262 IValks in Ireland : [Sept. 



character, and fixedness of pui"pose, upon which argument would be as 

 completely thrown away, as upon the matured and well-considered 

 decision of a mastiff. 



A memorable spot is Thomas-street in the annals of Dublin. The 

 theatre of the frantic insurrection of Eobert Emmet in 1803, and of the 

 tragical arrest of the unhappy and misguided Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 

 in 1798. The recollection sobers me at once. 



Lord Edward Fitzgerald was brother to the late, and uncle to tlie 

 present Duke of Leinster. Of violent passions, both evil auvl good, had 

 his lot been cast in a happier time he might have been a hero, the glory 

 of his country and his illustrious race, but he lived in the disastrous 

 days, when the pestilent infection of the French Revolution spread to 

 our unfortunate country, to madden the mind and corrupt the heart of 

 many a young and fiery enthusiast, who, stung with the recollections of 

 our sad and melancholy history, and listening to the satanic philosophy 

 which teaches that the end justifies the means, was willing to peril the 

 future to avenge the past, and buy, no matter at what cost of desolation 

 and blood, a share in that universal equality which denounces altars, and 

 thrones, and hereditary rank, as tyrannical superstitions, unworthy of 

 the Age of Reason, and incompatible with the Rights of Man. 



Two wily parties watched the course and progress of popular excite- 

 ment in Ireland. On the one side the restless and practised malcon- 

 tents, who hoped to profit by political convulsion, and how it might ; on 

 the other, the cool calculators, who, possessed of sure intelligence, tra- 

 versed the plans of the conspirators, and suffered them to matui'e their 

 plot, in order to cut them off the more effectually in the overt act. 

 Alas ! for many a bold-spirited, over-credulous youth, who hearkening 

 to the suggestions of those who, for their own evil purposes, taught him 

 to look upon a bloody servile war, without concert or arrangement, that 

 could give a chance of success, as an honourable and noble enterprize, 

 and rushing into the double toils of private treachery and forestalled 

 insurrection, perished in the inglorious field, or on the ignominious 

 scaffold. 



In an evil hour, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, piqued by a personal affront 

 which he had received in a high quarter, lent himself to this ill-omened 

 conspiracy. Little did he think, that plot within plot, and treachery 

 within treachery, then lurked a canker in the very heart of the body 

 to whicli he had imited himself, and that not a step did he take, not a 

 plan did he concoct, which was not detailed by an unsuspected informer 

 to the government he sought to overturn. But so it was. I hasten to 

 get rid of the subject. I am sorry I spoke of it at all, filled as it is with 

 gloomy and mournful recollections. In a house in Thomas Street, on 

 the right hand side as } ou go out of the town, and in a room which' 

 never has been used since that fatal day, was Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 

 lying on a bed, disguised as a countryman, and reading Gil Bias, when 

 the party commissioned to apprehend him, and guided by the double 

 traitor to whom I have alluded, arrived ; they were headed by the two 

 town majors, Sirr and Swan, and a Captain Ryan, who joined them just 

 as they were setting out from the Castle. Swan and Ryan entered the 

 room together, and summoned Lord Edward to surrender ; but he, 

 relying on his extraordinary activity and personal strength, determined 

 to make a dash for escape, and closing with poor Ryan, who rushed 

 forward before his companion, killed him with a dagger on the spot. 



