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PREFACE. XV
enwreathed plentifully with that weed which Shalt-; speare calls " the cockle of rebellion," and, in the same manner as before, committed it tremblingly to the chances of the letter-box. I hardly expected my prose would be honoured with insertion, when, lo, on} the next evening of publication, when, seated as usual in my little corner by the fire, I unfolded the paper for the purpose of reading it to my select auditory, there was my own Letter staring me full in the face, being honoured with so conspicuous a place as to be one of the first articles my audience •would expect to hear. Assuming an outward appearÂance of ease, while every nerve within me was trembling, I contrived to accomplish the reading of the Letter without raising in either of my auditors a suspicion that it was my own. I enjoyed the pleasure too of hearing it a good deal praised by them;-and might have been tempted by this to acknowledge myself the author, had I not found that the language and sentiments of the article were considered by both to be "very bold."*
- I was not destined, however, to remain long un-s detected. On the following day, Edward Hudson fj
* So thought also higher authorities ; for among the extracts from! The Press brought forward by the Secret Committee of the House of Commons, to show how formidable had been the designs of thtf United Irishmen, there are two or three paragraphs cited from this redoubtable Letter.
t Of the depth and extent to which Hudson had involved himself in the conspiracy, none of our family had harboured the least notionr till, on the seizure of the thirteen Leinster delegates, at Oliver Bond's, a 4 |
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