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xvi |
PREFACE. |
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— the only one, as I have said, entrusted with my secret, called to pay us a morning visit, and had not been long in the room, conversing with my mother, when looking significantly at me, he said, "AVell,
you saw------" Here he stopped; but the mother's
eye had followed his, with the rapidity of lightning, to mine, and at once she perceived the whole truth. " That Letter was yours, then ? " she asked of me eagerly; and, without hesitation, of course, I acknowledged the fact; when in the most earnest manner she entreated of me never again to have any connexion with that paper; and, as every wish of hers was to me law, I readily pledged the solemn promise she required. Though well aware how easily a sneer may be raised at the simple details of this domestic scene, I have yet ventured to put it on record, as affording an instance of the gentle and womanly watchfulness,—the providence, as it may be called, of the little world of home,—by which, although placed almost in the very current of so headlong a movement, and living familiarly with some of the most daring of those who propelled it, I yet was guarded from any participation in their secret oaths, counsels, or plans, and thus escaped all share in that wild struggle to which so many far better men than myself fell victims.
in the month of March, 1798, we found, to our astonishment and sorrow, that he was one of the numher.
To those unread in the painful history of this period, it is right to mention that almost all the leaders of the United Irish conspiracy were Protestants. Among those companions of my own alluded to in these pages, I scarcely remember a single Catholic. |
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