It was a singular coincidence that the officer of the Royal Artillery, who forty-six years before had left Woolwich to organize the first company of the Royal Irish Artillery, should, on the amalgamation, have been the Colonel commandant of the new Battalion. Lieutenant-General Straton had proceeded, in May, 1755, to Ireland, for the former purpose, and he rejoined the Royal Artillery on the 1st April, 1801, as Colonel commandant of the 7th Battalion. He died in Dublin on the 16th May, 1803, after a service of sixty-one years. At the time of the amalgamation, six of the companies were stationed in Ireland, and four in the West Indies. The Irish Artillery was not exempt from foreign service, and the conduct of the men abroad was as excellent as it always was during the times of even the greatest civil commotion. When, however, they left Ireland on service, their pay became a charge on the English Office of Ordnance; and in the Returns from their own head-quarters we find that any men who might be in England, pending embarkation, were shown as "on foreign service." The first employment of the Irish Artillery abroad was during the American war. In March, 1777, seventy men embarked, under the command of an officer of the Royal Artillery, and did duty with that corps in a manner which called forth the highest commendations from the officers under whom they served. The Master-General of the Ordnance, Lord Townsend, in a letter to the officer commanding the Irish Artillery, dated 23rd of December, 1777, alludes to these men in the following terms: "I am informed that none among the gallant troops behaved so nobly as the Irish Artillery, who are now exchanged, and are to return. I am sorry they have suffered so much, but it is the lot of brave men, who, so situated, prefer glorious discharge of their duty to an unavailing desertion of it." The conduct of the Irish Artillery, both in America and in the darkest period of their service, in the West Indies, contrasts so strongly with that of the men enlisted in Ireland for the Royal Artillery at the same time, that evidently the recruiting for the latter corps must have been grossly mismanaged, or, what is more probable, the national corps obtained with ease the best men, while the refuse of the country was left to the recruiting sergeants of the Royal Artillery. In the correspondence of General Pattison, who at one period of the American war commanded the Royal Artillery on that continent, the language employed in describing the recruits enlisted in Ireland, and sent to join the 3rd and 4th Battalions in America, would be strong in any one, but is doubly so, coming from an officer always most courteous in his language, and by no means given to exaggeration.