-----
Footnote 1:
AGRICULTURE.—‘The mother and nurse of a military population, Ireland
has been forced into this. It was thought that she had sunk under the
arbitrary tyranny of British monopoly. Let the proud Briton regale
himself in the wholesome air of mines and workshops, and become
ossified in the strengthening attitudes of monotonous labour; while
the degraded Irishman draws health and number, and fierceness and
force, and becomes too nimble to be caught by his crippled owner, who
hobbles after and threatens with his crutch.’
Footnote 2:
A contemptuous name for Yeomen.
Footnote 3:
It is said that the North Cork Regiment were the inventors—but they
certainly were the intruders of pitchcap torture into the county of
Wexford. Any person having their hair cut short, (and therefore called
a Croppy, by which appellation the soldiery designated a United
Irishman) on being pointed out by some loyal neighbour, was
immediately seized and brought into a guard-house, where caps either
of coarse linen, or strong brown paper, besmeared inside with pitch,
were kept always ready for service. The unfortunate victim had one of
these, well heated, compressed on his head: and when judged of a
proper degree of coolness, so that it could not easily be pulled off,
the sufferer was turned out amidst the horrid acclamations of the
merciless torturers, and to the view of vast numbers of people, who
generally crowded to the guard-house door, attracted by the afflicting
cries of the tormented.
Footnote 4:
Hay’s History of the Insurrection in Wexford.
Footnote 5:
The rebel outlaws, who took up their abodes in the mountains and
fastnesses of Wexford and Wicklow, after 1798, ludicrously called
themselves “The Babes of the Wood.”
Footnote 6:
That paper was as follows:
“It may appear strange, that a person avowing himself to be an enemy
of the present Government, and engaged in a conspiracy for its
overthrow, should presume to suggest an opinion to that Government on
any part of its conduct, or could hope that advice coming from such
authority, might be received with attention. The writer of this,
however, does not mean to offer an opinion on any point, on which he
must of necessity, feel differently from any of those whom he
addresses, and on which therefore his conduct might be doubted. His
intention is to confine himself entirely to those points on which,
however widely he may differ from them in others, he has no hesitation
in declaring, that, as a man, he feels the same interest with the
merciful part, and as an Irishman, with at least the English part of
the present administration: and at the same time to communicate to
them in the most precise terms, that line of conduct which he may
hereafter be compelled to adopt, and which, however painful it must,
under any circumstances be, would become doubly so if he was not
conscious of having tried to avoid it by the most distinct
notification. On the two first of these points, it is not the
intention of the undersigned, for the reason he has already mentioned,
to do more than state, what government itself must acknowledge—that of
the present conspiracy it knows (comparatively speaking) nothing. That
instead of creating terror in its enemies, or confidence in its
friends, it will only serve by the scantiness of its information, to
furnish additional grounds of invective to those who are but too ready
to censure it for a want of intelligence, which no sagacity could have
enabled them to obtain. That if it is not able to terrify by a display
of its discoveries, it cannot hope to crush by the weight of its
punishments. Is it only now we are to learn, that entering into
conspiracy exposes us to be hanged?—Are the scattered instances which
will now be brought forward necessary to exemplify the statute? If the
numerous and striking examples which have already preceded, were
insufficient,—if government can neither by novelty of punishment, nor
the multitude of its victims, impress us with terror, can it hope to
injure the body of a conspiracy so impenetrably woven as the present,
by cutting off a few threads from the end of it.
“That with respect to the second point, no system however it may
change the nature, can affect the period of the contest that is to
take place; as to which the exertions of United Irishmen will be
guided only by their own opinion of the eligibility of the moment for
effecting the emancipation of their country.
“That administration....”