The Reverend William Hazlitt

O IF the many friends of freedom in Ireland during the American Revolution, one in particular deserves to be remembered for his contribution to the cause of liberty and humanity. This friend of America was a dissenting clergyman, the Reverend William Hazlitt of Bandon. In 1780 the Reverend William Hazlitt moved from Maidstone, in Kent, to Bandon, near Cork, in Ireland. With him he took his wife and three children, John, William, and Margaret. John later became a wellknown portrait painter and William made a name for himself as an essayist and critic. To Margaret we owe much of our knowledge of the Hazlitts, for her manuscript recollections are the only source of information about many stirring events in their lives. According to Margaret's account, her father had charge of a large and respectable congregation in Bandon for three years. In her recollections, she wrote

American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Irish and British Studies