Memoirs of William Sampson

people, and a people so manifestly against a government: if a kingdom must be put out of the king's peace in order that a faction may monopolise royal power, it may be fairly asked, on which side is rebellion ? and the answer arises spontaneously in the breast of a free American.

Some of the most respectable citizens of America have acknowled to the Author, that they had been deceived respecting Ireland, and were desirous of knowing the true state of things; and this was a principal motive for giving to the public his Memoirs, which, from certain principles of moderation, he had so long suppres

sed.

The Author has, with no less frankness avowed, that the unremitting and reiterated calumnies levelled against the American reputation, had not been without effect upon his mind, until it was his fortune to be corrected by the happiest experiment: till in that country, where, it was written, * that the men were sordid, the women withered, the institutions vicious, and religion unknown, he found-exalted hospitality: the charms of female society elegant and attractive: institutions

* See Moore, Weld, Parkinson, Davis, The Stranger, and all the rest.

Action

PREFACE.

which on the other side the Atlantic pass for wild and visionary theories, reduced to practice, and unexampled prosperity growing beneath their shade: till he found religion unsullied by political craft or violent dominion, inculcated with purity, and exercised in charity: till he found, in the benignity of the BENCH, a long lost profession, and in the liberality of the BAR, friends worthy of his entire esteem.

To such a people he addresses himself with confidence. The faint sketch his Memoirs present of the calamities of his country, may serve at least to awake attention to a subject too little known for the common interest of humanity. The rest will follow; and time may yet come, when the genius of Columbia, exulting in her young flight, and soaring on her eagle-wing, in quest of subjects equal to her swelling conceptions, may find them in the courage, the constancy, and undeserved calamities of slandered Ireland. Till then, let it be kept in mind, that the same writers and runners, hired to traduce Irishmen in America, are those who traduce America in Europe--with this only difference, that in all their clumsy sarcasms, the spirit of the jest is, to call the American YANKEE, and the Irishman PADDY.

ERRATA.

IN running his eye over these sheets, since they were printed, the Author regrets to have discovered several typo. graphical errors; which it would be too tedious a task for him to point out in a formal list of Errata: confiding in the liberality of every candid and intelligent reader to make allowance for those accidents, which he knows are inseparable from all literary performances, and which no author has ever been able to prevent, particularly in a first edition.