person, not authorized by law to keep and carry arms, was to be allowed to have the smallest quantity of gunpowder in his possession. These were the principal provisions of the act, to enforce which, heavy penalties were annexed to the violation of them, and many subordinate regulations were introduced. The act was to be in force for seven years. It was certainly a most severe measure of preventive police-more at variance with the principles of liberty, perhaps, than even the Insurrection act, and, from innumerable difficulties that must occur in the way of the effectual application of it, not likely to contribute much towards the extirpation of the peculiar evils which afflicted Ireland. It passed, however, through both Houses without ob

servation.

The Irish government availed itself with vigour, yet with moderation, of the additional powers with which the legislature had armed it; and proclamations were from time to time issued, placing under the cover of the Insurrection act, the districts, in which violent outrages were apprehended or had been perpetrated. The local authorities and the military continued to exert themselves with vigour; and the effect was, that the insurgents no longer dared to assemble in such large bodies as in the month of January, nor did they venture to oppose so daring and systematic a resistance to the police and the troops. Still the country remained in a very insecure state; and the evil, if it no longer raged in any one spot with the violence which it had exhibited in the county of Cork, seemed even to be extending its sphere of operation. Outrages were com

mitted in Waterford, Wexford, and Carlow, which would have excited general notice, and spread general alarm in any well-regulated country, but which seemed, and indeed with good reason, to be mere trifles, when compared with the nightly conflagrations, robberies, and assassinations, of which Limerick,* Cork, and Tipperary still continued to be the scene. The county of Donegal in the North was in a state not much better. The cause assigned for the bad spirit existing there was the prevalence of the practice of illicit distillation, of which no fewer than seventy-three persons were convicted at the Spring assizes for that county.

Our limits do not permit us to enter into details of the outrages. We have already gone into them minutely But

enough to show their nature. we give the following extract from a Limerick newspaper, as a specimen of the intelligence, with which (and with nothing else) the Irish Journals were filled day after day. After mentioning various outrages which had been committed in the month of February, the Limerick News subjoins a few straggling facts. "On the night of the 8th, two sheep were killed, and 36 carried off from the lands of Castletown Conyers -a species of military contribution. On the 6th, 150 men in arms, cut down and drew away on cars, impressed from the farmers for that purpose, 350 young forest-trees from Balyquile. On the 20th, the house of Mr. Standish was attacked; on the 19th, a tenant of lord Clare was fired at while ploughing, and his horse shot. On the 20th, Patrick Harrold, with a sum of money in his pocket, was waylaid by men with blackened faces put down on his knees to be shot, and saved by the accidental approach of a horseman. It were endless to enumerate all that we read. Near Clonmell, two notices are posted up. 23rd, Dennis Browne was shot through the heart in defending the house of his master, Mr. Cox, at Ballynoe.”

On the

Though the perpetration of crime was not suppressed, many of the guilty had been seized; and a special commission put the laws speedily in force against the unfortunate wretches. At Limerick and Cork, more especially, the calendar of crime was enormous. At the latter place, it presented on the day of opening the commission (the 16th of February) 366 offenders. Thirtyfive of these received sentence of death; and some of them were ordered for immediate, others for speedy execution. With respect to the remainder, baron Mac Clelland, the officiating judge, intimated, that the infliction of the vengeance of the law would, in the mean time be suspended, and that their ultimate fate would depend on the future conduct of the peasantry. If the district were restored to tranquillity, and the surrender of arms in it became general, mercy would be extended to them; but if no sure signs of returning peace appeared, their doom was inevitable.

The assizes followed at a short interval, when similar scenes were again repeated. Many were convicted, and not a few were acquitted. It is a melancholy observation, which we are obliged to add, that the witnesses for the prosecutions exhibited in some instances a most dangerous promptitude to swear so as to convict, which leaves on the mind of the reader of the proceedings no very favourable opinion of their credibility, and excites in him the painful (though perhaps mistaken) apprehension, that the innocent may have often suffered with the guilty. At Cork, a shop-keeper of the name of Heffernan, received sentence of death, having

been convicted of selling gunpowder to the insurgents.

After the application of all these various and sharp remedies, we are still obliged to return to the same chorus:-the burthen of our narrative still is that the evil was not cured that it was even in a slight degree only that it was allayed. The advancing season of the year naturally threw a great and insurmountable obstacle in the way of the excesses of the disorderly: for their operations were not such as could be completed in a very short time: they had to assemble from a distance; they had generally to proceed in company over a considerable space: they had to perpetrate their enormities; and they had then to disperse and seek concealment. All this was to be done; and it could be done safely, only under the cover of night. As winter, therefore, departed, and the days lengthened, and the nights shortened with the coming on of Spring, the opportunity of committing outrages was diminished; and it was consequently to be expected, that a greater degree of tranquillity would prevail. This expectation was not disappointed yet the excesses, that continued to be perpetrated, were both numerous and atrocious. Throughout March, and during the earlier part of April, scarcely a newspaper appeared, which did not record some attacks upon houses, some wilful conflagrations, or some unprovoked assassinations.* The com

We give, as a specimen, the following account from Kilkenny of the 11th of April: Kilkenny, let it be remembered, was not one of the principal

centres or scenes of disturbances:

"Kilkenny, April 11.-The barony of Knocktopher continues in a state of

parative improvement was most observable in those districts, where the evil had shortly before reached the greatest height; chiefly, because a large military and civil force was there kept in constant action, in whose presence the open acts of rebellion, and the operations approaching almost to those of regular warfare, which had

disturbance. On Sunday night detachments of the 78th Highlanders, in garrison here, scoured the country

in that direction to a considerable extent, but without coming in contact with the marauders, although a numerous armed body of these ruffians visited the house of Michael Deacon, in that barony, on the same night, and for the fourth time, in search of arms. The fellows placed Mr. Deacon on his knees, and threatened with dreadful imprecations to put him to death; but they ultimately retired without carrying their menaces into execution.

After the fellows taken by the rev. Mr. Rochford, were brought to the Bridewell of Newcastle, one of them said, in the most careless manner, I know I'll be hanged; but I don't care about it, as I shall die in a good cause, for the benefit of my country. When they were made prisoners, one of them threw a powder-horn, full of gunpowder, into the fire-place, with the intent of blowing up the house and all who were in it. The powder-horn remained there for some time, until Mr. Furling observing it lying in the ashes, coolly walked to the spot, and took it up with his hand.

"On Thursday a farmer, in the neighbourhood of Nine Mile House, county of Tipperary, was shot for having disregarded the notices which had been served upon him by order of general Rock. On Friday, the rev. John Croker of Croom Glebe, a magistrate of the county of Limerick, was also nearly assassinated by two ruffians, who snapped their blunderbusses at him while he was travelling with his servant. Both the pieces providentially missed fire. The villains were shortly afterwards pursued, but effected their escape."

taken place in the beginning of the year, could not be attempted. The southern and western districts of Munster had been brought into apparently better order; and Connaught seemed to be tolerably tranquil. But in the conterminous districts of Munster and Leinster, especially in Tipperary and Kilkenny, the spirit of disorder was little, if at all abated, and displayed itself in an unbroken series of atrocities.

of those, who were best acquainted According to the representations with the south of Ireland, the insurgents consisted of various descriptions of men, who, though acting in concert at the moment, were influenced by very different motives. They may be divided into three classes, according as they were chiefly actuated by pecuniary distress-by political disaffection— or by superstition. Of the first class there were many, who, by the depression of farming produce, had been reduced from the rank of substantial yeomen to complete indigence. By the custom of letting lands in perpetuity, or for very long periods of years, many farmers had been induced to expend their whole property upon buildings and improvements; calculating upon a permanent interest in farms, for which, however, they now paid full rackThese men rents, or even more. fell in readily with any project likely to embroil the country; and, by the share of education they possessed, unaccompanied by correct religious sentiments, became at once the ablest and the least restrained promoters of mischief. The second class consisted of the survivors of those, who had been engaged in the rebellion of 1798, and of their disciples. These

patrons of Jacobinical principles were not numerous. Still, however, a few of them remained, who were to be found chiefly in towns, and thence carried on a correspondence with the adjacent peasantry. Some of this description were said to have quitted Cork in the beginning of the year, in order to join the insurgents on the mountains, fifteen or twenty miles to the westward of that city. The third class comprehended the formidable mass of ignorance and bigotry, which is diffused throughout the whole south of Ireland. It consisted of persons, who, plunged in ignorance, and under the influence of a few fanatical leaders, incited, like themselves, by artful predictions of the approaching overthrow of the Protestant church and constitution, hoped for, and were eager to contribute to, the speedy arrival of that event. Publications had been long circulated, and one such in the year 1817, foretelling the extirpation of Protestants in 1818: nor were these infatuated devotees to popery undeceived by the notorious falsification of the prophecies employed for their delusion; on the contrary, they were still quite confident, that the Protestant name was on the eve of final extinction. The prelates and upper clergy of the Romish church, indeed, held these things in utter contempt; and were sufficiently acute to see, that their best security lay in a steady adherence to the government, and in the maintenance of strict subordination. But what could they do? Superstition, pretended miracles, and legendary impostures, were interwoven with the very essence of their ecclesiastical system; and some of the lower clergy countenanced delu

sions and abuses to a much greater extent than their public ritual rendered necessary. Against these men the prelates dared not lift their voices, well knowing that an infallible church cannot disown that upon which it has once set the stamp of orthodoxy; and that the least attempt to displace one stone in the edifice, would inevitably tend to its total destruction.

Many

It was a mistake to suppose, that the pressure of tithes and taxes was the sole or principal inciting cause to the unhappy tumults and atrocities that disgraced Ireland. These might doubtless have some influence in swelling the numbers of the first-mentioned class of the disturbers of the peace, by adding to the difficulties of men who were in pecuniary embarrassments. But, even in this respect, their operation was over-rated. species of agricultural produce were exempt from ecclesiastical claims: for instance, no agistment tithe was paid; neither was any tithe paid of calves, lambs, pigs, or live stock; and even the tithable articles-corn, hay, and potatoes were not rated at any thing like their full value. With regard to taxes, the Irish husbandman paid none to the state directly: even the more opulent class of farmers were exempt from direct taxation, for, having seldom more than six windows, they did not become liable to the window duty. Nor, indeed, unless they used tobacco or fermented liquors, did they even pay any indirect taxthe small one on leather excepted.

At the same time, the clamour about taxes was not groundless; for, owing to the absence of the great landed proprietors, the important offices of grand juror and

justice of the peace were often filled by inferior persons, by whom jobbing was practised to a shameful extent, and local charges laid on without mercy. When the constable of a barony came to levy these rates, the poor cotter-tenant, remembering neither the mode of their assessment, nor the uses to which they were to be applied (some of which were frequently most unjustifiable), considered himself oppressed by taxes; and, feeling that the levy was made by legal authority, drew no kind of distinction between this proceeding, and the proper act of the government. The pressure of these local assessments was rendered still more grievous, by the circumstance, that there are no modern surveys of baronies or town lands; so that it often happened, that a farm of 300 acres had to pay as much county and barony rate, as a neighbouring one of 1,200 acres; both in an equal state of culture, and equally contiguous to the market.

Many persons, who had much local acquaintance with the south

western part of Ireland, entertained an opinion, and seemingly not without reason, that the disturb ances were fermented, and the peasantry stirred up to insurrection, by the unprincipled men who carried on the contraband trade in tobacco, &c., upon the western coast; and by the proprietors of unlicensed distilleries in some remote parts of the county of Cork, who, it was thought, had furnished the peasantry with arms and ammunition, in order that, the army being kept occupied in the interior, they might prosecute their nefarious trade with less interruption. Smuggling had been carried on with an effrontery unmatched at any former period; its agents were men, who shrunk not back from perjury and murder; and they had numberless opportunities of bringing in from Holland and France supplies of military stores, which they could easily land in Bantry-bay, and the other deep bays of the western coast, where the country was thinly inhabited.