Hugh Brontë gave out his views with a warmth that betrayed _animus_ arising from personal injury. He was therefore declared to be disloyal, and that at a time when there was danger in disloyalty. About the time Hugh Brontë was enunciating these sentiments the rising of the United Irishmen took place, and the pitched battle of Ballynahinch was fought, in 1798. It has always seemed to me strange that he should have passed through those times in peace, for the "Welsh horse" devastated the country far and wide after the battle, and hundreds of innocent people were shot down like dogs. Besides, William, his second son, was a United Irishman, and present at the battle of Ballynahinch. After the battle he was pursued by cavalry, who fired at him repeatedly, but he led them into a bog and escaped.
Hugh Brontë lived in a secluded glen; but the "Welsh horse" visited his house, and after a short parley with his wife, in which neither understood the other, one of the soldiers struck a light into the thatch. Hugh suddenly appeared and spoke to the Welsh soldiers in Irish, which it was supposed they understood, as being akin to their own language, and they joined heartily with him in extinguishing the flames. They joined still more heartily with Hugh in disposing of his stock of whiskey. The inability of Hugh's neighbors to communicate with the Welsh may account for the fact that a man well known for such advanced and disloyal views passed safely through those troublous times.
Having completed his negative assertions, or paradoxes, Hugh Brontë proceeded to state his theories, or positive conclusions. He laid it down as an axiom that justice must be at the root of all good government, and he declared emphatically what O'Connell and Agent Townsend have since maintained, that the Irish were the most justice-loving people in the world. He also held that unjust laws were the fruitful source of all the turbulence and crime in Ireland.
Justice, he said, was nothing very grand. It meant simply that every man should have his own by legal right. This definition brought him to his tenant-right theory. In illustration he returned to the story of his ancestral home and the wrongs of his ancestors. He maintained that when his forefathers drained the bog and improved the land they were entitled to every ounce of improvement they had made. The landlord had done nothing for the land. He never went near it, and had never spent one farthing upon it, and he should not have been entitled to confiscate to his own profit the additional value given to it by the labor of another.