Trinity College MS. 873 Madden Papers Item 436 Salisbury Mills Orange County 27th Oct 1842 My Dear Sir Altho' not present at the meeting assembled to pay a tribute of respect to the memory of the lamented Macnevin, yet my mite shall be forthcoming towards the erection of the monument of my valued friend (sic; nothing omitted - BDB) I observed by the Papers that you took occasion at that meeting to make some observations of Doctor Maddens History (sic: second inverted comma omitted - BDB) that work so far as it goes is tolerably correct, but Is as one of the Party of which it treats, must be permitted to say that the History of the "United Irishmen" is yet to be written and I am pleased to think from the observations you then made, that the Doctor is about to Invox the world with further data from his masterly pen. Surely he should dwell somewhat on that species of presecution which involved whole families in ruin for the guilt of one individual (if guilt it was) few (crossed out) as in the case of my father & sisters & brothers, who were doomed to destruction & expatriation through the influence of the powerful squireality of the day, in the hope of their acquiring by confiscation that part of our property and Estate, which had escaped their merciless doings of burning, conflagration & turning them houseless on the world. For what bein for the act of one son a lad of not nineteen years of age, whom the clemency of Cornwallis snatched from the doom of death awarded by an infuriated Court Martial thus averting the order of the Decalogue, by causing the sins of the son to fall on the father, tho the latter never was an "United Irishman but had in their view been guilty of protecting his weak & persecuted neighbours of all religious denominations against the various petty annoyances of their more wealthy & in most cases their inveterate Orange follow subjects. And this very lad be it remember'd when unknown to his father & family had been placed in command of a very large body of rebels saved the Persons & properties of the Lovel from insult & spoilation in the very Town which was burned by the Kings troops after he had marched his Men to another district. I refrain from stating further particulars of the vengeful malignity that pursued our family, but would proceed to more general observations. Doctor Madden in my opinion has not sufficienty informed his readers of the first movements of the United Irish in the North TO when Rob Stewart i.e. Lord Castlereagh was first proposed as a Member for the County of Down he was Major of the Downshire Militis & a more interesting, more noble looking young man I never beheld, he was then in his twentieth year, at a County Meeting be solemay (sin) pledged himself to use all his power, influence & energies to obtain Parlismentary Reform, he succeeded in opposition to Lord Kilwarlen i.e. the Barl of Hilsborough afterwards Marquia of Downshire and nearly the entire Lord Interest of the County backed by all the influence of the Government and that to him & his father at a small expense [sici CORPO, to the encrmous aum of forty thousand Pounds said to be e. hénded after a hard fought contest of five weeks, indeed the expence (sic) of the Phone: e & honesty Party" principally borne by the independunt freeholders chem selves, sided by the purses & pens & labours of the People of Beliest & other friends to the liberties of their Country & such was the then zeal. of the Stewart family in that cause, that years afterwards when a inno by