The Warwickshire Herald. — 1886-06-17 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

SCENES PROM THE IRISH REBELLION IN 1798; OR, WHAT THE IRISH LOYALISTS HAVE AGAIN TO EXPECT IP MR. GLADSTONE TRIUMPHS.  NO. VII.—THE NIETRDRE OF LORD KILWARDEX. Wg have given a sufficient number of Cruikshank's pictures to make it clear to what frightful excesses of barbarity the Irish race will go when once they have secured a free hand. It has been made perfectly obvious that to be a Protestant and a Loyalist is tantamount to a death warrant, where the Irish are loose( from restraint; and many matters which we have not been able to depict would show with equal clearness the madness of Irish mob-rule, extending, as it did in 1798, even to the introduction of a French army into Ireland to assist in the horrors perpetrated by a bigoted and priest-ridden populace. The Rebellion was at an end, and the Act of Union had been passed. The outbreak under Robert Emmett came as the last flicker of the candle of disaffection in 1802, and we mention it here simply because the heartless murder engraved above was one of the outcomes of it, and again showed how the Irish people are strangers both to humanity and gratitude. It was during the height of this later insurrection that the venerable Lord Kilwarden, Chief Justice of the Kin's Bench, accompanied by his daughter, Miss Wolfe, and his nephew,a clergyman, arrived in Thomas-street, on his way from his country-house to the Castle. Lord Kilwarden and Mr. Wolfe, his nephew, were inhumanly dragged from the carriage, and pierced with innumerable mortal wounds by the pikemen. Before he expired he was rescued by a party of the military and of the police; and hearing some violent expressions employed as to the punishment of the rebels, he had only time before he breathed his last to prefer a petition "that no man might suffer but by the laws of his country." The following authentic story explains the extreme baseness of this foul murder :  "in the year 1795, when Kilwarden was Attorney. General, a number of young men (all of whom were between the ages of fifteen and twenty) were indicted for high treason. Upon the day appointed for the trial they appeared in the dock wearing shirts with tuckers and open collars, in the manner usual with boys when the Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, before whom they were tried, came into court and observed them. He called out, Well, Mr. Attorney, I suppose you are ready to go on with the trials of these truckered traitors?' The Attorney-General was ready and had attended for the purpose, but indignant and disgusted at hearing such language from the judgment seat, he rose and replied, No, my lord, I am not ready, and,' added he, in a low tone, to one of the prisoner's counsel, who was near him, if I have any power to save the lives of these boys, whose extreme youth I did not before observe, that man shall never have the gratification of passing sentence upon a single one of these truckered traitors?' Ile performed his promise, and soon after procured pardons for them all, upon the condition of their expatriating themselves for ever; but one of them obstinately refusing to accept the pardon on that condition, he was tried, convicted, and executed.  "After the death of this young man, his relatives, it is said, readily listening to every misrepresentation which flattered their resentment, became persuaded that the Attorney-General had selected him, alone to suffer the utmost severity of the law. One of these, a person named Shannon, was an insurgent on the 23rd of July,lBo2, and when Lord Kilwarden, hearing the popular cry of vengeance, exclaimed from his carriage, 'it is I, Kilwarden, Chief Justice of the King's Bench," Then,' cried out Shannon, 4 you're the man that I want,' and plunged a pike into his lordship's body." It is useless to dilate further on these barbarities. Enough has been done to illustrate the danger into which Mr. Gladstone is desperately endeavouring to thrust the loyal Irish. Our object is to warn the British nation in time, and prevent the perpetration of the Premier's contemplated madness. Forewarnei of the fiendish acts which the Irish race, when unbridled, plunges into, there is little fear that British voters who have the feelings of men will for one moment tolerate a policy of Imperial disruption, which began in treachery and doubredealing, and would end, unless checked, in atrocities and outrages as vile as those which for ever disgraced the Irish race in 1798.