SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

istoesernr,

The United Irishmen ; their Lives and Times. By R. B. Madden, M.D., M.E.T.A.. With numerous Original Portraits. Third Series. In three volumes.

Deu, DuhI i.

Mumma,

A Tour to and from Venice, by the Vaudois and the Tyrol. By Louisa Stuart cos. tello, Author of " A Summer amongst the Boccages and the Vines." OttioWr. FICTION,

Leontine, or the Court of Louis the Fifteenth. By Mrs. Maberly, Author of " Me-

lanthe," " The Love Match," &o. In three volumes. Cotburn.

DE. MADDEN'S 'UNITED IRISHMEN.

WE never saw the second series of Dr. Madden's memoirs of the different persons who were connected with the rebellions and revolutionary pro- jects so rife in Ireland about fifty years ago. The third series contains the Lives of Wolfe Tone; Tandy, more conspicuous from the euphony of his name than for any intrinsic merit of his own ; James Coigly, distinguished through having been tried with O'Connor at Maid- stone, where, being found guilty, he was executed ; and the celebrated Robert Emmet. A number of other persons are included in the volumes, whose names are too little known to stimulate the attention, and some of whom derive no other claim to be recorded than the fact of an tm- timely death and their enrolment as United Irishmen.

The literary character of the book does not greatly differ from that of

the first series. The work is as much a collection of materials for bio- graphy as a series of biographies, unless where the materials are so very scanty that brevity and completeness of a certain kind are enforced by necessity. When Dr. Madden gets hold of any letters written by one of his heroes, he prints them at large, though their only claim to this dis- tinction would arise from the interest felt by the reader in a celebrated name, as they have little intrinsic character. He has applied to all the survivors of that disastrous period he could get access to, and very properly secured all the information they could give him, taking it down in their very words, where they did not write it themselves. But, instead of using these materials, he publishes them ; and as his correspondents have little of logic or literature, and mix up all kinds of reminiscences with their nar- ratives, the reader is puzzled or annoyed by a hodgepodge of facts or opinions having slender relation to the real subject. Neither does Dr. Mad- den manage his own composition without a good deal of digression and diffusion. As Emmet considered any attempt at insurrection in Ireland hopeless whilst Great Britain was at peace, we have a long account of the armed truce of Amiens, with the story of Despard's conspiracy. Dr. Madden allows that he has had many complaints of the defective arrangement of his materials, and admits the fault ; promising to remedy it in a new edition.

The tone of the work seems that of a partisan; and Dr. Madden has

undoubtedly a bias which leads him to aggravate the misdoings of the Government while he extenuates those of the United Irishmen. We believe, however, that he has been anxious to do justice; and he does it upon matters of simple fact. It is a wordy and turgid style fiat gives an air of onesidedness to his book,—together with the Hibernian manner of seizing upon collateral, subordinate, or common points, and urging them as essentiaL Sometimes Dr. Madden's zeal blinds his logic. For example, in an affair at Scurmore, the rebels had forced some Protestants into their ranks, and these were cut doin in the pursuit. Upon which Dr. Madden talks of the "massacre,"--tie if a charging squadron could discriminate under such circumstances, or each trooper, in a pursuit, were to ascertain all the particulars of a man's life before he used his sword. The book is fall of such errors ; at least they occur at everyopportunity. Read critically, The United Irishmen will not have the effect its author intended: for, instead of martyrs, the best were only hot-headed and theoretical enthusiasts, embarking in conspiracies whose difficulties they could not comprehend, and to whose after results, if successful, they never seem to have given a thought, beyond some idle dreams about making Ireland what Moore subsequently embodied in better language—

"great, glorious, and free, First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea."

Some of the humbler Catholics Lad individual grievances to complain of, in actual oppression by the local Orangemen—supposing the facts truly stated ; but their own conduct or character is of a cast that deadens sympathy or destroys it. The more respectable conspirators had no per- sonal oppressions to endure; and could hardly be said to suffer as an in- ferior caste, for some of them received offers from Government, and others had been in its employ; even when engaged in their conspiracy several were treated with lenity and consideration, which a few honourably re- jected, and others accepted to plot fresh treasons. The redress of civil and religious grievances and the reform of administrative abuses were proper grounds of union, though scarcely attainable by secret conspiracy; but the United Irishmen went far beyond this. They avowedly content, plated an alliance with a foreign enemy, an overthrow of the existing Government, a separation from Great Britain, and the establishment of republic,—treason as clear as noon-day, and which every de facto go!. vernment must punish. To what extent any moral excuses may exten- uate their conduct, is a very grave question. Sincerity and earnestness are insufficient pleas for undertaking an impracticable project ; or one where success is scarcely probable, and the attempt produces every misery which mankind have to suffer in civil war. Men are bound to use their reason before embarking in anything affecting others, much more in conspiracy or rebellion. Nor is there any other excuse than madness for persons, whether United Irishmen or Young Irelandmen, who deliberately and of malice aforethought involve a country in comfitb sion, and in the inevitable misery that accompanies a state of violence. The United Irishmen however, have an extenuation which the !bunt Irishmen have not. The public opinion of their day was less rigid, and it may be said less rational upon the subject of rebellion, than ours. The doctrine of " resistance " to existing government, established at the Revolution of 1688, lately exhibited with success in America, and then going on in France, was fashionable with the Whigs and in popular opinion, whilst the Tories could not deny but only explain and limit it. The difference between a parcel of briefless barristers and other persons still more obscure and powerless, and the aristocracy, gentry, army, and people of England—the legislative bodies and the bulk of the American colonists, already armed and disciplined as a militia—or the States General of France, engrossing the obstructive power and to some extent the actual authority of, the conntryescaped these patriots : so that dementia is still necessary to their complete excuse. The only man who understood the difficulties of the case, and had suf- ficient comprehension and shrewdness to rise above the haze of Irish politica, was probably Wolfe Tone ; and he soon learned not to commit himself to insurrection without a French army at his back. In point of practical sagacity and business-like sense, too, he excelled them all ; though there was too much of the professional agitator about him to in- spire the degree of respect for his character which Irishmen claim for him. His life and conduct, however, are best studied in his own Memoirs : Dr. Madden's is, very properly, only a sketch.

The celebrated Robert Emmet had beyond doubt the personal disin- terestedness in which Tone seems to have been deficient ; and had besides a purity of moral character, a devoted earnestness, and a lofty if not well-balanced genius, which excited the commiseration of enemies little accustomed to tenderness, and nndesignedly fascinated the hearts of all with whom he came in contact as friends. The story of his attachment to Miss Curran, with the melancholy circumstances attending her fate— the elements of a tragedy with the wildness of a romance—have made him a theme for tale and song, and spread his fame wherever the music and poetry of his country have been carried. It is these almost extrinsic circumstances which have embalmed his memory in the minds of men, rather than his patriotism : for if that be closely scanned it will be found of an indifferent order, reflecting as much upon his prudence and judg- ment as upon his humanity—if recklessness to almost certain conse7 quences be inhumane. The scheme in which he embarked was a Cato Street conspiracy upon a larger scale. He, like Thistlewood, was to have seized the heads of the Government in Dublin; which coup d'etat was to have been followed by a regular rising throughout the country : how he was to have disposed of the Army, the Yeomanry, and the Orangemen, or the power of Great Britain, does not seem to have been settled. As far as numbers went, and a country organization, the conspiracy had an advantage over Thistlewood's ; but the town project had less likelihood of success. It was intrusted to far too many persons ; and Emmet's preparations were carried on in too open a way; for he had several depots in Dublin for the manufacture of pikes, the storing of ammunition, and the preparation of combustibles of a deadly kind. 'An explosion took place in one of these magazines ; the house was visited by the police, and nest have clearly indicated what was going on, even had not the Govern- ment (as is supposed) had spies in the ranks of the conspirators. This kind of risk, though not perhaps to such a degree, is inseparable from conspiracy; but the total failure upon every point of every one of his expectations argues a miserable administrative or practical capacity. The following account of the causes of his failure, which, during his imprison- ment, he drew up to send to his brother, reads like a burlesque.

" I expected three hundred Wexford, four hundred Kildare, and two hundred Wicklow men, all of whom had fought before, to begin the surprises at this side of the water, and by the preparations for defence, so as to give time to the town to assemble. The county of Dublin was also to act at the instant it began: the number of Dublin people acquainted with it, I understand, to be three or four thousand. I expected two thousand to assemble at Costigan's mills—the grand place of assembly. The evening before, the Wicklow men failed, through their officer. The Kildare men, who were to act, (particularly with me,) came in, and at five o'clock went off again, from the Canal harbour, on a report from two of their officers that Dublin would not act. In Dublin itself it was given out by some treacherous or cowardly person that it was postponed till Wednesday. The time of assembly was from six till nine; and at nine, instead of two thousand there were eighty men assembled. When we came to the market-house they were diminished to eighteen or twenty. The Wexford men did assemble, I believe, to the amount promised, on the Coal-quay; but three hundred men, though they might be sufficient to begin on a sudden, were not so when Government had five hours' notice by express from Kildare.

"Add to this, the preparations were, from an unfortunate series of disappoint- ments in money, unfinished; scarcely any blunderbusses bought up. •

" The man who was to turn the fuzes and rummers for the beams forgot them, and went off to Kildare to bring men, and did not return till the very day. The consequence was, that all the beams were not loaded, nor mounted with wheels, nor the train-bags, of course, fastened on to explode them. •

a The person who had the management of the depot mixed, by accident, the slow matches that were prepared with what were not, and all our labour went for nothing. "The fuzes for the grenades he had also laid by, where he forgot them, and could not End them in the crowd.

"The cramp-irons could not be got in time from the smiths, to whom we would not communicate the necessity of despatch; and the scaling-ladders were not finished (but one)."

More causes were enumerated, but the above certainly were sufficient to explain the failure. With his eighty men, however, Emmet sallied forth from one of the depots to overturn the British empire in Ireland I " The motley assemblage of armed men, a great number of whom were, if not intoxicated, under the evident excitement of drink, marched along Thomas Street without discipline, with their ill-fated leader at their head, who was endeavouring to maintain order, with the assistance of Stafford, a man who appears to have remained close to him throughout this scene, and faithful to him to the last. Between the front ranks and the rear there was a considerable distance, and it was in vain that Stafford and others called on them repeatedly, and sometimes with imprecations, to close their ranks, or they would be cut to pieces by the army. They were in this state about half-past nine, when Robert Emmet, with the main body, was close to the old market-house. The stragglers in the rear soon commenced acts of pillage and assassination;" —.dragging a gentleman out of a hackney-coach, whom they wounded, but not mortally; but murdering Lord Kilwarden, and his nephew Mr. Wolf, who was in the carriage with him. As soon as Emmet heard of this atrocity, he returned to the place; too late to prevent the murder, but he is said to have safely conveyed Lord Kilwarden's daughter from the carriage to a neighbouring house. 'By the -time he.got back to his position as head of the insurrectionists, he had lost heart.

From that moment he gave up all hope of effecting any national object. He saw that his attempt had merged into a work of pillage and murder. He and a few of the leaders who were about him abandoned their project and their followers. A detachment of the military made its appearance at the corner of Cntpurse Row, and commenced firing on the insurgents, who immediately fled in all directions. The route was general in less than an hour from the time they sallied forth froni the depot. The only place where anything like resistance was made was on the Coombe; where Colonel Brown was killed, and two members of the Liberty Rangers, Messrs. Edmeston and Parker. The guard-house of the Coombe had been unsuccessfully attacked, though with great determination; a great many dead bodies were found there."

Such was the the result of a " physical force " experiment ; which a cer- tain class of wild Irishmen seem inclined to encourage in our day, though under less promising circumstances; for they will scarcely lay claim to the genius or virtues of Emmet; whilst their own country is certainly not in so combustible a state as in 1798 or 1803, the resources of Great Britain are as large and more available: neither would the public opinion of the civilized world look so mildly on such villany of vanity as it did half a century ago. But though the Young Ireland party cannot vie with the superior qualities of Robert Emmet, it can as little be de; nied that Robert Emmet partook of their, weaknesses, especially in,a certain false and theatrical taste. He was smitten with a taste for tailor- ing, like the '82 Club. At a time when common sense dictated the limitation of his labours as much as possible, he multiplied the chances of detection by employing tailors at his depots in the manufacture of, green uniforms, including a laced snit for himself. A witness deposes as fol- lows on the trial.

"He saw green uniform jackets making in the deptit by different tailors, one of whom was named Colgan. He saw one uniform in particular—a green coat, laced on the sleeves and skirts, &c., and gold epaulets, like a general's dress. He saw the prisoner take it out of a desk one day and show it to all present—(here the witness identified the desk, which was in court.) * On the evening of the 23d July, [the day of the insurrection,] witness saw the prisoner dressed in the uniform above described, with white waistcoat and pantaloons, new boots and cocked hat and white feather. He had also a sash on him, and was armed with a sword and case of pistols. The prisoner called for a big coat, but did not get it, to disguise his uniform, as he said, until he went to the party that was to attack the Castle. Quigley and a person named Stafford had uniforms like that of Emmet, but had only one epaulet. Quigley had a white feather, and Stafford a green one. Stafford was a baker in Thomas Street." , But for the bloody business in which they were embarking, this sug- gests the idea of a player's dressing-room rather than the preparation Of patriots starting to overturn a tyranny and establish a republic. This point might be pursued further ; but we will conclude with other matter, Dr. Madden, among his various inquiries, has hunted up every surviving person who could give him any particulars respecting Miss Curran and the last moments of Emmet. From this more generally interesting topic we take a couple of passages.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SARAH CURRAN.

Anne Devlin, in speaking of Enunet's residence at Harold's Cross, mentions her having been sent for to convey a letter to Miss Curran; but in a subsequent con- versation she stated that she had been the bearer of several notes to Miss Curran, when he was living at Butterfield Lane. Another person, I am informed, fre! quently performed the same office, a sister of young Palmer, of Thomas Street. Anne Devlin says, that when she delivered a note to Miss Curran, " her face used to change so, one would hardly know her." She remembered bliss Curran, she said, as well as if she was then standing before her; she was a person "whose face, some way or another, the first time one ever laid their eyes on her, seemed to be known to one. You could not see Miss Curran and help liking her; and yet she was not handsome, but she was more than handsome." I described to her the person of a sister of Miss Sarah Carran, whom I had known in Italy upwards of twenty years ago; but she said there was no resemblance. Miss Sarah was not tall, her figure was very slight, her complexion dark, her eyes large and black, and " her look was the mildest and the softest and the sweetest look you ever saw."

THE LAST INTERVIEW.

It has been stated that Miss Curran had an interview with Robert Emmet the day before his execution. The statement is denied, I believe with truth, by every friend of Robert Emmet with whom I am acquainted. The only friend, or person presumed to be a friend of his, who visited him the day previous to his trial, or after his conviction, was Mr. Leonard M`Nally, the barrister. None of his fellow prisoners were even permitted to take leave of him. But the morning of his execution, there was a coach stationed at a short distance from the jail, near the entrance to the Royal Hospital. A lady was seen in that coach by an associate of Robert Emmet, with her face buried in her handkerchief; and when the prisoner left the jail, and the carriage in which he was placed approached the spot where the other vehicle was drawn up, Robert Emmet put his head out of the window, gazed intently at the person who was in it, waved hishand several times, and was continuing to do so till he was oat of sight of the person who gave me this ac- count. At the moment Robert Emmet passed, the lady referred to stood up in the carriage, waved her handkerchief, and sank back on the seat. My informant was not near enough to the coach to discern her features distinctly: she was a young person, and he believed it was Miss Curran. A day or two after the execution, Leonard, the old gardener of Dr. Emmet, told. me, Miss Curran continued to elude the vigilance of her friends, and in the dusk of the evening visited the grave of her lover.