideration has shown us adequate reasons, as we think, for treating this volume as a complete whole in itself. It embraces the Greek literature from its commencement until the close of the ancient tragedy; Euripides being the last author extant on whom any criticism is put forth. Now, whether by design of the learned professor or otherwise, it so happens that this is a remarkable era, separating the poetical from the philosophical and rhetorical age of Greek; so that our present volume might be entitled "Greek Poetry," with the exception of the imaginative and half poetical storyteller Herodotus. None of the older philosophers survive to us. It is true, that a few minor writers remain for the next volume, and one more original, yet decidedly inferior poet, the Sicilian Theocritus. But all the nobler and higher minds belong to the earlier period which is now brought before our notice.

It is natural to inquire whether the history of Greece Proper, as trans

* Scotland was, in reality, more an independent kingdom than Ireland, but no Scotchman is so foolish as to think that his country became a province by its incorporation with England; in fact, neither Ireland nor Scotland became provinces of England by their legislative unions, in any degree more than England became a province of the incorporated countries. Before the French revolution, different provinces in France had provincial parliaments, and as there is no evil without good, the destruction of these separate legislatures was a permanent blessing to France, by consolidating its energy and simplifying its laws.