13th June 1798, and held office to 17th March 1801. He was selected by Pitt with the expectation of his being able to carry through the Union when once the Insurrection was suppressed. It was Lord Cornwallis's decided conviction that the measure was essential for the security and permanence of the British Empire. His policy and character cannot be better depicted than in the following extracts from his private despatches to Pitt, the Duke of Portland, and others:—(28th June 1798.) "I am much afraid that any man in a brown coat who is found within several miles of the field of action is butchered without discrimination. It shall be one of my first objects to soften the ferocity of our troops … I shall immediately authorize the general officers … to offer to the deluded wretches who are still wandering about in considerable bodies, and are committing still greater cruelties than they themselves suffer, the permission of returning quietly to their homes, on their delivering up their arms and taking the oath of allegiance; and I shall use my utmost exertions to suppress the folly which has been too prevalent in this quarter, of substituting the word Catholicism instead of Jacobinism as the foundation of the present rebellion." (1st July.) "The life of a Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland comes up to my idea of perfect misery, but if I can accomplish the great object of consolidating the British Empire I shall be sufficiently repaid." (8th July.) "The Irish militia are totally without discipline, contemptible before the enemy when any serious resistance is made to them, but ferocious and cruel in the extreme when any poor wretches, either with or without arms, come into their power: in short, murder appears to be their favourite pastime… The principal persons of this country, and the members of both Houses of Parliament, are in general averse to all acts of clemency, and although they do not express, and perhaps are too much heated to see the ultimate effects which their violence must produce, would pursue measures that could only terminate in the extirpation of the greater number of the inhabitants, and in the utter destruction of the country." (9th July.) "Although there is no enemy here to oppose a large body of our troops in the field, we are still engaged in a war of plunder and massacre; but I am in great hopes that, partly by force, and partly by conciliation, we shall bring it to a speedy termination… Of all the situations which I ever held, the present is by far the most intolerable to me, and I have often within the last fortnight wished myself back in Bengal." (13th July.) "Amnesty is more likely to succeed than extirpation." (20th July.) "Convinced as I am that it [the Union] is the only measure which can long preserve this country, I will never lose sight of it." (24th July.) "Numberless murders are hourly committed by our people without any process or examination whatever… The yeomanry are in the style of the loyalists in America, only much more numerous and powerful, and a thousand times more ferocious. These men have saved the country, but they now take the lead in rapine and murder." (l0th August.) "People's minds are getting cooler, and I have no doubt of their being sufficiently manageable for all ordinary purposes, but I do not know how they will be brought to act on the great measure of all [the Union], on the event of which the safety of Great Britain and Ireland so much depends." (12th August.) "Unless a great measure [the Union] is adopted, the connection between Great Britain and Ireland must soon be at an end." Lord Cornwallis was in the field in the west, from 28th of August to about the 12th of September, in consequence of Humbert's invasion; but was not present at Humbert's defeat at Ballinamuck. In a general order, dated from Ballinamore, 31st August, he calls upon the officers to "assist him in putting a stop to the licentious conduct of the troops, and in saving the wretched inhabitants from being robbed, and in the most shocking manner ill-treated by those to whom they had a right to look for safety and protection." (16th Sept.) "A perseverance in the system [of governing Ireland] which has hitherto been pursued can only lead us from bad to worse, and after exhausting the resources of Britain, must end in the total separation of the two countries." (25th Sept.) "Situated as I am for my sins in the direction of the affairs of a country ninetenths of the inhabitants of which are thoroughly disaffected to the Government, with a militia on which no dependence whatever can be placed, and which Abercromby too justly described by saying that they were only formidable to their friends." (30th Sept.) "I am determined not to submit to the insertion of any clause that shall make the exclusion of the Catholics a fundamental part of the Union, as I am fully convinced that until the Catholics are admitted into a general participation of rights (which when incorporated with the British government they cannot abuse), there will be no peace or safety in Ireland."
