Dublin in the early 19th Century
The local events of the period which has elapsed since the Union are too numerous to particularise in a condensed narrative. The principal occurrences are the public meetings and associations for the attainment of political objects, organised insurrections, tumults resulting from those causes and embittered by the acrimony of party spirit, and visitations of famine, during which the working classes suffered great distress. Two events, however, deserve more particular notice.
In 1803, a sudden and alarming insurrection broke out in the city: it was planned and carried into effect by Robert Emmet, a young gentleman of respectable family, who, at his own sole expense and with the aid of a few associates of desperate fortune, secretly formed a depot of arms and ammunition in a retired lane off Thomas-street, whence he issued early in the night of the 23rd of July, at the head of a band chiefly brought in from the neighbouring counties of Kildare and Wicklow, and was proceeding to the castle, when the progress of his followers was checked by the coming up of Lord Kilwarden, chief justice of the king's bench, who, on hearing a rumour of insurrection at his country seat, had hurried to town in his carriage with his daughter and nephew. Both the males were killed; the lady, being allowed to pass in safety, gave the alarm at the castle, and detachments being immediately sent out, the undisciplined multitude was at once dispersed with some loss of life, and the leaders, who had escaped to the mountains, were soon after taken and executed.
On the accession of George IV., in 1820, his majesty received a deputation from Dublin, consisting of the lord mayor and city officers, on his throne: this was the first address from the city thus honoured. The next year, on the 12th of August, the king's birth-day, he landed in Ireland, and after remaining till Sept. 3rd, partly at the Phoenix Lodge, and partly at Slane Castle in Meath, during which time he visited most of the public institutions of Dublin, and held a chapter of the order of St. Patrick, at which nine knights were installed, he sailed from Dunleary (since called Kingstown) amidst the enthusiastic acclamations of an unprecedented multitude.