and consequently as a rebel commander.”  The reward for their charity now was instant execution.  The Rev. John Redmond, the Catholic priest of Newtownbarry, had saved Lord Mountmorris and other gentlemen from the fury of the exasperated people, and had preserved his house and property from plunder.  He was now sent for by this nobleman; and, conscious of his innocence, and the benefits he had rendered him, he at once obeyed the summons.  On his arrival, he was seized, brought before the court, and executed on the pretence of having been a commander in the rebel army.  He had, indeed, commanded, but the only commands he ever uttered were commands of mercy.  Well might Mr. Gordon sorrowfully declare, that he had “heard of hundreds of United Irishmen, during the insurrection, who have, at the risk of their lives, saved Orangemen; but I have not heard of a single Orangeman who encountered any danger to save the life of a United Irishman.”  With equal sorrow he remarks the difference in the treatment of females by each party.  The Irish were never once accused of having offered the slightest insult to a woman; the military, besides shooting them indiscriminately with the men, treated them in a way which cannot be described, and under circumstances which added a more than savage inhumanity to their crime.

The next act of the fatal drama was the execution of the State prisoners.  The rising in Ulster had been rendered ineffective, happily for the people, by the withdrawal of some of the leaders at the last moment.  The command in Antrim was taken by Henry McCracken, who was at last captured by the royalists, and executed at Belfast, on the 17th of June.  At Saintfield, in Down, they were commanded by Henry Monroe, who had been a Volunteer, and had some knowledge of military tactics.  In an engagement at Ballinahinch, he showed considerable ability in the disposal of his forces, but they were eventually defeated, and he also paid the forfeit of his life.  A remnant of the Wexford insurrection was all that remained to be crushed.  On the 21st of June, Lord Cornwallis was sent to Ireland, with the command both of the military forces and the civil power.  On the 17th of July an amnesty was proclaimed; and the majority of the State prisoners were permitted eventually to leave the country, having purchased their pardon by an account of the plans of the United Irishmen, which were so entirely broken up that their honour was in no way compromised by the disclosure.

Several men, however, were executed, in whose fate the country had, for many reasons, more than ordinary interest.  To have pardoned them would have been more humane and better policy.  These were the two Sheares, M’Cann, and Mr. William Byrne.  Their history will be found in the Lives of the United Irishmen, by Dr. Madden, a work of many volumes, whose contents could not possibly be compressed into the brief space which the limits of this work demands.