the fleet, almost without trial, any persons
found at unlawful assemblies. The yeomanry
were savage, thievish, and insolent; beasts of
burden were impressed for baggage transport,
without regard to any private rights; the billeting
was shamefully abused; Habeas Corpus
was suspended; arrests on secret information
of spies were incessant; and the seizure
of arms was made a pretext for every variety
of arrogant oppression. It is the last straw
breaks the camel's back, the Arab says, and
here was a whole truss-full.

In 1795, the year the first Orange lodge was
formed, and the year before the yeomanry was
organised, Napper Tandy had fled to avoid
trial. Wolf Tone, a coachmaker's son, and a
mischievous adventurer, had escaped to America.
Dr. Jackson, an envoy from the French government,
had been tried for high treason, and
poisoned himself in the dock. In 1796 the government
was moved to fresh severities by the
unsuccessful attempt of General Hoche, with fifteen
sail-of-the-line, ten frigates, twenty-seven
transports, and fifteen thousand men, to land in
Bantry Bay. In 1798, Lord Camden's vigilance
was unremitting, and it was by his seizure of
the chief conspirators in Dublin before the day
fixed for the outbreak that the subsequent
failure of the unfortunate rebellion must be
mainly attributed. Mr. Reynolds, of Kilkea
Castle, a retired silk-manufacturer, betrayed
the Leinster delegates, who, fifteen in number,
were seized at the house of Oliver Bond, a
woollendraper in Bridge-street, Dublin.
Emmet, the son of a surgeon, afterwards hung
for treason, was among the number. The
leader of the United Irishmen, Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, was also arrested on the 8th of
May, at the house of Murphy, a featherman,
in Thomas-street. He fought desperately with
a dagger, inflicting mortal wounds on a
Captain Ryan, and disembowelling another officer.
Lord Edward was shot in the struggle by Major
Sirr, and died a month after, of his wounds and
mental irritation. These arrests, and those
of the two Sheares, barristers, utterly disconcerted
the rebels and disarranged all their
plans. The police pursued the conspirators, and
drove them to a hurried and premature
insurrection, which was trodden out in most places
bit by bit. An attempt on the night of the 23rd
of May was unsuccessful, Neilson, the leader,
being captured by a jailer while reconnoitring.
General Lake's measures were prompt and firm.
Strong pickets were placed on all the canal
bridges, and militia regiments drawn up on
St. Stephen's Green, the garrison and yeomanry
drums beat to arms, aiid all the alarm-posts
were instantly occupied. The country roads,
alleys, gateways, stable-lanes, and byways
of the Liberty were already swarming
with pikemen, lurking there ready at beat of
rebel drum to rush out and intercept the
yeomanry as they hurried to their rendezvous.
The mail-coaches were all to be stopped and
destroyed at a signal, the water supply of Dublin
was to be cut off, the Custom House to be
seized, the Castle to be stormed by men with
cutlasses and pistols, who were to murder the
lord-lieutenant, Lord Castlereagh, and the staff.
There was no time to be lost. Every dingy
yard and city garden was full of hidden arms.
The yeomanry were half of them United Irishmen;
the domestic servants, two-thirds spies,
were preparing to murder their masters. The
very lamplighters refused to light the lamps
till forced at the point of the bayonet. The
mountains from the Scalp in Wicklow to
Mount Leinster in Wexford were bright with
signal-fires, the increase or diminution of which
were understood by the expectant rebels.

General Lake issued a proclamation early on
the 24th, requiring all the inhabitants of
Dublin except certain privileged persons to
remain in their houses from nine o'clock at night
till five in the morning, under pain of punishment.
All persons who had registered arms
were to give in an inventory, to be filed at
the town clerk's office, and all persons who
had not registered their arms were required
to instantly deliver them up to the lord mayor
or some magistrate, on pain of being sent on
board the fleet without trial. Housekeepers
were also required to place outside their doors
a list of all tenants of the house, especially
specifying strangers.

On the night of the 23rd there were several
partial risings. The Belfast mail was burned
at Bantry, the Limerick mail was stopped on the
Curragh, and the guard and coachman murdered;
the Athlone coach was broken up at Lucan, and
the Cork mail destroyed at Naas. At Rathfarnham,
Lucan, Lusk, Collon, and Baltinglas, the
rebels and yeomanry met, and in all cases the
green cockades were repulsed. On the following
day, Clane, Naas, Ballymore-Eustace, and
Kilcullen were attacked. At Prosperous, a
town seventeen miles from Dublin, forty men
of the North Cork Militia and twenty
British Cavalry were surprised in their quarters,
which were easily set on fire, the cellars being
full of straw. The screaming victims who
leaped out of the windows were received on the
pikes of the shouting rebels.

Some headlong but undisciplined attacks on
troops at Naas and Carlow were unsuccessful.
On Saturday, the 26th of May, the flames
broke out in Wexford. A bonfire lighted on
the hill of Corrigrua was answered by another
on Boulavogue. In the latter place the rebel
leader was Father Murphy, a priest who had
graduated at Seville. He was the son of a small
farmer, and had been educated at the hedge-
school at Ferns. This man, of a savage
determined disposition, began by burning every
Protestant house in Kilcormick, and piking all
the Protestants he could seize. It was said that
the soldiers had burned the house and chapel
of this man, and that he had vowed vengeance.

The royalists, having dispersed a rebel camp
with about three thousand men on a ridge of
the Slieve Bridge Mountains, and afterwards
burned two chapels and one hundred cabins, an
attempt was next made to attack the rebel
position on the hill of Ontart, two miles from
Gorey. Colonel Foote pursuing an advantage