CHAP. X.] ARTHUR O'CONNOR. 365 but he was not without great imprudence, and some vanity.* His want of caution appeared on his journey on the Continent in 1796, when his conversation enabled one of his travelling companions to penetrate his object; and a lady, who happened to be one of the company, and singularly enough, connected with a friend of Mr. Pitt, communicated to him through that channel, what she conceived to be his designs. After the period of his arrest on the 19th of May, he appears to have exposed himself unnecessarily and imprudently, and this, in all probability, led to his discovery and capture. His generous and manly nature, with his frank, open disposition, rendered him too confiding. He lacked the qualities required for a conspirator-darkness, reserve, craft, caution, dissimulation. He had feelings of revenge, but none of inhumanity, and was sensitively alive to the injuries inflicted on his country. He strove to avenge them prematurely; but he had not judgment to devise the proper plan -prudence to concert it, or patience to await the fitting moment for its execution: thus blinded and bewildered, he precipitated his own downfall, and that of his country. He fell a victim to a generous enthusiasm, and a mistaken sense of patriotism, and was sacrificed and betrayed by a low and faithless set, and lost his life in a wild and foolish insurrection. Next came Arthur O'Connor. He was a man of talent, of spirit, and of eloquence; pleasing in appearance, and rather engaging in manners; but he was devoid of principle. His commencement in the Irish Parliament in 1790, was a bad one. He opposed the Pension Bill of Mr. Forbes, and praised the Earl of Westmoreland, then Lord-lieutenant. He spoke ill-injured, perhaps, by the * Murat was one of Buonaparte's best and vainest officers. 366 ARTHUR O'CONNOR. [CHAP. X. badness of his cause; but though he made an inauspicious beginning, yet soon afterwards he rallied. He cast off the rusty fetters of the court, and their sycophantic phrases; and on the Catholic question he came forward with power and effect. His speech was an excellent performance, and greatly admired; it embraced much extraneous matter, and showed that he had studied much, and was a clever and an eloquent man: his statements were able; his argument was close and short, and his composition without a defect. He had been intended for the church, and had taken deacon's orders; but he soon abandoned that profession, and was brought into Parliament by his relation Lord Longueville, who offered him a situation under Government, which he states that he refused; differing, however, from him in political views, and voting against his patron, he conceived himself obliged in honour, to relinquish his seat; and the other thought he was bound not only to take that from him, but his fortune likewise; and he ungenerously deprived him of a considerable property which O'Connor expected to inherit. His addresses to the county of Antrim, for which he was imprisoned, (but without trial or sentence), possess spirit and ability, but evince a want of prudence and discretion, and partake too much of the style and the foreign fashion of the day. His letter to Lord Castlereagh, from prison, was manly and fearless. French fraternity was his ruin. He was certainly a man of parts; but wanted somewhat more good faith, sound judgment, and sterling principles.* M'Nevin was an able man-Jackson a man of * After a long detention in captivity at Fort George, contrary both to the letter and the spirit of the agreement made on the part of the exiles with the Irish Government, he entered into the military service of France, and was appointed by Buonaparte one of the officers to call out the Conscription of the North. CHAP. X.] JACKSON. THE SHEARES'S. 367 spirit and of honour. Mr. Burrowes, who knew them all, used to relate an anecdote of the latter that redounds to his credit. There was a young person who attended the meetings of the United Irishmen, for whom Jackson had a great regard, and he said to him, "Leave us-you have a large family-go home, and have nothing to do with the United Irishmen. I am embarked too deeply--I cannot recede." He was a gentleman, and also a republican-but a republican who would have been led to support a settled form of government by the correction of abuses. Henry and John Sheares were brothers, men of good character in the South of Ireland, welleducated, and brought up to the profession of the law. They were, in private, amiable, pleasing, and gentle in their nature; Henry in particular, almost to weakness. They were men of good repute, and of some practice at the bar; but in point of ability, spirit, and courage, such as was necessary for the dangerous enterprize in which they engaged, they were very deficient. They had gone to France for a short period of time, and from thence they returned with French principles, with whimsical notions and revolutionary ideas. They assumed the emblems of party, its colours, and its ribands, which they displayed when danger was not near; but at its approach these foolish badges led them into peril, and then they became afraid. They entered late into the executive directory of the United Irishmen, and were most basely and cruelly betrayed by a Captain Armstrong, who gained their confidence, encouraged their plots, forwarded their objects, then sacrificed their lives. All this was done for weeks, with the knowledge and approbation of Government, who, far from arresting them at the outset, or even during the progress of their treason, deliberately 368 SAMUEL NEILSON. [CHAP. X. encouraged it through their agent, and, as cruelhearted as they were cold-blooded, treacherously awaited till the moment of its execution,* and then they pounced upon their ensnared and deluded victims. The brothers walked hand-inhand to the same scaffold, and perished together. Samuel Neilson was a man of principle: his real object was Parliamentary Reform. He conducted a newspaper set up at Belfast, in 1791, upon republican principles. He had been imprisoned for upwards of a year, on the information of a person, who declared afterwards that no charge could be proved against him, and was liberated in February 1798. He was sent for, and closetted with Mr. Pelham, on an enquiry by the Secretary as to the probability of conciliating the North of Ireland by granting Reform, and at the period of his release he was in habits of intercourse with the people of the Castle. They sought him in order to obtain intelligence, as he was an open-mouthed person. He was not devoid of taste and talent, was fond of books, and in politics was extravagant, but not irreclaimable. He was imprudent in conduct, very intemperate in his habits, and addicted to dissipation, all which rendered him very unfit for an undertaking such as that in which he was embarked. His figure was Herculean, and his mind and manner were similar, and as bold. He attempted to force the jail, after the capture of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and rescue the State *Lord Castlereagh could have stopped them at least one fortnight before, for he was regularly informed by Armstrong of the result of each interview, and every communication with the Sheares's-but he allowed them to go on See the trial. The letter of Sheares, found on him when he was arrested, in which the former expostulated with him on his attempt to rescue the state prisoners, is a proof of his want of judgment and prudence, and shows how little concert and subordination existed among the leaders even of that party.-Report Secret Committee. 1 CHAP. X.] RIGOROUS TREATMENT OF HIM. 66 369 prisoners at Newgate. He was taken; his clothes were torn off him, and his body wounded all over by the soldiers hacking at him; he was cut and scarred in upwards of fifty places, and was only saved by the number of his opponents, and dragged into jail. When brought into the Court, the noise of his entrance was like the march of men in iron. He was called on to plead, and asked if he had anything to say; he replied, in a stentorian voice, No! I have been robbed of everything; I could not fee counsel; my property-everything has been taken from me!"-and he turned away, but he came again to the front, and said, "For myself, I have nothing to say--I scorn your power, and despise that authority that it shall ever be my pride to have opposed; but I may say-not that I value it-why am I kept with these weighty irons on me, so heavy that three ordinary men could scarcely carry them? Is it your law, that I should be placed in irons, and in such irons ?" Lord Carleton,* who was one of the Judges, called up the jailor (Gregg) to account for this: he said, "It is true, my Lord, he is in irons, and in such irons as I would not think of putting on any two men ; but it was necessary-my life was attempted-I was not safe." Neilson interrupted *Lord Carleton had been solicitor-general several years before. He was a timid man; his mind was weakness itself. He understood law very well, and proved to be an excellent judge. He was very sharp, and at the state trials was cool and collected, not influenced by the fury and passion of the times, though he was by the result.. He was remarkable for a pleasing address, and for the goodness of his manners; but in politics he had no idea whatever of public spirit or principle; in the House of Commons he made a wretched figure. In the Lords he supported the Union, not by arguments, but in the weakest and most pusillanimous style of reasoning. After that; he was allowed to retire on a large pension, in consequence of a plea of bad health, and he lived in London for upwards of twenty years in the gayest style. Some lawyer observing to Curran that his sharpness surprised him, Curran replied, "Don't you know that water turned to ice cuts like adamant? That's Carleton's case. All his former fears have collected themselves, and have become condensed." |