The brilliant career of Richard Montgomery will be found detailed in this volume with fond faithfulness, if not with becoming ability. Sullivan and Lee, two other general officers, will be recognised as Irishmen ; and few will be mistaken in the gallant bearing and distinguished bravery of Morgan.

Of Mason, of Wexford, the history of the first war supplies no important details; but in that of 1812 his name held high place. At the age of seventy he slew in single fight the military chief, Tecumseh. And in the same battle was concluded a fierce war with the Western Indians, excited, it is said, by English agents from Canada.

John Barry, also a Wexfordman, obtained the highest distinction in the American navy; and England had cause to deplore that her harsh laws had made him, and many others, an avenging exile.

Andrew Jackson, born on the sea, was the last and the most honored of the Irish. He served in the first, and led the second war, in which the victory of New Orleans crowned him and his adopted country with undisturbed glory.

Ireland, to turn from the theatre of war,supplied the American Congress with some of its sternest and sagest councillors. Charles Thompson, its first Secretary, who signed officially the Declaration of Liberty, was an Irishman. Of

those who attested that great document, some were Trish and many the sons of Irishmen.

Among these "Charles Carroll, of Carlton," was the most distinguished. His residence is added to his name. Why it should be so in this only instance is thus accounted for. There were several of the same name in the province. No man signed the Declaration except at the risk of life and fortune, should the republican arms be broken. When writing his name he was told he might have a chance to escape among a great number of namesakes-he added, at once, his residence, to prove how unwilling he was to avail himself of the circumstance.

"In abandoning the design of interweaving with my narrative the particular history of those I have mentioned, and some others of my country, it was matter of great regret to find that I could not, with any justice to the main events of my subject, afford space for the highly interesting details conneeted with individual character. There are few • who would not wish to know more than I have been able to tell of Franklin, Jefferson, Henry, Rutlege, Adams, Harrisson, &c. Each name would, in itself, suggest and supply a history; and I have preferred to leave them unnoticed in the notes, to giving a necessarily brief and unsatisfactory epitome of their history.

With still deeper regret I have been compelled

to give up an object which I had in view-namely, to describe in detail the varied and singular incidents of the war of posts. The American conflict was truly a guerrilla warfare, and its success was principally owing to the skill and intrepidity with which those posts were disputed.

It is quite possible this may be dangerous ground, yet I cannot help saying, that defensible positions scattered through the country, and the ability and skill necessary for their maintenance, are the last and surest safeguards of a population struggling for liberty. And it is fit that all men should know their value. They may have had superior advantages in America, where vast forests intervened, and the march of armies was so difficult except on the principal lines of road. But in every country they are available in a greater or less degree. In Ireland they are eminently so. Except along the coast it would be utterly impossible to preserve a communication between an invading army and its stores, with a population so numerous that at an hour's warning 20,000 men could be concentrated on any one point along the line.

CW

To know the advantages, whether military, commercial, or social, which his country presents, is the duty of every upright citizen. If a jealous law brooks with impatience and suspicion his

examination of these things his inquiry how far they may be turned to account-thereby it stands condemned. And wherever his apprehension so far prevails as to induce the neglect of what it is becoming in a free man to know, the citizen is a slave, and the government despotism. I do not think so meanly of my country or so harshly of its government. I believe it to be quite compatible with its ease as well as its permanent security, that the Irish people should thoroughly understand and know how to make use of their country's capacity for a military struggle.

If it were otherwise, what a lesson for the world! England," might well commune some new Napoleon, "has millions of subjects whom she has kept untaught because she dares not trust. To what conclusions such dangerous logic may lead, this is not the place to conjecture. But, considering England's name, her great prestige upon the earth, her dazzling empire, her old renown, her letters, her flag, her bulwarks of the ocean-things she knows so well to prize, and offers this long-stricken land a share of it is beyond the wildest probability which ever visionary dreamed withal, that we should use our knowledge and our strength against her, reject such offers, and prefer work and hunger, and danger and death.

Nor is the supposition to be even canvassed on any ground save a living and stinging sense on England's part that the wrongs she has done us must sooner or later be avenged.

Enough of this. It has been too often said, that we do not want or wish to war with England. The assertion is not believed for the reason already given. The very argument was unblushingly urged by the opponents of English negro emancipation. But the event has proved that it was a fallacy.

The only consideration, however, that weighed with me was, that I could not follow the enterprising chiefs of America to the passes, and fords, and forests, and mountains which they defended or won, and recount in detail their sufferings, and chivalry, and triumphs, without too widely disjointing the unity and concord of the great members of my subject. Hereafter it may become a question with me, whether the American guerilla and naval enterprises may not claim a senąrate volume.

For the present I have done.