Henry Haslett (United Irishmen)

Hennry Haslett
Born	1758 Kingdom of Ireland
Died	1806 Belfast, County Antrim, United Kingdom
Resting place	Knockbreda Cemetery, Belfast
Occupation	Draper
Known for	Irish Revolutionary
Political party	United Irishmen

Henry Haslett (1758 – 1806) was a founding member of the Society of the United Irishmen, a revolutionary organisation in late 18th century Ireland.

Born in Limavady, Haslett set up business as a woollen draper in Belfast. In the 1780s, he joined the Volunteer movement. Along with other future United men, such as Thomas McCabe and William Tennant, he was a Freemason. By the 1790s he was involved in shipping, and became involved with a syndicate known as the 'New Traders'. This group espoused economic views about free trade and commerce, at odds with the system of the British Empire in the 18th century. This led them to sympathies with American Revolutionaries who shared those views, and eventually the views of democracy and republicanism. Almost all members of the New Traders would become United Irishmen.

The United Irishmen were initially founded as a group of liberal Protestant and Presbyterian men interested in promoting Parliamentary reform, and later became a revolutionary movement influenced by the ideas of Thomas Paine and his book ‘The Rights of Man’. In 1791 Theobald Wolfe Tone published the pamphlet ‘Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland’ where he set out that religious division was being used to balance “the one party by the other, plunder and laugh at the defeat of both.” He put forward the case for unity between Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter.

A group of nine Belfast Presbyterians, including Haseltt, interested in reforming Irish Parliament read Tone’s pamphlet and liked his ideas. They invited Tone and his friend Thomas Russell to Belfast where the group met on October 14, 1791. The group became known as the United Irishmen, and among their number was Haslett.

Following the French declaration of war against Britain in 1793, the Society was outlawed and went underground. At this point, more radical members like Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the Sheares brothers came to the fore, demanding an alliance with France and an immediate national insurrection against the government. In 1796, Lazare Hoche and Wolfe Tone tried and failed to land a massive French invasion army in Bantry Bay. In response, the government and the army began cracking down on dissension and the Society. In September 1796, Haslett was arrested along with Russell, Samuel Neilson and Charles Teeling.

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