‘[...] I would not obstrude myself on public attention, were I not earnestly solicited by numerous and respectable friends, (who have at length prevailed) to give a genuine acount of the transactions in the county of Wexford, during the insurrection, in the year 1798; in order to counteract the baleful effects of the partial details and hateful misrepresentations, which have contributed so much to revive and continue those loathsome prejudices that have, for centuries, disturbed and distracted Ireland. It is conceived, that a fair and impartial account, by dissipating error, may operate as a balm to heal the wounds of animosity; for let the candid reader be of what political principles he may, I am confident he must be sensible, that no adherent of either of the contending parties in this unhappy country, can in justification feel himself authorized to assert, that his own party was perfectly in the right, and the other egregriously in the wrong; and yet there are partizans to be found on either side, endeavouring to maintain that this is actually the case. But if these cealots could be induced calmly to listen to the melancholy tales of enormity that can unfortunately be told of both parties, they might be prevailed upon to relax a little in their prejudices. If the spirit of intolerance and retaliation be still held up, no kind of social intercourse [ii] or harmony can exist in Irland With a view, therefore, to establishing concord, by shewing from what has happened, that it will be of universal advantage to forget the past, and to cultivate general amity in the future, I have undertaken the arduous task of endeavouring to reconcile; pointing out errors by a genuine relation of facts, and I hope t his may eventually prevail upon neighbours of all descriptions to cherish the lessings of union and mutual benevolence, which cannot fail of naishing from their breasts every rankling idea, and must prevent the possibility of their ever becomine the easy tools of political speculation, which unfortunately hitherto encouraged hatred and variance, and ended in the miserable debility and depression of all.

Did I know any other person willing and able to give a more circumstnatial account of what has fatally happened in the county of Wexford (which is the only part of Ireland I at present undertake to treat of) I would cheerfuly resign my documents into his hands; but as I have been most peculiarly circumstanced, as an eye-witness of many remarkable transactions, the information cannot be so well hande over, and might not be produced with such good effect at second-hand. Iconceive it therefore necessary to give some account of myself, as most of my readers could not possibly otherwise be sensible of the many opportunities I had of being informed of the state of the country, which certainly did not fall to the lot of many persons.

My family have been established in Ireland since the reign of Henry the second, as my ancestor came over with Strongbow, and was allooted a knight’s share of [iii] lands in the southern part of the country of Wexford, which his descendants possessed until the revolution in Ireland about the middle of the seventeenth century, when there was but one estate in the whole country left unalienated by Cromwell. My ancestor had not the good fortune to be the person undisturbed; but he acquired a property in another part of the county, where his descendants have ever since resided. Born of catholic parents, and being reared in the principles of that religion, occasioned by banishment at an early age, for some years from my native country, as my parents wished to procure me a collegiate education in a foreign land, to which the rank and respectablity of my family entitled me, but which the laws of my country denied me at home. After having pursued a course of study for several years in France and Germany, I returned to my native soil, fully sensibly of my civil degradation as a catholic, and I therefore sought all the legal and constititonal means in my power in the pursuit of catholic emancipation. The liberality of the times contributed much to the relaxation of the penal laws [...]

Hay goes on to record that he was elected to the Catholic Committee in 1792 and speaks of the resistance of the Irish parliament to the measures of liberalisation introduced by the crown - to be followed by ‘very serious disturbances’ in Co. Wexford, and afterwards the arrival of Lord Fitz-William as viceroy. &c. Also reports a ‘most gracious reception’ given to the delegates of the Catholic Committee at St. James’s (London) on 22 April 1795; he proposed a census (’emumeration of the inhabitants’) to Fitzwilliam; Edmund Burke sought is acquaintance on seeing the proposal in London; admitted to the RIA on the strength of that proposal; its execution prevented by the withdrawal of Fitzwilliam and ‘the misfortune of the times’ [vii] and reproduces his proposal with some returns from its private circulation throughout Ireland which he considers ‘sufficient to give a much more certain account of the population of Ireland’ [viii] than any other source available. He adds: ‘I have been favoured with authentic copies of all the documents on which the late Mr. Bushe [sice for Bush] grounded his return of the inhabitant sof this country, which has gained him much credit, and I can positively affirm tht he was not in any degree possessed of such various and detailed accounts, as those, which on my plan, have been returned to me; and I shall feel highly obliged to any person, who according to this scheme, shall make me a return of one or more parishes, through the country at large, or of a street or streets in any town or city, together with any remarks tending to shew the encrease or decrease of population since the year 1795.’ (p.viii.)

[...]

If it can be established beyond a possibility of doubt, that there are vastly more inhabitants in Ireland than they are at present supposed to be, (and this I have good reason to believe is the case) surely the national consequence must be enhanced, and our importance in the scale of nations raised in proportion; and as I already feel a well-founded expectation that I shall be enabled to perfect this desirable object, I hope it will induce every real lover of his country to make me those returns, which the simplicity of the plan will enable any person to execute in his own neighbourhood; [...] In England it was a measure of parliamentary enquiry to ascertain the state of the population exactly: Why should not the like policy obtain with respect to Ireland? Surely, since the union of both nations has been formed, Ireland is entitled to the same advantages as England. In short, a knowledge of the real state [ix] of the country is of such material important to any one wishing to promote its welfare, as to be evident on first contemplation, since without it conjecture most supply the place of certainty, and so perhaps occasion material for error and confusion. (pp.ix.-x.)

[Hay gives his Dublin printer as a post-restante address. Further:] Different motives of private concern induced me to resolve to quit Ireland, in the year 1797, and to go to reside in America, and this I purposed to do as soon as the regulation of my affairs would permit me.’He goes on to say that he was prevented because instructions for the valuation of his furniture were not complied with, pending an auction on 28th May - facts mentioned to ‘counteract the malevolent insinuations of my enemies’ since it was this ‘disappoint that occasioned my detention in the county of Wexford until the commencement of the disturbances; by which I lost all my furniture, and all else that could be taken from me, except what I had on my back, and about my person. (p.x.)

[...]

Had I any possible intimation of the calamities that ensued, I most undoubtedly would have preferred settling my property even at a loss, and securing the value, to waiting to be detained against my will in that unfortunate country; and I would thus have escaped enduring those sufferings and persecutions that afterwarrds fell to my lot.

[He further speaks of his persecutions and sufferings and of the efforts that he made within his powers to alleviate the distress of others, including three gentlemen who had earned his resentment - which he put aside.]

[Speaking of his confinement under guard to his lodgings, depriving him of access to court martial where he would have called some as witnesses ‘when their loyalty may have been called in question, were they to do justice to my conduct; and it may also have been manifested, that whatever honour some of them now possess, is owing to their taking my advice in preference to their own; as if they escaped pikin on the one side, they may have been hanged on the other, and with much more justive than several who have forfeited their lives on the occasion. To transport me without further enquiry, was therefore considered more advisable; xv].

[Escaped being placed on a hulk previously occupied by Lord Kingsborough and his officers which was pronounced by ‘the butchers of Wexford ... unfit for the reception of a pig. Afterwards installed on the Lovely Kitty, fromerly appointed by the Wexford committee [of United Irishmen] as their prison ship, and which was ‘sunk to within a foot of her deck and so escaped firing when the other sloop which had been used as a prison ship was burned’. Stench and infestation with rates on board.]

Among the twenty-one doomed to this dreadful and loathsome confinement, (which I believe not to be paralleled by any dungeon in the world) there were desperate villains and scum of the earth; a circumstance more degrading and offensive to a liberal mind than any punishment, when unable to avoid such intercourse, and this was the case aboard the Lovely Kitty, whose burden was but about fifty tons.’ Overhears one of his captors assert that ‘we had no reason to complain, since the vessel had been fitted out for the rebels she was good enough for us!’

[At first guarded by the seven yeomen of the Shilmalier infantry, afterwards called Lord Ogle’s Loyal Blues; among the guards one who formerly worked for him as a carpenter and who dealt with him humanely [xii] - offering to keep dry out his bed by daytime. ‘He, however, said that he could not act without the permission of his captain, the right hon. GEORGE OGLE. With this gentlemean I formerly kept company, as our families were neighbours, and visited each other. I therefore thought, as well as from the favourable opinion, which he before constantly expressed to me, that his prejudice or bigotry could not make him forget good manners so far as not to answer a letter from me on such an occasion. I did of course address him one, but certainly not in the strain of a prisoner, which I knew I ought not to be, but, as one gentleman whould write to another, giving an account of my distressing and unmerited situation. This letter, the right hon. GEORGE OGLE laid before the Wexford committee, and declared, that he would not permit any of his corps to go on such an errand. Of this I was informed by a letter of the secretary of the committee, which I preserve for the inspection of the curious. [...] The good-natured yeoman who offered me his kind service, was checked by his captain for demeaning himself by speaking to the prisoners, and he soon after quitted the corps [xiii] in disgust and enrolled himself with a captain more congenial to his disposition and feelings.’ (pp.xii-xiii.)

[Hay writes at greater length about the ‘iniquitous practices of the committee’ who, inter alia, held a child-relative of Bagnel Harvey on the prison ship who was only released when he appeared before Lord Kilwarden in Dublin, seeking better suited for the care of a nurse than a gaoler. Hay pursues his case with General Lake, whom the committee mislead as to his supposed request for transportation, and afterwards with Brig.-Major Fitzgerald, sent to him by General Hunter to enquire into his situation, to whom he demonstrates his innocent ‘from he most authentic and convincing documents’ [xxiii] Persuades Judge Chamberlain in Dublin to release him but foiled by the committee who threaten to hang an informer against him in a conversation heard by him through the weak ceiling; xxv]

[Subsequently acquitted after much legal trouble and then rearrested in the street by General Grose who required instructions from the Lord Lieutenant - causing:]

astonishment of all the gentlemen of the Leinster bar [...] after such an acquittal as that of which they had been witneses, particularly counsellor O’Driscol, the leading counsel for the crown on my trial, who offered to prove and substantiate my honourable acquittal in any mannner that my lawyyers might suggest. A memorial to the lord lieutenant was now [1799] framed in my behalf, referring to bar, (now Sir Michael Smith, master of the rols) and to justice Chamblerain, for the truth of its ocntents; and praying that no reference should be made to the Wexford gentry, who had already alleged so many falsehoods against me, but to any liberal man, of independent mind, at all acquainted with the circumstances of my case. This memorial was presented to his excellency marquis CORNWALLIS, by the earl of DONOUGHMORE, at whose residence he was then on a visit. The consequence war, that orders were immediately sent to general Grose to liberate me; and I was then released from a confinement altogether of thirteen months. [xxxii]

[Travelled to England, remaining till 1800; victim of forged letter to Dr. Jacob expressing ‘in so ungentlemanly a stile as I hop I shall never be guilty of, against the measure of the UNION’. (p.xxxiii.)]

[Hay writes of his discovery of the new plot against him and of the promise of protextion from persons of distinction and his own ‘determination, as a catholic, not to interfere about the UNION’(known to them).]

[S]ome have after a time returned to former civility, and excused themselves on being undeceived, as having been misled by false information. Indeed the spirit of MISTAKEN LOYALTY was so zealous, that it induced many to fabricate lies which required numberless others to support them; nay, the public mind was so led astray, that truth itself, by various misconstructions, was perverted into absolute falsehood. [xxxvi]

[...]

A dissertation on the UNION is not my present object: I only want to make all ranks and degrees of my countrymen sensible that UNION and HARMONY among themselves will prevent the possibility of their being put down by any power on earth. [xxxvii.]

[...]

What I consider most lamentable in Ireland, is the dreadful prevalence of RELIGIOUS PREJUDICE and its baleful consequences. This is so inculcated even in infancy, that it is scarcely to be eradicated by any future conviction or experience, however eviden its mischief and absurdity.

[Hay offers examples and analogues explaining the inculcation of prejudice against other religions - chiefly Catholicism - in the young, and speaks of British riots against Catholics in 1780 and 1783.]