The United Irishmen, Their Lives and Times, Volume 2

Front Cover
J. Madden & Company, 1842

From inside the book

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 388 - ... councils of this government, are holden over these catacombs of living death, where the wretch that is buried a man, lies till his heart has time to fester and dissolve, and is then dug up a witness.
Page 148 - In this situation men not only shrink from the frowns of a stern magistrate ; but they are obliged to fly from their very species. The seeds of destruction are sown in civil intercourse, in social habitudes. The blood of wholesome kindred is infected. Their tables and beds are surrounded with snares. All the means given by Providence to make life safe and comfortable, are perverted into instruments of terror and torment.
Page 388 - How his glance, like the lightning of heaven, seemed to rive the body of the accused and mark it for the grave, while his voice warned the devoted wretch of woe and death — a death which no innocence can escape, no art elude, no force resist, no antidote prevent. There was an antidote — a juror's oath — but even that adamantine chain...
Page 385 - If this was in England, I should think this gentleman entitled to bail; but I don't know the laws of this country. However, I think you had better loosen those irons on his wrists, or I think they may kill him.
Page 388 - ... make his appearance upon the table the living image of life and of death, and the supreme arbiter of both ? Have you not marked when he entered, how the stormy wave of the multitude retired at his approach ? Have you not marked how the human heart bowed to the supremacy of his power, in the undissembled homage of deferential horror ? How his glance, like the lightning of heaven, seemed to rive the body of the accused, and mark it for the grave, while his voice warned the devoted wretch of...
Page 380 - On the following evening, poor Hevey was dogged in the dark into some lonely alley; there he was seized, he knew not by whom, nor by what authority — and became in a moment, to his family, and his friends, as if he had never been. He was carried away in equal ignorance of his crime, and of his destiny ; whether to be tortured, or. hanged, or transported. His crime he soon learned ; it was the treason which he had committed against the majesty of major Sirr.
Page 381 - ... his family that he was not dead : — he instantly gave the order required. The major graciously accepted it, saying, your courtesy will not cost you much; you are to be sent down to-morrow to Kilkenny to be tried for your life ; you will most certainly be hanged ; and you can scarcely think that your journey to the other world will be performed on horseback.
Page 310 - In the awful presence of God, I, AB, do voluntarily declare, that I will persevere in endeavouring to form a brotherhood of affection among Irishmen of every religious persuasion, and that I will also persevere in my endeavours to obtain an equal, full, and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland.
Page 388 - I speak not now of the public proclamation of informers, with a promise of secrecy and of extravagant reward ; I speak not of the fate of those horrid wretches who have been so often transferred from the table to the dock, and from the dock to the pillory; I speak of what your own eyes have seen day after day...
Page 235 - We also swear that we will never sheath the sword till every being in the country is restored to those equal rights which the God of nature has given to all men; until an order of things shall be established in which no superiority shall be acknowledged among the citizens of Erin but that of virtue and talent.

Bibliographic information