In 1791 in Ireland, Dr. William Drennan, Theobald Wolfe Tone, Archibald Hamilton Rowan and Thomas Addis Emmet formed the Society of United Irishmen to further reforms begun by the Volunteer Movement. The movement began in Belfast, and soon took hold in Dublin. The United Irishmen considered government and its institutions the cause of human suffering, rather than human nature itself. They believed that Britain had played the Anglicans off against the dissenting Presbyterians and Roman Catholics to gain control of Ireland, and that religious unity was essential to overthrow Britain’s dominance.[1] At first, the organization sought to work within the system, but as time wore on it favored the more drastic measure of forming a republic. They added Catholic emancipation to their agenda for parliamentary reform.
Mathew Carey paid close attention to these developments. In November 1791, his brothers William Paulet and James began publishing a newspaper called the Rights of Irishmen or the National Evening Star that ran articles on the Society’s behalf. James left the paper the following March. William carried on alone. Like Mathew, William was a capable editor. His paper was successful, and was monitored closely by officials in Dublin Castle, who were well aware that he was Mathew’s brother. William printed Drennan’s “Address to the Volunteers” in 1792. The Irish government charged William Paulet Carey with seditious libel. Early in 1793, he went into hiding. He sold the Evening Star to Randal McAllister, a printer, publisher and member of the United Irishmen.
Unlike Mathew, who was young, and without a family at the time of his emigration from Ireland, William Paulet Carey had a wife and a family, and could not flee the country easily.
He appealed to the United Irishmen for money. They refused. In November, 1793, certain members in the organization who were working against him, accused him of sending letters to the Morning Post under a pseudonym. He was expelled from the organization. A British agent working undercover in the Society convinced William to testify against Drennan with a generous offer of compensation. The government then dropped the charges against Carey but failed to secure Drennan’s conviction. The agent’s offer of money proved to be too little too late. The government imprisoned the Evening Star’s new owner, Randal McAllister, who went bankrupt.[2]
William’s activities with the United Irishmen, coupled with Mathew’s activities organizing the Hibernian Society, where he encountered Irish radicals immigrating to Philadelphia, would provide difficulties for Carey in the years ahead.
William Paulet Carey as a young man. William Paulet Carey was charged with seditious libel after publishing an article by William Drennan (1754-1820), one of the founders of the United Irishman and an Irish radical. The United Irishmen refused to help William Paulet Carey escape from Ireland. Government agents persuaded him to testify against Drennan to avoid going to trial.
TRANSITION TO PUBLISHER | Carey and the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793
[1] David A. Wilson, United Irishmen, United States, Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) 12.
[2]Edward C Carter II, The Political Activities of Mathew Carey Nationalist, 1760-1814 Bryn Mawr College Ph.D. Dissertation, 1962, 192-3, 214-15; M. Pollard, Dictionary of Members of the Dublin Book Trade 1550-1800 (London: Bibliographical Society, 2000) 88, 376.