"In May 1797, although numbers had been sworn both in Munster and Leinster, the strength of the organization, exclusively of Ulster, lay chiefly in the metropolis and in a few neighbouring counties, namely Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Westmeath, and the King's County. "In order to engage the peasantry in the southern counties, particularly in the counties of Waterford and Cork, the more eagerly in their cause, the United Irishmen found it expedient in urging their general principles, to dwell with peculiar energy on the supposed oppressiveness of tythes. "With a view to excite the resentment of the Catholics, and to turn that resentment to the purposes of the party, fabricated and false tests were represented as having been taken to exterminate Catholics, and were industriously disseminated by the emmissaries of the treason throughout the provinces of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught. Reports were frequently circulated amongst the ignorant of the Catholic persuasion, that large bodies of men were coming to put them to death. This fabrication, however extravagant and absurd, was one among the many wicked means, by which the deluded peasantry were engaged the more rapidly in the treason. "The measures thus adopted by the party completely succeeded in detatching the minds of the lower classes from their usual habits and pursuits, insomuch, that in the course of the autumn and winter of 1797, the peasantry in the midland and southern counties were sworn and ripe for insurrection." Although, in the mid-land and southern counties, the Roman Catholics thus came to be eventually involved in the rebellion, they had no share in its origin; and, I am disposed to think that, in Ulster, the priesthood and lay members of the Roman Catholic church, had not, at any time, much concern in the transaction. As to the Established Church, none, I believe, of its clergy, and only very few of its laity were concerned. On the contrary, the Presbyterian Ministers of Ulster, with comparatively few exceptions, were United Irishmen; and many of them, I fear, secretly abetted the rebellion. "The Northern Star," a Belfast newspaper, conducted with great ability, and of singular influence, is well known to have been indebted for many of its most exciting articles to the pens of Presbyterian clergymen. The Rev. James Porter, of Grey-Abbey, in particular, wrote a series of papers which produced an amazing popular effect. I well recollect their being almost committed to memory by the entire peasantry of the district in which I resided. Mr. Porter, himself, I saw, fifty years ago, when, under cover of lecturing upon some popular branches of Natural Philosophy, he made a tour for the real purpose of exciting discontent. He was a handsome man; possessing respectable talents, I believe, but more distinguished for an agreeable address. Whilst assembling crowds to see the ascent of his little Montgolfier balloons, and to feel the shock of his tiny electric battery, he was exceedingly successful in spreading the principles of the United Irishmen, and was every where followed as a popular idol. Unhappy man! His fate was truly deplorable. Having, at the head of a small party, intercepted the King's mail, in order to obtain some information which he deemed important, he was arrested for the offence, summarily tried by a Court Martial, and executed under circumstances of extreme cruelty towards both himself and his family, which were altogether unnecessary for any purpose of public example. On a rising ground, within a few perches of his own meeting-house, and within sight of his own dwelling-house, where the hearts of his wife and children were bursting in agony, he was literally "hanged upon a tree"! On a low, flat tomb-stone which covers the place of his repose, I have read the following inscription: "Sacred to the memory of the Rev. JAMES PORTER, Dissenting Minister of Grey-Abbey, who departed this life July 2d, 1798.” Mr. Porter is represented to have been a man of respectable education, good understanding, amiable dispositions, and very popular talents. His unhappy widow, through God's blessing, was able to educate a numerous family in great respectability. Two of his sons emigrated to the United States, where the elder, (lately deceased,) became a distinguished Judge and Senator, for the State of Louisiana, and where the younger, I believe, still holds the office of Attorney General. Of his male descendants in this country, I only know two of his grandsons; and, I lament to say, that both of them are strenuously opposed to the religious and political principles of their distinguished, though unfortunate progenitor. One other clerical victim, in the same neighbourhood, about six months afterwards, also expiated the crime of "loving his country, not wisely, but too well." James Warwick was a most amiable young minister, justly valued by his friends, on the eve of being united to one who was worthy of his love, and to whom he had been betrothed for years! Sentenced by a Court Martial, during the heat of the insurrection, he, nevertheless, received a respite on account of his youth, innocence, and peculiar circumstances. For six months, he was a prisoner in Newtownards, more in name than in reality. The rebellion, in every part of Ireland, had been completely crushed, and even vengeance seemed to be satiated; when lo ! through some cruel whim of official justice or private spleen, a carriage one morning stopped at the door of the prison from which the poor youth could on any day have escaped; and without a mo. ment's warning he was hurried away to the scaffold, amidst the horror of the people, the groans of his aged parents, and the appalling screams of her who had hoped to be the happy partner of his honorable life! With this unaccountable, unprofitable, and atrocious execution, the blood of Presbyterian Ministers ceased to flow; but the jails. were choked with their bodies, and many of the most eminent men of the Church were permitted to go into voluntary exile, instead of being subjected to the sterner penalties of the Law. Hull, of Bangor-Sinclair and Simpson, of Newtonards-Birch, of Saintfield-Glendy, of Maghera-and several others, I believe, whose names and residences, I cannot at this moment recollect-sought an asylum in the United States, where they all became eminent and prosperous, as Ministers of Churches, or Professors in Colleges. A less happy fate awaited Dr. William Steele Dickson, of Portaferry, who was, by far, the most learned, the most eloquent, and the most able of them all. Refusing to emigrate, and repeatedly requesting to be tried, he was confined for three years, at Fort George, in Scotland, and finally liberated without trial, to witness the wreck of a considerable fortune which he had received with his wife-and, harder still, to be refused admission into the pulpit which he had long adorned by his extraordinary talents, and into which a young clerical friend had been inducted, with the distinct understanding, if not with a written compact, that he would resign the charge, in the event of Dr. Dickson's liberation! Sunk in poverty and broken in spirit, he found an asylum at Keady, in the County of Armagh, where he collected a small Congregation: but through the mean hostility of Dr. Black, of Derry, who then ruled the General Synod of Ulster with a rod of iron, the Government refused him even the paltry sum of £50 a-year, of Royal Bounty. Finally, oppressed with age and sorrows, he was obliged to retire from the Ministry; and, for several years, he enjoyed the gratuitous shelter of an humble roof in the suburbs of Belfast, through the liberality of the late Joseph Wright, a member of the Established Church! There, after being sustained by a weekly allowance, contributed by the late Dr. Stephenson, William Tennent, Francis M'Cracken, John Barnett, Dr. Tennent, Dr. Drennan, Adam M'Clean, and a few others, this good and amiable man, "majestic though in ruins," closed his earthly pilgrimage about twenty years ago. From the year 1780, until the year 1798, he was a courted and honored guest in the most splendid mansions of Belfast, where, alternately, his patriotic wisdom commanded acquiescence, and his sparkling wit "set the table on a roar :" yet, without one stain upon his character, I saw the earthly remains of that great man, even in the same town of Belfast, deposited in a pauper's grave, where not even a stone marks "the narrow house of his repose!" Some eight or ten individuals formed the entire "funeral procession:" the late warm-hearted W. D. H. M'Ewen pronounced a pathetic oration and we left the melancholy spot, moralizing on the value of public gratitude, the permanency of political friendships, and the advantages of popular applause! : "Sic transit gloria mundi!” On the melancholy scenes which took place amongst our laity, and over Ulster, in general, during the last Irish Rebellion, it is not my province to dwell. Even now, at the expiration of fifty years, there are still some living hearts whose deep wounds might be opened and it could afford no gratification to any individual or party, to depict the exciting horrors of the battle-field, the awful spectacle of public executions, the entire destruction of peaceful villages, the wide-spread burning of extended rural districts, the hopeless miseries of thousands of widows, and orphans, and desolate homes; and all the appalling evils inseparable from the very nature of civil war. My object in at all adverting to the Rebellion has been to show the leading part which Presbyterians took in that great national struggle; and I am not ashamed to publish it openly to the world. In the ranks of the glorious Volunteers, they peacefully attained some of their just rights-their spirit was awakened -the successful struggles of America and France inspired courage and hope whilst the blindness of the English government and the obstinacy of the Irish legislature, in refusing reasonable reforms, aroused an indignation and hostility which were as natural as they eventually proved to be disastrous. That Presbyterians should have occupied the van, in vindicating the sacred cause of Civil and Religious Liberty, is only consistent with the genuine principles of their Church: that so many of them should have been seduced by spies and traitors, or by the generous excess of their own patriotic enthusiasm, to overlook the safe and practical influence of public opinion, firmly and perseveringly expressed, and to join in mad schemes of ruinous and hopeless rebellion, is greatly to be deplored. When the fever subsided, none could have been more astonished than they were, at the magnitude of their own folly; and none, I am well aware, more sincerely deplored its results than those who, with pure and moderate purposes, gave the first impulse to the popular sentiment by the formation of "The Society of United Irish men," and thereby evoked a spirit which they were afterwards unable to control. To such men, and indeed to the great mass of those who became actual participators in the sad scenes of the Insurrection, no moral blame, whatsoever, can be attached. They undoubtedly erred in judgment; but, I sincerely believe, they were truly honest and patriotic-merely seeking to attain a right end by wrong means. And, in looking over the entire history of the Northern Insurrection, I rejoice to think that not one act of deliberate cruelty could ever be justly charged against any individual or body of the popular army. Brave they were, I know in the hour of battle, believing their cause to be righteous and patriotic: but, in the hour of victory, (and some such hours they had,) they were equally generous and humane. I am not, therefore, ashamed to acknowledge that some of my own "kith and kin" fought in the ranks of their country and I am proud to say that, during the last forty years, I have found my best, my clearest-headed, and my warmesthearted friends, amongst the United Irishmen of 1798. Some of them yet survive-retaining the generous ardour of youth, tempered with the prudence of age: men who never shrunk for an hour, from the honest support of principle-who have been the persevering advocates of popular rights for upwards of fifty years—— and who now, in venerable age, rejoice to behold the daydreams of their youth" embodied in the statute-books of the empire. I lament to say, however, that all Presbyterians have not entitled themselves to this meed of praise for honorable consistency and patriotism. Some miserable recreants I have known, especially amongst the higher classes-men who spent their youth in organizing rebellion, disgraced their maturer years by timidity and truckling, and dishonoured their old age by endeavouring to tread down every principle which they honestly supported, in their earlier and better years! Most of them are gone; and I grant to their memory the charity of leaving them unnamed. I cannot, however, conceal a deeper cause of grief, in relation to my Presbyterian brethren of the humbler classes. The renovated Calvinism of the Synod of Ulster has, for the last twenty years, been gradually undermining their political integrity and their sense of public justice. Yes: they have come, with a few honorable exceptions, to connect a man's fitness for the enjoyment of civil rights, with the orthodoxy of his religious creed. Yes: the degenerate descendants of the illustrious Volunteers of 1783, of the United Irishmen of 1798, now swell the Orange Societies and Pro |