PREFACE. THE following Effays are republished, because they relate to fubjects, on which it is of importance to throw every poffible degree of light, both in order to the present restoration of tranquillity, and for the purpose of future information and inftruction. Had the commotions in this country been merely of a local nature, it might appear impertinent to call the attention even of the other parts of the British Empire to a republication of tracts, whose object was, almost wholly, to trace those commotions to their fource. But when the plots and confpiracies by which Ireland has been af flicted are so evidently the result of a kind of epidemic Mania, when the fame pestilential principle has operated, and still more or less continues to operate in every quarter of Europe and North America, and when Great Britain herself, the happiest of Nations, is not exempt from the contagion, then circumstances in themselves local, may become of infinite confequence, both as ferving to illuftrate the nature of the difcafe, and as pointing to the most effectual methods of counteraction and cure. Perhaps fuch a Republication as the prefent, may appear fuperfluous after fo full a developement of the principles and tendencies of the IRISH UNION, as has been given in the late Reports of the Secret Committees. But it is to be observed that the direct proofs of a treasonable purpose adduced in those important and interesting collections, scarcely go farther back than the year 1795, although the Society of UNITED UNITED IRISHMEN had exifted for more than three years previous to that period. It may therefore not be useless to pay fome additional attention to the earlier stage of that affociation, in order fully to afcertain whether the original views of its founders were limited to any thing which could be called Parliamentary Reform, or whether, on the contrary, their defign was not fyftematically traiterous from the first moment of their career, The confideration of this question becomes the more neceffary, in confequence, of the attempt made by fome of the leaders of the United Irishmen to justify themselves, even at the moment when they were disclosing the moft complicated villanies. It was then afferted by them that, though Revolutionary Democracy became at length their object, it had formed no part of their original defign; that they then only had adopted it when their hopes |