Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1831 edition. Excerpt: ... land. Connected as he was, by blood, with that country, and counting, as it proved, far too confidently on the present dispositions of the English towards change and reform, he looked, at first, rather to concert with them in the great cause of freedom, than to any thing like schism, and would, at the commencement of the struggle, have been contented with such a result as should leave the liberties of both countries regenerated and secured under one common head. This moderation of purpose, however, gradually gave way, as the hopes by which alone it could be sustained vanished. The rejection of the motions of Mr. Grattan and Mr. Ponsonby for Reform had shut out all expectation of redress from the Irish government; while the tameness with which England, in her horror of Jacobinism, was, at this moment, crouching under the iron rule of Mr. Pitt, gave as little hope of a better order of things dawning from that quarter. In the mean time, the United Irish Society of Dublin, whose meetings hitherto had been held openly, were, under the sanction of one of the new coercive measures, dispersed, as illegal; and the whole body, thus debarred from the right of speaking out, as citizens, passed naturally to the next step, of plotting as conspirators. Even yet, however, it does not appear that the last desperate expedient, of recurring to force or to foreign aid, though urged eagerly by some, and long floating before the eyes of all, had entered seriously into the contemplation of those who were afterwards the chief leaders of the struggle; nor can there, indeed, be any stronger proof of the reluctance with which these persons suffered themselves to be driven to such extremities than the known fact that, at the commencement of the year 1796, neither...
