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where Tone stood when he declared:—"To subvert the tyranny of an execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country—these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter—these were my means."
What exactly were the aims of these United Irishmen? Have they left any record of their ideals so that the generations to follow might understand how it came to pass that a Presbyterian minister should exhort his congregation to pray for fine weather on the next occasion when a French fleet should reach our shores bringing men and arms to help the Irish in establishing a Republic, while at the same time the Irish Catholic peasant, unsubdued by the long slavery that followed Aughrim, considered as his proudest possession the pike hidden in the thatch for use on the same day of deliverance?
"THEY ROSE IN DARK AND EVIL DAYS."
Let us briefly trace the historic conditions which produced the "United Irishmen" who were so vitally to affect the future course of the nation, raising the aspirations of the people to hitherto undreamed-of heights, and dispelling for ever any lingering belief in the return of a Messiah-like King James or Prince Charlie.
Following the defeat of the Jacobite army at Aughrim, society in Ireland hardened into two distinct divisions. The broad line of demarcation was religion; and it was possible to mark out the defeated Gaelic race and despoil it by proscribing its particular creed.
This class-religious distinction prevailed for the greater part of the 18th century, and formed an impediment to national progress until a new economic alignment, no longer corresponding to sectarian moulds, expressed itself in the demand for national democratic unity to overthrow foreign rule and colonial feudal despotism.
By the year 1791 it was no longer true to say that there were in the country only the British colonists and the enslaved Irish. A new division had come about, and on one side were arrayed those who stood for privilege and foreign government, and on the other those both of Irish
