Carey, William Paulet (1759–1839), journalist, art critic, engraver, and United Irishman, was born in Dublin, third of five sons of Christopher Carey of Redmond's Hill, a catholic baker who had prospered supplying the Royal Navy during the American war. Stung by the disabilities suffered by catholics, he claimed that to educate himself he had to ‘drink by stealth from the fountain of learning’ (Durey, 91). After training in art at the Dublin Society's drawing school (where he won two prizes), he did some work as a portrait painter and engraver, but mostly earned his living as a jobbing printer and journalist. He and his brothers strongly supported the Volunteer movement, and two of them, Mathew (qv) and Thomas, were prosecuted for editing the anti-government Volunteer Journal. Carey himself wrote several articles for the paper and for the Dublin Evening Packet (1782–4), and supported the radical Volunteer demands of 1783–5 for catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform. In 1787 he designed and engraved a series of prints, with the theme of religious brotherhood, which were very popular. He did the copperplates for Gambado's Annals of horsemanship and many of his plates appeared in the Sentimental and Masonic Magazine (Dublin, 1792–5) and other contemporary periodicals. In 1789 he edited a paper, the Miscellanist; he also wrote for his brother Mathew's American Museum, contributed verse to Walker's Hibernian Magazine, and wrote several pamphlets under the name ‘Scriblerius Murtough O'Pindar’ satirising the Buckingham (qv) administration.
In August 1791 he published the prospectus of a newspaper, the Rights of Irishmen or National Evening Star, stressing the need for religious unity among reformers. The paper began publishing on 10 November 1791 and advocated catholic emancipation as the first step to wider political reform. Carey wrote much of the paper himself, including several anti-government letters under the name ‘Junius Hibernicus’. Critical of the conservative aristocratic leadership of the Catholic Committee, he strongly supported the radical Catholic Society of Dublin (formed in October 1791). Sympathetic to the poor, his paper welcomed parliament's rejection of the anti-combinations bill of March 1792, arguing that the rich frequently engaged in combinations of their own and that workers were entitled to defend their livelihoods. After the collapse of the United Irish National Journal in June 1792, the Dublin Society of United Irishmen subsidised Carey's paper, and it became for a time their semi-official organ. Carey, though, was initially black-balled for entry to the society in July 1792, on suspicion that he had criticised the United Irishman Theobald McKenna (qv) in his paper; he was admitted some months later. In November 1792 he was threatened with prosecution for republishing an article from the Northern Star celebrating the French victory at Valmy. He brought his case before the United Irishmen on 23 November and the society agreed to help him. On 14 December, in a direct challenge to the privy council proclamation against Volunteers assembling in arms, the society, under the chairmanship of William Drennan (qv), instructed Carey to publish an ‘Address to the Volunteers of Ireland’, written by Drennan, calling on the Volunteers to arm immediately and assert their rights. Carey was himself a member of the Dublin Independent Volunteers, modelled on the French revolutionary National Guard. With war looming, the authorities were anxious to crack down on sedition, and Carey was prosecuted. His creditors began to call in their debts and he asked for assistance from the United Irishmen; the society opened a subscription for him but it raised only eight guineas (£8.40). He sold his paper to the printer Randal McAllister (qv), but received no payment and in May 1793 it closed down. Carey contrasted his treatment with that of the society's imprisoned leaders Simon Butler (qv) and Oliver Bond (qv), for whom large sums had been raised.
On 29 March he again appealed to the United Irishmen, and was arrested leaving that meeting. He was released on bail of £200 and over the next few months proposed to the society that he would emigrate if they would reimburse his bail sureties. His case was debated at a United meeting (11 October 1793), but the society was desperately short of funds and did nothing to help him. Carey criticised the society's leaders in the press and was summoned to explain himself. After he complained of the society's inquisitorial methods, and threatened to publish his examination, he was expelled and his name erased from its membership role.
Financially ruined, Carey stated his case in the Dublin Evening Post (15 April 1794) and told the society that unless they assisted him he would have no choice but to go to the authorities. This led the informer Thomas Collins (qv) to conclude that Carey ‘may be had on very easy terms’ (McDowell, 126). In May 1794 Carey finally agreed to name Drennan as the author of the ‘Address’, if the government would drop his own prosecution. He was a reluctant informant, and informed only on the matter of Drennan's authorship, believing he had been abandoned by the United Irishmen and left to pay the penalty for its leaders' rashness. As the chief crown witness in Drennan's trial for seditious libel, Carey found his character severely attacked by the defence counsel, J. P. Curran (qv), and his testimony discredited, and Drennan was acquitted on 25 June. In September 1794 Carey wrote a 200-page pamphlet, An appeal to the people of Ireland (1794), which strongly criticised the United Irishmen's social elitism, claiming that the professional aristocracy which monopolised the society's offices had become corrupt and dictatorial.
The government supplied him with the money to set up the General Evening Post in 1795; he also received a cash payment and an annuity. The paper's sales were very poor and it finished in 1797. Early in 1797 Carey joined the yeomanry, but was expelled for protesting against their disciplinary procedures. He was listed in the Union Star as an informer who deserved the people's vengeance and, fearful for his safety, withdrew to England in June 1798. Returning to Ireland several months later he was again threatened and in 1799 he emigrated to London.
In London he worked as an engraver but turned to art criticism after an accident with his eyes. He wrote extensively, championing British and Irish artists, including the sculptor John Hogan (qv), and the poet James Montgomery (1771–1854). He became an art dealer with premises in Marylebone St., and his services as a critic and connoisseur were much in demand. The famous collector Sir John Fleming Leicester (1762–1827) enlisted Carey's help to create his gallery of British art in Hill St., Berkeley Square, and Carey published its catalogue (1819). He maintained a strong interest in Irish affairs, claiming that Irish achievements were not given sufficient credit in Britain, and that Ireland should be allowed to share in the British empire's glory. He was critical of absentee landlords and those who refused to patronise the arts in their native country, and in Patronage of Irish genius (1823) advocated that funds subscribed to commemorate George IV's visit to Ireland should be used to build a national art gallery rather than a new bridge over the Liffey. (His advice was not taken; Kingsbridge was built in 1828.) He also published a pamphlet opposing any government interference in the running of the catholic church in return for emancipation (1813), and pamphlets defending Princess Caroline (1814, 1820). He settled in Birmingham about 1834, and died there 21 May 1839.
In May 1792 he married a Miss Lennon of Grafton St., Dublin; they had seven children, one of whom, Elizabeth Sheridan Carey, published a collection of poetry, Ivy leaves (1837). Carey's brother John (1756–1829) was a classical scholar who lived mostly in London; he made some valuable translations and wrote several popular schoolbooks. Another brother, James (1762?–1801), emigrated to America and became a staunchly Jeffersonian newspaper editor in Philadelphia.