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to the warfare of resolutions. The people of Belfast were not idle on their part. They spared neither pains nor expense to propagate the new doctrine of the Union of Irishmen, through the whole North of Ireland; and they had the satisfaction to see their proselytes rapidly extending in every direction. In order more effectually to spread their principles, twelve of the most active and intelligent among them subscribed 2507. each, in order to set on foot a paper whose object should be to give a fair statement of all that passed in France, whither every one turned their eyes, to inculcate the necessity of union among Irishmen of all religious persuasions, to support the Emancipation of the Catholics, and finally, as the necessary though not avowed consequence of all this, to erect Ireland into a Republic independent of England. This paper, which they called very appositely the Northern Star, was conducted by my friend S Nn, who was unanimously chosen Editor, and it could not be delivered into abler hands. It is in truth a most incomparable paper, and it rose instantly on its appearance into a most rapid and extensive sale. The Catholics every where through Ireland, (I mean the leading Catholics,) were of course subscribers, and the Northern Star was one great means of effectually accomplishing the union of the two great sects by the simple process of making their mutual sentiments better known to each other.

It was determined by the citizens of Belfast to commemorate this year, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, with great ceremony. For this purpose, they planned a review of the volunteers of the town and neighbourhood, to be followed by a grand procession with emblematic devices, &c. They also determined to avail themselves of the opportunity to bring forward the Catholic question in force; and in consequence, they resolved to publish two addresses, one to the people of France, and one to the people of Ireland. They gave instructions to Dr. Drennau to prepare the former, and the latter fell to my lot. Drennan executed his task adınirably, and I made my address for my part as good as I knew how. We were invited to assist at the ceremony, and a great number of the leading members of the Catholic Committee determined to avail themselves of the opportunity to shew their zeal for the success of the cause of liberty in France, as well as their respect and gratitude to their friends in Belfast. In consequence of all this, a grand assembly took place on the 14th of July. After the review, the volunteers and inhabitants to the number of about six thousand assembled in the LinenHall, and voted the address to the French people unanimously. The address to the people of Ireland followed, and, as it was directly and unequivocally in favour of the Catholic claims, we expected some opposition-but we were soon relieved from our anxiety, for the address passed (I may say) unanimously. A few ventured to oppose it indirectly, but their arguments were exposed and overset by the friends to Catholic Emancipation, among the foremost of whom we had the satisfaction to see several Dissenting clergymen of great popularity in that country, as S―r, K—c, Wm. D. -n, and F. Bh. It was Sr who moved the two addresses. It is the less necessary for me to detail what passed at this period, as every thing material is recorded in my Diary (No.) Suffice it to say, that the hospitality shewn by the people of Belfast to the Catholics on this occasion, and the personal acquaintance which the parties formed, riveted the bonds of their recent union, and produced in the sequel the most beneficial and powerful effects.

Rennes, September 28th, 1796.

As my time is growing shorter, I pass over a very busy interval of my life, all the events of which are detailed in different Diaries among my papers, and I hasten to the period when, in consequence of the conviction of William Jackson for high treason, I was obliged to quit my country, and go into exile in America. A short time before iny departure, my friend Russell

* 1795.

being in town, he and I walked out together to Rathfarnham to see Emmett, who has a charming villa there. He shewed us a little study of an elliptical form, which he was building at the bottom of the lawn, and which he said he would consecrate to our meetings, if ever we lived to see our country emancipated. I begged of him, if he intended Russell should be of the party, in addition to the books and maps it would naturally contain, to fit up a small cellar, which would contain a few dozen of his best old claret. He shewed me that he had not omitted that circumstance, which he acknowledged to be essential; and we both rallied Russell with considerable success. I mention this trifling anecdote, because I love the men, and because it seems now at least possible that we may meet again in Emmett's study. As we walked together into town, I opened my plan to them both. I told them that I considered my compromise with Government to extend no further than the banks of the Delaware, and that the moment I landed, I was free to follow any plan which might suggest itself to me for the emancipation of my country; that undoubtedly I was guilty of a great offence against the existing Government; that in consequence I was going into exile, and that I considered that exile as a full expiation for the offence, and consequently I felt myself at liberty, having made that sacrifice, to begin again on a fresh score. They both agreed with me in these principles, and I then proceeded to tell them, that my intentions were, immediately upon my arrival in Philadelphia, to wait on the French minister, to detail to him fully the situation of affairs in Ireland, to endeavour to obtain a recommendation to the French Government, and, if I succeeded so far, to leave my family in America, and to set off instantly for Paris, and to apply in the name of my country for the assistance of France, to enable us to assert our independence. It is unnecessary, I believe, to say that this plan met with the warmest approbation and support from both Russell and Emmett. We shook hands, and having repeated our professions of unalterable regard and esteem for each other, we parted; and this was the last interview which I was so happy as to have with these. two invaluable friends together. I remember it was in a little triangular field that this conversation took place; and Emmett remarked to us, that it was in one exactly like it in Switzerland, where William Tell and his two associates planned the downfall of the tyranny of Austria. The next day, Russell returned to Belfast.

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As I was determined not to appear to leave Ireland clandestinely, whatever? might be the hazard to myself, I took care, on the day of Jackson's trial, to' walk up and down in the most public streets in Dublin, and to go, contrary to my usual custom, into several of the most frequented coffeehouses, and to my bookseller's, which was still more frequented. In this last place I was seen by Lord Mountjoy, who gave himself the pains to call on the Attorneygeneral the next day, and inform him that I was to be found, for that he had seen me at Archer's the day before. The Attorney-general, however, gave him no thanks for his pains; and so the affair ended. My obligation, a however, to his Lordship, is not the less for his good intentions. Having made this sacrifice to appearances, I set out with all diligence to prepare for my departure. I sold off all my little property of every kind, reserving only my books, of which I had a very good selection of about 600 volumes; and I determined to take leave of nobody. I also resolved not to call on any of my friends, not even Knox or Emmett; for, as I knew the part I had taken in Jackson's affair had raised a violent outcry against me with a very numerous and powerful party, I resolved not to implicate any of those I regarded in the difficulties of my situation. Satisfied as I was of the rectitude of my own conduct, and of the purity of my motives, I believe I should have had fortitude to bear the desertion of my best friends; yet, to their honour be it spoken, I was not put to so severe a trial. I did not lose the countenance and support of any one man whom, I esteemed; and I believe now that I secured the continuance of their regard by the firmness I had shewn all along through this most arduous and painful trial, and especially by my

repeated declarations that I was ready to sacrifice my life if necessary, but that I would never degrade myself by giving testimony against a man who had spoken to me in the confidence that I would not betray him. I have said that after Jackson's death I visited nobody; but my friends made it, I believe, a point to call on me; so that, for the short time I remained in Dublin after, we were never an hour alone. My friends McCormick and Keogh, who had interested themselves extremely all along in my behalf, and had been principally instrumental in passing the vote for granting me 3004. in addition to the arrears due to me by the Catholics, were, of course, among the foremost.

It has often astonished me, that the Government, knowing there was a French minister in Philadelphia, ever suffered me to go thither, at least without exacting some positive assurance on my part that I should hold no coumunication with him, direct or indirect. So it was, however, that either despising my efforts, or looking on themselves as too firmly established to dread any thing from France, they suffered me to depart without demanding any satisfaction whatsoever on that topic, a circumstance of which I was most sincerely glad; for if I had been obliged to give my parole, I should have been exceedingly distracted between opposite duties. Luckily, however, I was spared this difficulty, for they suffered me to depart without any stipulation whatever. Perhaps it would have been better for them if they had adhered to their first proposal of sending me out to India; but as to that the event will determine.

Having paid all my debts, and settled with every body, I set off from Dublin for Belfast, on the 20th May, 1795, with my wife, sister, and three children, leaving, as may be well supposed, my father and mother in very sincere affliction. My whole property consisted in our clothes, my books, and about 700/. in money and bills on Philadelphia. We kept our spirits admirably. The great attention manifested to us, the conviction that we were suffering in the best of causes, the hurry attending so great a change, and perhaps a little vanity in shewing ourselves superior to fortune, supported us under what was certainly a trial of the severest kind. But if our friends in Dublin were kind and affectionate, those in Belfast were, if possible, still more so. During near a month that we remained there, we were every day engaged by one or other. Even those who scarcely knew me were eager to entertain us. Parties and excursions were planned for our amusement, and certainly the whole of our deportment and reception at Belfast very little resembled those of a man who escaped with his life only by a miracle, and who was driven into exile to avoid a more disagreeable fate. I remember particularly two days that we passed on the Cavehill; on the first, R, N. and M ̊C, and one or two more of us, on the summit of Mac Art's Fort took a solemu obligation (which I think I may say I have on my part endeavoured to fulfil) never to desist in our efforts till we had subverted the authority of England over our country, and asserted her independence. Another day we had the tent of the 1st regiment pitched in the Deer-Park, and a company of thirty of us, including the family of the S-s, Ñ——s, M'Cs, and my own, dined and spent the day deliciously together. But the most agreeable day we passed during our stay, and one of the most agreeable of our lives, was in an excursion we made with the Ss, Ns, and Rs, to Ram's Island, a beautiful and romantic spot in Lough Neagh. Nothing can be imagined more delightful; and we agreed, in whatever quarter we might find ourselves respectively, to commemorate the anniversary of that day, the 11th of June. At length the hour of our departure arrived. On the 13th June, we embarked on board the Cincinnatus of Wilmington, Captain James Robinson; and I flatter myself we carried with us the regret of all who knew us. Even some of my former friends, who had long since deserted me, returned on this reverse of my fortune, struck, I believe, by the steadiness with which we all looked it in the face. Our friends in Belfast loaded us with presents on our sleparture, and filled our little cabin with sea-store, fresh

provisions, sweetmeats, and every thing they could devise for the comfort of my wife and children.. Never while I live will I forget the affectionate kindness of their behaviour.

We were now at sea, and at leisure to examine our situation. I had hired a state-room, which was about eight feet by six, in which we had fitted up three births. My wife and my youngest little boy occupied one, my sister and my little girl the second, and my eldest boy and myself the third. It was at first grievously inconvenient, but necessity and custom, by degrees, reconciled us to our situation. Our greatest suffering was want of good water, under which we laboured the whole passage, and which we found it impossible to replace by wine, porter, or spirits, of which we had abundance. The captain was tolerably civil, the vessel was stout, and we had good weather almost the whole of our voyage; but we were 300 passengers on board a ship of 230 tons, and of course crowded to a degree not to be conceived by those who have not been on board a passage-ship. The slaves who are carried from the coast of Africa have much more room allowed them than the miserable emigrants who pass from Ireland to America; for the avarice of the captains in that trade is such, that they think they never can load their vessels sufficiently; and they trouble their heads, in general, no more about the accommodation and stowage of their passengers than of any other lumber on board. I laboured, and with some success, to introduce something like a police, and a certain degree, though a very imperfect one, of cleanliness among them. Certainly the air of the sea must be wonderfully wholesome, for if the same number of wretches of us had been shut up in the same space ashore with so much incouvenience of every kind about us, two thirds of us would have died in the time of our voyage. As it was, in spite of every thing, we were tolerably healthy: we lost but one passenger (a woman). We had some sick aboard, and the friendship of James M'Donnell, of Belfast, having supplied me with a small medicine-chest and written directions, I took on myself the office of physician. I prescribed and administered accordingly, and I had the satisfaction to land all my patients safe and sound. As we distributed liberally the surplus of our sea-stores, of which we had great abundance, and especially as we gave from time to time wine and porter to the sick and aged, we soon became very popular aboard, and I am sure there was no sacrifice to our ease or convenience in the power of our poor fellow-passengers to make that we might not have commanded. Thirty days of our voyage had now passed over without any event, save the ordinary ones of seeing now a shoal of porpoises, now a shark, now a set of dolphins, the peacocks of the sea, playing about, and once or twice a whale. We had indeed been brought to, when a week at sea, by the William Pitt Indiaman, which was returning to Europe with about twenty other ships, under convoy of four or five men of war; but, on examining our papers, they suffered us to proceed. At length, about the 20th of July, some time after we had cleared the banks of Newfoundland, we were stopt by three British frigates, the Thetis, Captain Cochrane, the Hussar, Captain -, and the Esperance, Wood, who boarded us, and after treating us with the greatest insolence, both officers and sailors, they pressed every one of our hands save one, and near fifty of my unfortunate fellow-passengers, who were most of them flying to America to avoid the tyranny of a bad government at home, and who thus most unexpectedly fell under the severest tyranny, one of them at least, which exists. As I was in a jacket and trowsers, one of the lieutenants ordered me to the boat as a fit man to serve the King, and it was only the screams of my wife and sister which induced him to desist. It would have been a pretty termination to my adventures, if I had been pressed and sent on board a man of war. The insolence of those tyrants to myself, as well as to my poor fellow-passengers, in whose fate a fellowship in misfortune had interested me, I have not since forgotten, and I never will. At length, after detaining us two days, during which they rummaged us at least twenty times, they suffered us to proceed. On the 30th July we made Cape Henlopen;

the 31st we ran up the Delaware, and on the 1st of August we landed safe at Wilmington, not one of us providentially having been for an hour indisposed on the passage, nor even sea-sick. Those only who have had their wives, their children, and all, in short, that is dear to them, floating for seven or eight weeks at the mercy of the winds and waves, can conceive the transport I felt at seeing my wife and our darling babies ashore once again in health and in safety. We set up at the principal tavern, kept by an Irishman, one Captain O'Flynn (I think), for all the taverns in America are kept by Majors and Captains either of Militia or Continentals; and in a few days we had entirely recruited our strength and spirits, and totally forgotten the fatigues of the voyage.

During our stay in Wilmington, we formed an acquaintance, which was of some service and a great deal of pleasure to us, with a General Hampton, an old Continental officer. He was an Englishman, born in Yorkshire, and had been a major in the 25th regiment, but on the breaking out of the American war he resigned his commission and offered his services to Congress, who immediately gave him a regiment, from which he rose by degrees to his present rank. He was a beautiful, hale, stout old man of near seventy, perfectly the soldier and the gentleman; and he took a great liking to us, as we did to him on our part. On our removal to Philadelphia, he found us a lodging with one of his acquaintance, and rendered us all the little services and attentions that our situation as strangers required, which indeed he continued without remission during the whole of my stay in America, and I doubt not equally since my departure. I have a sincere and grateful sense of the kindness of this worthy veteran.

Immediately on my arrival in Philadelphia, which was about the 7th or 8th of August, I found out my old friend and brother exile Dr. ——, who seemed, to my very great satisfaction, to be very comfortably settled. From him I learned that had arrived about six weeks before me from France; and that same evening we all three met. It was a singular rencontre, and our several escapes from an ignominious death seemed little short of a miracle. We communicated respectively our several adventures which took place in the gaol of Newgate in Dublin fourteen months before. In Dr. there was nothing very extraordinary. had been seized and thrown into prison immediately on his landing near Brest, from whence he was rescued by the interference of a young man named, an Irishman, in the service of the Republic, and sent on to Paris to the Committee of Public Safety by Prieur de la Marne, the deputy on mission. On his arrival he was seized with a most dangerous fever, from which he narrowly escaped with his life. When he recovered, as well as during his illness, he was maintained by the Government. He was examined on the state of Ireland: but immediately after came on the famous 9th Thermidor, the downfal of Robespierre, and the dissolution of the Committee of Public Safety. The total change which this produced in the politics of France, and the attention of every man being occupied with his own immediate personal safety, were the causes that was forgotten in the confusion. After remaining there for several months, he yielded to the solicitude of his family and friends, and embarked at Havre for New York, where he arrived about the middle of June 1795, after a tedious passage of eleven weeks. It is unnecessary to detail again my adventures which I related to them at full length, as well as every thing relating to the state of politics in Ireland, about which it may be well supposed their curiosity and anxiety were extreme. I then proceeded to tell them my designs, and that I intended waiting the next day on the French minister with such credentials as I had brought with me, which were the two votes of thanks of the Catholics, and my certificate of admission into

The name is suppressed in the manuscript, but from the facts, and the initial R-occurring in the sequel, we conjecture that the person in question must have been Mr. Hamilton Rowan.

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