gangs of nocturnal marauders, as is always the case after the commotion of civil warfare. These appear to have consisted at first of the lower classes of loyalists, some of whom might think, or pretend to think, that they were only making reprisals from those who had plundered them or their friends in the rebellion. But a system of unlawful violence, if not speedily coerced, will be carried to excesses which admit neither excuse nor palliation. Should we suppose that none except persons guilty of rebellion and pillage were subjects of plunder, still the loyalist landlords of these ruined people must be sufferers.* But by whatever pretences they might endeavour to impose on their own consciences, lucre was their object, without regard to the guilt or innocence of the persons who were the subjects of their depredation. With these erroneously-termed loyalist robbers, in a little time some croppies were admitted to associate (and the latter sometimes formed separate parties); but the Romanists alone were the subjects of pillage, because these, being disarmed at the quelling of the insurrection, were incapable of defending their houses; while to attack Protestants, who were furnished with arms, appeared too dangerous to these adventurers. The wretched sufferers were not only destitute of the means of resistance, but even of the consolation of complaint; for they were threatened with death and the burning of their houses if they should give information of the robbery. Many houses, in fact, were fired in the course of this melancholy winter, the inhabitants hardly escaping from the flames, and the cattle sometimes consumed alive in the conflagration. How some survived the hardships of the dreary season, who were deprived of their provisions, beds, bed-clothes, and nearly of their wearing apparel, in the midst of deep snow and severe frost, seems not easily accountable. The magnitude of the evil, which tended to desolate the country, and which is suspected to have been most unwisely encouraged by the connivance of some yeoman officers, roused at last the attention of public-spirited gentlemen, by whose exertions these violences were restrained, but not suppressed. One species of mischief was the burning of Romish chapels in the night, of which hardly one escaped in the extent of several miles around Gorey. This, though it evinced a puerile spirit of religious antipathy, little honourable to any description of people, was of a nature far less cruel. I have heard Roman Catholic gentlemen say, that the burning of one poor cabin must cause more actual misery than that of hundreds of chapels."†

Much blame has been ascribed to the Irish executive for the continued severities exercised upon the leaders of the insurrection, after continued defeats had led to the dispersion of their deluded followers. No doubt that, in some cases, mercy might have been judiciously

* "But the destruction of property was not the only species of damage resulting to the community from this ill-fated combination. To this may be added the loss of lives, the neglect of industry by an idle turn acquired by the minds of men from warfare, or the preparations for it, the obstruction of commerce, the interruption of credit in pecuniary transactions, and the depravation of morals in those places which were the seats of civil violence."

+ Gordon's History.

extended - while in others, a stern necessity existed for severe example.* As crime is said to generally carry with it punishment, there were few of the rebel chieftains who had not bitter cause to lament their elevation to the dangerous distinction they enjoyed-and their revelations in exile or on the scaffold proved painfully, that a mob command is probably the greatest curse that could descend upon an ill-starred individual.

Before we close this narrative of the southern insurrection, we will give a brief summary of the military and moral character of that portion of the rebel bodies by whom the brunt of the contest was maintained.t

"That among the insurgents, those who were the most scrupulously observant of the ceremonial of religion were most addicted to cruelty and murder, has been remarked by men who had the best opportunity of observation-and heroes of the shilelah, the bullies of the country, who consequently were expected to be the most forward in the rebellion, were, on the contrary, when the insurrection took place, shy of firearms, and backward in battle, whilst the men who had been quiet and industrious were found the resolute in combat and steady under arms.

"Those who were boldest in fight occasionally displayed some ingenuity in their tumultuary warfare, in which they had neither regularity, subordination, nor leaders. They converted books into saddleswhen the latter could not be procured-placing the book, opened in the middle, on the horse's back, with ropes over it for stirrups. Large volumes, found in the libraries of the Bishop of Fernes, Mr. Stephen Ram, and Colonel Le Hunte, were thus destroyed. Being short of ammunition, they frequently used small round stones, or hardened balls of clay, instead of leaden bullets; and, by the mixing and pounding of the materials in small mortars, fabricated a species of gunpowder, which was said to explode with sufficient force while fresh, but not to remain many days fit for service. They found means to manage in an awkward manner the cannon taken from the army, applying wisps of straw in place of matches. In their engagements with the military, they availed themselves of hedges, and other shelter, to screen them

*Those who instigate rebellions are the great criminals, not the poor wretches who are driven by circumstances they cannot control into acts of violence. They are merely the instruments-and it would be nearly as wise to destroy the musket with which a man was shot, instead of the man who pulled the trigger, as to put an unfortunate creature to death who appears as a rebel to avoid death, or who is by infernal agency persuaded that the government, or those in power, wish or contemplate his destruction."-Memoirs of Holt.

† In taking Mr. Gordon as a safe authority in describing the moral and military character of the Wexford insurrection, I think I may rely on obtaining an honest estimate of both. I am aware that he was accused of partial feelings towards the disaffected at the time, and the truth of some statements he made respecting royalist severities was impugned. He was himself a resident in the county, and therefore might be expected to be more accurately informed on local occurrences, than men who were strangers, and, consequently, dependent on hearsay evidence-and as he was a Protestant clergyman, it is not likely that he should have had any unfair leaning in favour of men from whom he dissented in religion.

from the shot of their opponents; and when a man could not see the position of his associates, who might fly before he could perceive it, and leave him in the hands of those who never gave quarter, they would not trust one another-a circumstance favourable to the loyal party, since to withstand a well-conducted nocturnal pike-assault would be much more difficult than one in day."*

Nor was the difficulty of restraint confined to men who, in rank and religion, differed from the unruly masses over whom they had assumed command. The popularity of the peasant chief was just as unsteady as that of the Protestant aristocrat, and Harvey and Holt experienced the ingratitude of a barbarous mob, on whose conduct they could place no dependence, and in whose personal attachment not a moment's reliance could be reposed. The hopeless task of directing the movements of a band of insubordinary savagest will be found in many passages of Holt's eventful history-and even he, a man wearied of the world, and almost rendered dead to human sympathies, found that a convict's life was preferable to the leadership of the banditti he commanded. Thus he speaks :

"I then determined to give up the enterprise I had undertaken, and extricate myself as soon as possible from a connection with the scoundrel party I commanded. I found it impossible to keep them from crime, their whole mind now bent on robbery; and they were tired of a chief who restrained that propensity."

Gordon.

"In a few minutes after, I heard the signal from our picquets that the enemy were advancing, but on calling to arms I had not more than two hundred men in a fit state to fight; there were upwards of five hundred lying on the ground in beastly intoxication, which produced such a panic in the rest, that they began to fly in all directions. I did what I could to rally them, and thus effected a retreat, leaving the drunkards to their fate, who were bayoneted on the ground."—Holt's Memoir.

CHAPTER XIX.

POLITICAL RETROSPECT OF ULSTER, FROM 1784 гo 1798.

THE Wexford insurrection had justly alarmed the government-but its sudden outbreak, partial success, and total suppression, passed like the dramatic action of a play; and a short month ended the painful history. To account for its violence while it lasted were easy. The fiery character of the southern peasantry-the facility with which their worst passions are evoked-abuse of power, placed for a brief season in unworthy hands, followed by the reaction that violence has always excited the besotted ignorance of the multitude-and the evil example of those, who, from their callings, should have tranquillized their flocks and nipped rebellion in the bud-excesses of the soldiery on the one hand, and ruthless outrages on the other, produced those sanguinary reprisals at the commencement of the contest, which became still more ferocious at its close. To the cabin, fired by the mercenary Hessian, might, possibly, be traced the infernal tragedy of Scullabogue; and men, innocent of treason, and lacerated through mere wantonness or bare suspicion, called down a fearful retaliation in the cruelties committed in the rebel camps, and perpetrated on the bridge of Wexford.

The Wexford explosion was but the forerunner of one infinitely more formidable. The disaffection, too general in the North, had been gradual and progressive-not the hasty ebullition of turbulent excitement, but the slow and determined antipathy with which republican feeling regarded monarchical institutions. From northern intelligence much more danger was to be apprehended than from the wild and evanescent outbursts of southern ferocity. The Wexford outbreak, like the bursting of a thunder-cloud, was fierce but transitory. The northern conspiracy had all the character of the gathering storm; and the matériel of its violence was the more to be dreaded, from the length of time it had been in steadily collecting.

For many years the political state of the North had been in constant agitation-White-boys and Right-boys-Hearts of Oak and Hearts of Steel-Defenders, Orangemen, and United Irishmen, all followed in rapid succession-and the statutory enactments of these troublous times give a silent but striking evidence of the fevered state in which the kingdom remained for five-and-twenty years before the outbreak of '98.

So early as the third of the reigning monarch (George III.), an Act was found necessary to indemnify loyal subjects in the suppression of riots, and the apprehension of all concerned. In the fifth of the same king, "An Act to prevent the future tumultuous risings of persons within the kingdom" passed. "The Chalking Act," to prevent

malicious cutting and wounding, followed-but its provisions, stringent as they might appear, were found inefficient. As the barbarous excesses committed by the White-boys continued to increase, the 15th & 16th of Geo. III. were enacted against them. It recites, that the Act previously passed had been insufficient for suppressing them; and it states, "That they assembled riotously, injured persons and property, compelled persons to quit their abodes, imposed oaths and declarations by menaces, sent threatening and incendiary letters, obstructed the export of corn, and destroyed the same." This is an exact description of the proceedings of the Defenders subsequently. As their turbulence and ferocity continued to increase, and as they made a constant practice of houghing soldiers in a wanton and unprovoked manner, the Chalking Act was still farther extended, and amended by the 17th and 18th of Geo. III. c. 49.

One of the advantages conferred by the Volunteer Association was the suppression of White-boyism, but it was only for a time-for as the esprit of that celebrated body subsided, Defenderism increased. The system was brutal in the extreme,* and it produced, in due season, a sanguinary and dangerous reaction.

The Right-boys succeeded the White ones-and they directed their earlier hostility against the church rather than the state. In Ireland, tithes have been ever an obnoxious impost-and in whatever they might otherwise have disagreed, Protestant and Catholic were found generally united on one point, and unfriendly to their exaction. Many of the Irish clergy were neither conciliatory in their manners, nor moderate in their demands. The Catholic was averse to lend direct support to a church which he repudiated as heretical - the Dissenter rejected the impost on conscience-sake-the Episcopalian, as often found reason for complaint, and frequently he fostered privately an opposition to a system, in some cases most arbitrary, and in all, open to exaction and abuse. Many of the Protestant gentlemen, hoping to exonerate their estates of tithes by the machinations and enormities of the Right-boys, secretly encouraged them-and others connived at their excesses till they began to oppose the payment of rents and the recovery of money by legal process-and then their former friends came forward in support of the law.†

In the South, this system of agrarian warfare soon spread beyond its original object; and although, supported by an Act Parliament (passed 1787), the tithe proprietors, lay and clerical, were forced to bend to the storm. The Protestant clergy in the county of Cork were so much intimidated by the menaces and insults which they received,

* "In December, 1784, a body of White-boys broke into the house of John Mason, a Protestant, in the county of Kilkenny, in the night, placed him naked on horseback, and having carried him in this manner five or six miles from his house, they cut off his ears, and in that state buried him up to his chin: they also robbed him of his firearms.

"This year they were so outrageous in the province of Leinster, particularly in the county of Kilkenny, that a denunciation was read against them in all the Popish chapels in the diocese of Ossory, on the 17th of November, 1784."—Musgrave. + Musgrave.