From the New Ross Standard, 4 August 1905, this account of the remarkable barrister and United Irishman William Sampson, whose name appears on the Memorial of the 1798 Rebellion in the Four Courts, Dublin, Ireland.

A barrister of large practice on the North-East Circuit, Sampson was exiled as a result of the Rebellion. After subsequent adventures around Europe, he went on to win renown as a lawyer in the United States of America, where he is still fondly remembered today.

“‘Of all the legal wits of whom there is any account,’ says Irving Browne, ‘William Sampson was the brightest, and among all the wits of earth there can never have been his superior… Fame has not been so kind to him as his contemporary and fellow-countryman, Emmet, and his later fellow-countrymen… Yet in general culture and legal learning he could have held his own with any of them.’

William Sampson was born in Londonderry, January 17, 1764; his father was a clergyman of that city, and was descended from one of those settlers to whom Elizabeth granted Irish lands, with little regard to the titles of the rightful possessors. During his childhood he was distinguished for his superiority in manly exercises. At the age of eighteen we find that he held a commission in a corps of volunteers, and probably about the same time entered the Dublin University.

Soon after [Sampson] being called to the bar, the ‘Northern Star’ was established in Belfast, to expose the crimes and follies of the Government. Sampson was one of its most active contributors; several of his political squibs were considered so valuable that they were collected and circulated as pamphlets. Amongst these, the one which excited the most attention was a mock review of a pretended epic poem, called the ‘Lion of Old England,’  the main object of [which] was to show that the power of England was not so sure a support to a misgoverning oligarchy as the rulers believed, and to encourage the friends of reform by showing that Europe had vainly boasted against the cause of freedom in France.

In [Sampson’s] ‘Life of Curran,’ he gives us the following account of his taking the oath of a United Irishman: —

‘I was generally engaged for those on the north-east circuit, charged with treason, sedition, and union. I had a full opportunity of knowing their sentiments when nothing was or could be concealed from me. I was here also a disinterested witness, for I was connected with the accused at that time by no tie but the sympathies of humanity, and certainly not by interest, since all my hopes of advancement lay the other way… It shocked me to see hundreds of my countrymen, among whom were many possessing all the purity and all the virtue that could adorn their species, branded as traitors, and living at the mercy of the veriest and vilest traitor.

Manhood could nor ought not to endure it, and, seeing the crisis at hand when there could be no more neutrality, I took, in open court, the oath of the United Irishmen, repeating it from the very document on which my client then stood for his trial – for his life or death. I learned afterwards that Thomas Addis Emmet had in an opposite extremity of the kingdom, without any concert between us, done the same thing from a like impulse, and having done so, defied the jury to indict him. I did not do this in a spirit of bravado or romance, but because I hated dissimulation, and felt a consciousness that I was doing what became me, and I have never repented of it.’

On January 2, 1797, at a meeting in Belfast, with Sampson in the chair, the following resolutions were passed: –

‘1st, That the imperfect state of the representation in the House of Commons is the primary cause of the discontent at present existing in the country.

2nd, That the public mind would be restored to tranquillity, and every impending danger effectually averted by such a reform in Parliament as would secure to population and property their due weight in the scale of government, without distinction on account of religious opinion.

3rd, That a determination, firmly manifested on the part of government, to comply with the just desires of the people, would have the happiest effect of conciliating the affections of the people, whose object is reform alone, and thereby constitute the only rampart of defense that can bid complete defiance to the efforts of foreign and domestic enemies.’

Lord Clare, in speaking of these resolutions,

 ‘begged to call to their Lordships’ attention the daring insolence of some of those persons in the town of Belfast, where a meeting was lately held, at which resolutions of so treasonable a nature were entered into as to make us amazed at the mildness of the Government in not punishing the authors.’

Clare’s amazement at the mildness of the Government was a hint not lost on the military commanders and magistrates of Ulster. They began to exhibit renewed examples of vigour beyond the law… Sampson’s house was searched… but the patriot effected his escape by hiding in a hayloft, and the Northern Star styled him ‘Punch in the Hayloft.’  For these and other exposures of similar outrages, a party of soldiers was sent to [the Star’s] office; the soldiers, acting under the orders of the officers, broke the press, destroyed the type, and expelled the printers at the point of the bayonet.

In vain did the proprietors seek any compensation for this illegal and atrocious outrage. Clare, at that time the Lord Chancellor of Ireland and therefore the head of the administration of justice, vindicated this open violation of peace and justice in the House of Lords. The Irish Parliament was so pleased with the proceeding that they consecrated the precedent into a statute. An Act was passed in 1798, empowering grand juries to prosecute newspapers for sedition, and authorizing the magistrates in such cases to seize and destroy the printing materials.

‘Never in the annals of civilized humanity,’ says Dr Madden, ‘were such atrocious outrages committed as those perpetrated by the undisciplined and licentious soldiery, let loose at free quarters upon the unhappy people of Ireland. These outrages were as shamelessly denied in England as they were ruthlessly perpetrated in Ireland…  There is scarcely a Protestant in Munster above the age of forty who has not heard those very atrocities made the subject of brutal boast by some of those who were engaged in their perpetration.

They triumphantly told how the life of man and the honour of women were at the mercy of everyone who wore a red coat, and they related countless anecdotes to prove that the quality of mercy was in either case but rarely exercised. Half-hanging, the tortures of the lash, the picquet and the knotted cord, firing gunpowder mixed with the roots of the hair, placing pitch caps on the heads of victims and setting them in flames were openly practiced, were….themes of pride and boast within human memory, and are still fondly referred to by certain public writers as the days of justice and strong government.’

Sampson’s name was included in the list of those marked for arrest on the memorable 12th of March 1798. He was not at home when the soldiers came; his house was searched, and nothing that could justify suspicion found; but an officer of the Cavan militia reported that the commission of a French general had been found in his house. Sampson concluded that this lie was devised for the purpose of pointing him out as a victim for assassination; he escaped to England, but was arrested at Whitehaven, and sent to Carlisle, brought to Dublin, and then sent to Bridewell.

It was soon known that many of those who had been arrested would be acquitted for want of legal evidence… Negotiations were commenced with the State prisoners, to which Sampson was a party, his object being to stop the effusion of blood by a signal act of self-devotion. There was no evidence whatever against him, nor the possibility of bringing him to trial when he made this sacrifice. Self-banishment was the price which these captives had to pay for their security…[and] Sampson obtained permission to go to Portugal.

On November 24, 1798, he sailed from Dublin, but having been shipwrecked did not reach Oporto until March 3, 1799. Nine days later he was arrested by the Portuguese authorities ‘by order,’ as they asserted, ‘of the English minister in consequence of something which Sampson was supposed to be writing.’  For a while he was kept in prison in Lisbon and Oporto [before being] conveyed on board a vessel bound for Bordeaux and kept in ignorance of his destination until he had performed the greater part of his voyage…  Fearing that he might be detained as a prisoner of war…he returned to England, addressed a memorial to [Prime Minister] Fox, and was permitted to go to America.

On July 4, 1806, [Sampson] landed at New York. Being aided by several of his fellow-countrymen, who had risen to prominence, he was admitted to the bar, where he rose to considerable eminence… In 1825 he removed to Georgetown, D.C. More than one hundred of the most prominent lawyers and judges of New York united in a letter of regret at his removal, with a strong expression of respect for his ‘attainments, talents, and virtues.’

In 1831 Sampson was invited to Philadelphia to defend some of his countrymen charged with a riot, which had been provoked by some Orangemen…   A public dinner was given to Sampson by the Irish residing in Philadelphia; and he delivered a speech in which he said: –

‘I might perhaps have risen to higher fortunes, and had I stooped as low as others did, I might have worn a coronet, and left, in dying, to my posterity, a high sounding title to hereditary infamy… but the reward I have in the esteem and approbation of my country and honoured countrymen, and that of my country’s friends, and the transmission of an honest name, is dearer far to me than baubles, that are now fallen full cheap in all discerning eyes – that even when earned by merit serve but to counteract the great scheme of natural equality and right, and which, by lifting the few, degrade the many, and which, when earned by… treachery, are but objects of loathing, contempt and scorn; and so should remain, and so descend from generation to generation.

 All is not lost – the time is at hand when true and faithful history will emblazon the achievements by which these guilty honours have been won. Unhappily, the history of Ireland has seldom been written with the pen of truth. It has been traced by her enemies; or which is little better, by indiscreet or else by half-faced friends… When the darkness in which the history of our time is shrouded shall be cleared away, how will it then show? How? Like the disordered scene of a long night’s debauch when day looks upon it. So great has been the influence of habitual debasement, and the long reign of terror, that scarcely one has ventured to look the latter events of Ireland in the face, or to yield to those who nobly dared, or nobly died, their meed of praise and honour.’

In the autumn of 1835, [Sampson’s] health began to fail and he died December 28, 1836. A tomb of white marble has been erected over his remains, testifying that he was a United Irishman, who defended the cause of Civil and Religious Liberty.”

Sampson is best remembered in the United States for his 1823 Anniversary Discourse before the New-York Historical Society in which he criticised the influence of English common law in the United States. Dismissing the common law tradition as an archaic “barbarous jargon” that fostered judicial overreach, he argued that American law must be independent and codified, so that citizens could view the law as a transparent, democratic creation rather than a mysterious judicial construct.

Sampson’s daughter Catherine subsequently married William Tone, son of fellow 1798 patriot and barrister Wolfe Tone. A line of descent from these two great Irish lawyers, through William and Catherine’s daughter Grace Georgiana Maxwell, continues in the United States today.

Irving Browne’s famous article on Sampson, detailing his United States career, may be read in full here.

Sampson wrote over forty books during his life – read his memoirs of his time in Ireland here.

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