He had interfered in the vain hope of protecting his unfortunate parishioners from injustice; and, in return, he was himself made the victim of injustice.  He was accused of encouraging a French invasion—­a fear which was always present to the minds of the rulers, as they could not but know that the Irish had every reason to seek for foreign aid to free them from domestic wrongs.  He was accused of encouraging the Whiteboys, because, while he denounced their crimes, he accused those who had driven them to these crimes as the real culprits.  He was accused of treason, and a reward of L300 was offered for his apprehension.  Conscious of his innocence, he gave himself up at once to justice, though he might easily have fled the country.  He was tried in Dublin and acquitted.  But his persecutors were not satisfied.  A charge of murder was got up against him; and although the body of the man could never be found, although it was sworn that he had left the country, although an alibi was proved for the priest, he was condemned and executed.  A gentleman of property and position came forward at the trial to prove that Father Sheehy had slept in his house the very night on which he was accused of having committed the murder; but the moment he appeared in court, a clergyman who sat on the bench had him taken into custody, on pretence of having killed a corporal and a sergeant in a riot.  The pretence answered the purpose.  After Father Sheehy’s execution Mr. Keating was tried; and, as there was not even a shadow of proof, he was acquitted.  But it was too late to save the victim.

At the place of execution, Father Sheehy most solemnly declared, on the word of a dying man, that he was not guilty either of murder or of treason; that he never had any intercourse, either directly or indirectly, with the French; and that he had never known of any such intercourse being practised by others.  Notwithstanding this solemn declaration of a dying man, a recent writer of Irish history says, “there can be no doubt” that he was deeply implicated in treasonable practices, and “he seems to have been” a principal in the plot to murder Lord Carrick.  The “no doubt” and “seems to have been” of an individual are not proofs, but they tend to perpetuate false impressions, and do grievous injustice to the memory of the dead.  The writer has also omitted all the facts which tended to prove Father Sheehy’s innocence.

In 1771 a grace was granted to the Catholics, by which they were allowed to take a lease of fifty acres of bog, and half an acre of arable land for a house; but this holding should not be within a mile of any town.  In 1773 an attempt was made to tax absentees; but as they were the principal landowners, they easily defeated the measure.  A pamphlet was published in 1769, containing a list of the absentees, which is in itself sufficient to account for any amount of misery and disaffection in Ireland.  There can be no doubt of the correctness of the statement,