[581] Success.—­The real betrayer of this brave but unfortunate nobleman has only been discovered of late years.  Dr. Madden was the first to throw light upon the subject.  He discovered the item of L1,000 entered in the Secret Service Money-book, as paid to F.H. for the discovery of L.E.F.  The F.H. was undoubtedly Francis Higgins, better known as the Sham Squire, whose infamous career has been fully exposed by Mr. Fitzpatrick.  In the fourth volume of the United Irishmen, p. 579, Dr. Madden still expresses his doubt as to who was the person employed by Higgins as “setter.”  It evidently was some one in the secrets of Lord Edward’s party.  The infamous betrayer has been at last discovered, in the person of Counsellor Magan, who received at various times large sums of money from Government for his perfidy.  See the Sham Squire, p. 114.  Higgins was buried at Kilbarrack, near Clontarf.  In consequence of the revelations of his vileness, which have been lately brought before the public, the tomb was smashed to pieces, and the inscription destroyed.  See Mr. Fitzpatrick’s Ireland before the Union, p. 152.

[582] Murphy.—­Rev. Mr. Gordon says:  “Some of the soldiers of the Ancient British regiment cut open the dead body of Father Michael Murphy, after the battle of Arklow, took out his heart, roasted his body, and oiled their boots with the grease which dropped from it.”—­History of the Rebellion, p. 212.

[583] Suffer.—­Annals of Ballitore, vol. i. p. 227.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

The State of Ireland before and after the Union—­Advancement of Trade before the Union—­Depression after it—­Lord Clare and Lord Castlereagh in the English Parliament—­The Catholic Question becomes a Ministerial Difficulty—­The Veto—­The O’Connell Sept—­Early Life of Daniel O’Connell—­The Doneraile Conspiracy—­O’Connell as Leader of the Catholic Party—­The Clare Election—­O’Connell in the English House of Parliament—­Sir Robert Peel—­George IV. visits Ireland—­Disturbances in Ireland from the Union to the year 1834, and their Causes—­Parliamentary Evidence—­The “Second Reformation”—­Catholic Emancipation—­Emigration, its Causes and Effects—­Colonial Policy of England—­Statistics of American Trade and Population—­Importance of the Irish and Catholic Element in America—­Conclusion.

[A.D. 1800-1868.]

It is both a mistake and an injustice to suppose that the page of Irish history closed with the dawn of that summer morning, in the year of grace 1800, when the parliamentary union of Great Britain and Ireland was enacted.  I have quoted Sir Jonah Barrington’s description of the closing night of the Irish Parliament, because he writes as an eyewitness, and because few could describe its “last agony” with more touching eloquence and more vivid truthfulness; but I beg leave, in the name of my country, to protest against his conclusion, that “Ireland, as a nation, was extinguished.”  There never was, and we must almost fear there never will be, a moment in the history of our nation, in which her independence was proclaimed more triumphantly or gloriously, than when O’Connell, the noblest and the best of her sons, obtained Catholic Emancipation.