Silly boy! (he was only twenty-four) with such a sum, and about one hundred followers, he thought it could be done. His crazy brain imagined his down-trodden compatriots hastening to his side, to fight for the deliverance of their beloved country from the yoke of the hated Saxon despot. There were meetings _sub rosâ_—assemblages on the quiet—as there always will be in Ireland when the pot is seething; and at last the curtain was to be drawn up, for the playing of this farce, on the 23rd of July, when towards evening, large bodies of men began to assemble in some of the streets of Dublin—but vaguely, and without leaders. At last a small cannon was fired, and a single rocket went upwards to the sky; and the deliverer, Emmett, sallied out, waving that big sword. A shot from a blunderbuss killed Colonel Browne; and the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Lord Kilwarden, and his nephew, Rev. Richard Wolfe, were dragged from their carriage, and brutally murdered. A little more bluster, and then, some three hours after its rising, this scum was put down by about one hundred and twenty soldiers. The ringleaders were caught and executed. Emmett, tried on the 19th of September, was hanged next day. To show how slowly news travelled in those days, the _Times_ has no notice of this riot on the 23rd till the 28th of July, and then not a full account. The Government, however, seems to have estimated the situation quite at its full gravity, for there was a message from the King to his faithful Parliament on the subject; the Habeas Corpus Act was once more suspended, and martial law proclaimed. On the 19th of October the religious panacea of a general fast was tried, and “was observed with the utmost decorum” in the Metropolis. The Volunteers, especially, won the encomia of the _Times_ for their goodness in going to church, and the _Annual Register_ also warms up into unusual fervour on the occasion: “Such a number of corps attended this day, that it is impossible to enumerate them. Every principal church was crowded with the ardent patriots who fill the voluntary associations; and there can be no doubt that, in the present temper of the people of this country, not only every other great city and town, but even the smallest village or hamlet throughout the island, evinced a proportionate degree of fervour and animation in the holy cause. The corps who had not before taken the oath of allegiance, did so this day, either on their drill grounds, or in their respective churches.” Of the latter part of the year, other than the Invasion Scare, there is little to say. Among the Acts passed this year, however, was one of hopeful import, as showing a glimmer of a better time to come in the era of religious toleration. It was to relieve the Roman Catholics of some pains and disabilities to which they were subject, on subscribing the declaration and oath contained in the Act 31 George III.