Lord Fitzwilliam very soon found, from the tenor of the letters he received from Pitt, that the minister was dissatisfied with some of his measures; and disquieting rumours prevailed that he would not long remain in Ireland. Relief bill were suspended, by positive orders from England; and as Mr. Grattan had acted in bringing it forward as 2 ministerial supporter he could only acquiesce, though with the gloomiest forebodings. In the meantime, Catholic petitions Again on the 2d of March, Sir Lawrence poured into the House. Mr. Grattan Parsons made a very violent speech, semoved for leave to bring in his Catholic verely reprobating the bad faith of the Relief Bill; and leave was given with only British Cabinet with regard to Lord Fitzthree dissentient voices. This was of william. "But the great object," he said, itself a very remarkable feature in Irish" of the motion he was about to make was politics; and what was even more notable to calm the public mind, to give the was the fact that no counter-petitions of people an assurance that the measures Protestants were sent in. The nation was which were proposed would not be abanin good humour; and the House voted doned; that the Parliament would keep larger supplies in men and money for the means in their hands until they were carrying on the war than had ever been accomplished; and that they would not voted in Ireland before. Now the un- be prorogued until they were fairly and pleasant rumours became more positive, fully discussed. He did not pretend to say and assumed more consistence. On the specifically what these measures were. 28th of February, Sir Lawrence Parsons, The first he believed to be the Catholic in his place in Parliament, asked the bill; and if a resistance to any one meamembers opposite if the rumours were sure more than another was likely to protrue; but received no answer. Sir Law-mote dreadful consequences it was this. rence added, "he was sorry to be obliged He said nothing as to the original proto construe the silence of the right honour-priety of the measure; but this much he able and honourable gentlemen into a con- would say, that if the Irish administrafirmation of this rumour; and he deplored tion had countenanced the Catholics in most deeply the event, which, at the present time, must tend to throw alarming doubts on the promises which had been held out to the people, of measures to be adopted for the promotion of their happiness, the conciliation of their minds, and the common attachment of every class of his majesty's faithful subjects of Ireland, in support of the same happy constitution. If those measures were now to be relinquished which gentlemen had promised with so much confidence to the country, and on the faith of which the House had been called on to vote the enormous sum of one million seven hundred thousand pounds, he must consider his country as brought to the most awful and alarming crisis she had ever known in any period of her history." He then moved an address to His Excellency, entreating him to remain in his government; Mr. Duquery seconded the motion, and used very strong language with respect to the conduct of Mr. Pitt, "who, not satisfied," he said, "with having involved the country in a disastrous war, intended to complete the mischief by risking the internal peace of Ireland, making that country the dupe of his fraud and artifice, in order to swindle the Nation out of £1,700,000 to support the war on the faith of measures which it now seemed were to be refused." And now all proceedings on the Catholic this expectation, without the concurrence of the British Cabinet, they had much to answer for. On the other hand, if the British Cabinet had held out an assent, and had afterwards retracted; if the dæmon of darkness should come from the infernal regions upon earth, and throw a fire-brand amongst the people, he could not do more to promote mischief. The hopes of the public were raised, and in one instant they were blasted. If the House did not resent that insult to the nation, and to themselves, they would in his mind be most contemptible; for although a majority of the people might submit to be mocked in so barefaced a manner, the case was not as formerly, when all the Parliament of Ireland was against the Catholics; and to back them, the force of England." Now, although the claim of the Catholics was well known and understood, not one petition controverting it had been presented from Protestants in any part of Ireland. No remonstrance appeared, no county meeting had been held. What was to be inferred from all this, but that the sentiments of the Protestants were for the emancipation of the Catholics? A meeting was held on Saturday last at the Royal Exchange of the merchants and traders of the metropolis, which was as numerously attended as the limits of that building would admit. The Governor of the Bank of Ireland was in the chair. An address was resolved on to His Excellency Lord Fitzwilliam, full of their country. And how large a part of affection, and resolutions strong as they the Irish nation lamented the loss of their could be in countenance of the Catholic truly patriotic Governor may be read in claim. He would ask them, was the Brit- the numberless addresses and resolutions ish minister to control all the interests, that poured in upon him both before and talents, and inclinations in that country? after his actual departure, expressive of He protested to God, that in all the his- their grief, despair, and indignation at tory he had read he had never met with that ominous event. They came from a parallel of such ominous infatuation as every description of persons, but from that by which he appeared to be led. Right Boys, Defenders, and the old de"Let them persevere," said he, "and you pendants upon the castle." The people of must increase your army to myriads; Ireland, of all sects and classes, seemed every man must have five or six dragoons seized with a sudden undefined horror at in his house." Sir Lawrence ended with the prospects before them. They saw a motion to limit the Money bill; but this that a great opportunity was lost. And motion was voted down by a large major- they had no mortal quarrel with one ity. Members could hardly yet believe another, save the quarrel always made for that so great a villany was intended. Mr. them, always forced upon them, by an Conolly, however, remarked, "that he English minister sitting safe in his Cabiwould vote for it if he did not hear some-net at Westminster. Many on both sides thing satisfactory "-namely about the retention of Lord Fitzwilliam. Within a few days after Lord Fitzwilliam was recalled from Ireland. No more was heard about Catholic Relief for nearly forty years. Lord Camden succeeded as viceroy, and the country was delivered strongly marked. over to its now inevitable ordeal of general gloom the shops were shut; slaughter and desolation; an ordeal no business of any kind was transacted, which, in Mr. Pitt's opinion, was needful to pave the way for the Legislative Union. Mr. Plowden has very truly described the effect of these transactions upon the nation : "The report of Earl Fitzwilliam's intended removal was no sooner credited, than an univeral despondency, in some instances bordering on desperation, seized the whole nation. Meetings were formed throughout the kingdom, in order to convey to their beloved and respected Governor, their high sense of his virtue and patriotism, and their just indignation at his and their country's enemies. The deep and settled spirit of discontent which at this time pervaded all ranks of people was not confined to the Catholics. The Dissenters and as many of the Protestants of the establishment as had not an interest in that monopoly of power and influence which Earl Fitzwilliam had so openly attacked and so fearfully alarmed, felt the irresistible effect: all good Irishmen beheld with sorrow and indignation, the reconciliation of all parties, interests, and religions defeated, the cup of national union dashed from their eager lips, and the spirit of discord let loose upon the kingdom with an enlarged commission to inflame, aggravate, and destroy. Such were the feelings, and such the language of those who deplored the removal of that nobleman, in the critical moment of giving peace, strength, and prosperity to who were destined soon to meet in deadly struggle could have prayed that this cup might pass. On the 25th of March, 1795, Lord Fitzwilliam took his departure from Ireland, when the resentment, grief, and indignation of the public were most It was a day of and the whole city put on mourning. His coach was drawn to the water side by some of the most respectable citizens, and cordial sorrow appeared on every countenance. The reception of Earl Camden, who arrived in Dublin five days after, wore a very different complexion; displeasure appeared generally : many strong traits of disapprobation were exhibited, and some of the populace were so outrageous that it became necessary to call out a military force in order to quell the disturbances that ensued. Still the rage for meetings and addresses continued. On the 9th of April a most numerous and respectable meeting of the Catholics was held in their chapel in Francis Street, to receive the report of their delegates, who had presented the petition at St. James': when Mr. Keogh reported, that in execution of their mission, they had on the 13th March presented their petition to His Majesty, and had received what was generally termed a gracious reception. That they had afterwards felt it their duty to request an audience with the Duke of Portland, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, to receive such information as he should think fit to impart relative to His Majesty's determination on the subject of their address. That his grace declined giving any information whatever, save that His Majesty had imparted his pleasure thereon to the Lord-Lieutenant, and that he was the proper channel through to Armagh, to turn the ferocity and fanawhich that information should pass. Here ticism of Peep of Day Boys into a religitheir mission was determined. Mr. Keogh ous contest with the Catholics, under the continued to deliver his sentiments up-specious appearance of zeal for Church on the critical situation of affairs, and and King. Personal animosity was artamongst many strong things which fell fully converted into religious rancour; from him, one observation gave particular and for the specious purpose of taking off offence to Government. He was not, he the stigma of delinquency, the appelsaid, sorry that the measure had been at- lation of Peep of Day Boys was changed tempted, though it had been defeated; for into that of Orangemen." It was in the it pointed out one fact at least, in which northern part of Armagh County that the feelings of every Irishman were in- this bloody association originated, and terested, and by which the Irish Legis- Mr. Thomas Verner enjoyed the bad emiture would be roused to a sense of its nence of being its first "Grand Master." own dignity. It showed that the internal Their test is said to have been: " In the regulations of Ireland, to which alone an awful presence of Almighty God, I, A. B., Irish Parliament was competent, were do solemnly swear, that I will, to the to be previously adjusted by a British utmost of my power, support the King Cabinet. Whilst this debate was going and the present government; and I do on, a very large party of the young men further swear, that I will use my utmost of the college came into the chapel, and exertions to exterminate all the Catholics were most honourably received. Some of the kingdom of Ireland." But this of them joined in the debate. They oath, being secret, has latterly been came that hour from presenting an ad- denied by the Orangemen of respectability dress to Mr. Grattan, to thank and con- and consequence. It has been generally gratulate him upon his patriotic efforts credited that it was taken by all the in the cause of Catholic Emancipation, original lodges, and continued afterwards and the reform of those abuses which had to be taken by the lower classes. The inflamed public indignation, to which Mr. Orange oath is given in the above terms Grattan made an appropriate answer. in a pamphlet published in 1797, called Every patriotic Irishman must look back" A View of the present state of Ireland," with unavailing regret to the lost opportunity, or rather to the cruel deception, of Lord Fitzwilliam's short administration. There was really at that moment a disposition to bury the hatchet of strife. At no subsequent period, down to this day, were the two nations which make up the Irish population, so well disposed to amalgamate and unite. But that did not suit the exigencies of British policy. There was to be an insurrection, in order that there might be a Legislative Union. In this same eventful year of 1795, British policy was materially aided by a new and portentous institution-the Orange Society. The recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and the absolute and most inevitable despair of obtaining either Reform of Parliament or Catholic Emancipation under the existing order of things, had driven vast numbers of the people, of both religions, into the United Irish Society. A spirit of union and fraternity was spreading fast. "Then," says Mr. Plowden, "the gentlemen in place becaine frightfully alarmed for their situations; active agents were sent down which is attributed to Arthur O'Connor. But whatever may have been the original form of engagement, or however it may have since been changed by more politic "Grand Masters," nothing is more certain than that the Orange Society did immediately and most seriously apply themselves to the task of exterminating the Catholics. There is quite as little doubt that this shocking society was encouraged by the Government, and by most of the magistrates and country gentlemen to keep alive religious animosity, and prevent the spread of the United Irish organization. An union of Irishmen upon the just, liberal, and fraternal basis of this organization, would have rendered impossible that other "Union" on which Mr. Pitt had set his heart-the Union of Ireland with England. The recall of Lord Fitzwilliam and the arrival of Lord Camden gave the signal for the bloody anarchy, through which Ireland was doomed to pass for the next four years, and which, it was deliberately calculated, was to end in her extinction as a nation. CHAPTER XXIX. 1795-1797. but the Orangemen commenced a persecution of the blackest dye. They would no longer permit a Catholic to exist in the county. They posted up on the cabins of these unfortunate victims this "To Hell or Connaught."-" Vigour beyond the pithy notice, To Hell or Connaught;" and apppointed a limited time in which the necessary removal of persons and property was to be made. If, after the expiration of that period, the notice had not been complied with, the furniture, burned the habitations, and forced the ruined families to fly elsewhere for shelter." Mr. Emmet adds, "While these outrages were going on, the resident magistrates were not found to resist them, and in some instances were even more than inactive spectators." Dr. Madden THE chief object of the Government and its has preserved and printed a number of agents was now to invent and disseminate the "notices," ill-spelled, but sufficiently fearful rumours of intended massacres of intelligible, which were posted on the all the Protestant people by the Catholics. cabin doors. But the Orangemen by no Dr. Madden says: "Efforts were made to means confined themselves to mere forinfuse into the mind of the Protestant cible ejectment of their enemies. Many feelings of distrust to his Catholic fellow-fearful murders were committed on the countrymen. Popish plots and conspira- unresisting people; and what gives percies were fabricated with a practical haps the clearest idea of the persecution facility, which some influential authorities conceived it no degradation to stoop to; and alarming reports of these dark confederations were circulated with a restless assiduity." The effects were soon apparent in the atrocities committed by the Orangemen in Armagh, and by the magistrates and military in other counties. The persecuted "Defenders" of Armagh made some feeble attempts to protect themselves, though almost without arms. This resistance led to the transaction called "Battle of the Diamond," near the village of that name, on the 21st of September, 1795. Several writers have alleged that the Catholics invited this conflict by a challenge sent to the Orange-" vigour beyond the law"-a delicate men. Of course, the latter, having abundance of arms, and being sure of the protection of the magistrates, were not slow to accept such an invitation; but nothing can be more absurd than to term the affair a battle. Not one of the Orange party was killed or wounded. Four or five Defenders were killed, and a proportionate number wounded; and this is the glorious battle that has been toasted at Orange banquets from that day to the present. Mr. Emmet thus describes the transaction: "The Defenders were speedily defeated with the loss of some few killed and left on the field of battle, besides the wounded, whom they carried away. The Catholics, after this, never attempted to make a stand, Pieces of Irish History. * is the fact that seven thousand persons were estimated in the next year to have been either killed or driven from their homes in that one small county alone.* But the unhappy outcasts, even when they escaped with their lives, had no shelter to fly to. In most cases they could only wander on the mountains until either death relieved them, or they were arrested and imprisoned; while the younger men were sent, without ceremony, to one of the "tenders," then lying in various seaports, and thence transferred on board British men-of-war. This was the device originally of Lord Carhampton, then commanding in Ireland. It was called a phrase which has since come very much into use to describe outrages committed by magistrates against the law. During all the rest of this year the greater part of Leinster, with portions of Ulster and Munster, were in the utmost terror and agony; the Orange magistrates, aided by the troops, arresting and imprisoning, without any charge, multitudes of unoffending people, under one pretext or another. It is right to present a sample of the story as told by "loyal men." Thus, then, the matter is represented by Sir Richard Musgrave, p. 145: "Lord Car *Mr. Plowden, who is as hostile to the Defen ders as any Orangeman, says from five to seven thousand. O'Connor, Emmet, and MacNeven, in their Memoirs of the Union, say, "seven thousand driven from their homes." He said that the act then in force for hampton, finding that the laws were silent magistrates and others, who, in their exand inoperative in the counties which ertions for the preservation of the public he visited, and that they did not afford tranquillity, might have acted against the protection to the loyal and peaceable forms and rules of law; he stated that the subjects, who in most places were obliged bill for the more effectually preventing of to fly from their habitations, resolved to insurrections, tumults, and riots, by perrestore them to their usual energy, by the sons styling themselves Defenders, and following salutary system of severity: other disorderly persons, was, however, In each county he assembled the most repugnant to his feelings. respectable gentlemen and landholders in it, and having, in concert with them, ex-administering unlawful oaths was not amined the charges against the leaders of this banditti who were in prison, but defied justice, he, with the concurrence of these gentlemen, sent the most nefarious of them on board a tender stationed at Sligo, to serve in His Majesty's navy.'" There is no doubt that great numbers of people were obliged to fly from their habitations; but then these were the very people whom Lord Carhampton and the magistrates called banditti, and sent to the tender as "nefarious." Such is, however, a specimen of the history of these times as told upon Orange authority. In the midst of these painful scenes, Parliament assembled on the 21st of January, 1796. Lord Camden, in his speech from the throne, congratulated them on "the brilliant successes of the Austrian armies upon the Rhine;" and then, alluding to dangerous secret societies, he intimated that certain additional powers would be called for; in other words, martial law. The Attorney-General lost no time in bringing forward an Insurrection Act and an Indemnity Act -the latter being for the purpose of indemnifying magistrates and military officers against the consequences of any of their illegal outrages upon the people. Mr. Curran wished to know the extent and nature of that delinquency which it was intended to indemnify; when Mr. M. Beresford observed, the word delinquency was not applicable to the persons intended; a part of the country was alarmingly disturbed; the magistrates and others invested with power had, in order to prevent the necessity of proclaiming martial law universally, acted in that particular district as if martial law were proclaimed: this conduct, so far from being delinquency, was justifiable and laudable, and of happy consequence in the event. On the 28th of the month, the Attorney-General adverted to the notice he had given on the first night of the session, of his intention of bringing in two bills: the object of one of them was for preventing in future insurrections, and tumults, and riots in this kingdom; and the object of the other bill was to indemnify certain sufficiently strong, and the administering of unlawful oaths was the source of all the treasonable actions which had taken place in the country: the bill proposed that the administering of unlawful oaths should be felony of death; but he would propose that that bill should be but a temporary law; there was also a clause in the bill to enable the magistrates, at the quarter sessions, to take up all idle vagrants and persons who had no visible means of earning a livelihood, and send them to serve on board the fleet; he said he did not propose to hurry this bill through the House, but give time for the consideration, as it might be necessary to add much, and make several alterations. He then moved for leave "to bring in a bill for the more effectual prevention of insurrections, tumults, and riots, by persons styling themselves Defenders, and other disorderly persons ;" and leave was given to bring in the bill. Then he moved for leave "to bring in a bill for indemnifying such magistrates and others who might have, since the 1st of January, 1795, excecded the ordinary forms and rules of law for the preservation of the public peace, and suppression of insurrection prevailing in some parts of this kingdom." There was earnest opposition against these two bills, but without effect: they were both passed into laws; and they had the effect, which they were certainly intended to have, of exciting, or at least hastening, the insurrection of 1798. It is observable that the motive assigned by the Government officials for passing these laws was always the outrages and alleged secret associations of Defenders. Not a word was said about the real outrages and exterminating oaths of Orangemen. Indeed, the measures in question were really directed not against either Defenders or Orangemen, but against the United Irishmen, the only association of which the Government had the slightest fear. Besides the two bills the Attorney-General proposed four supplemental resolutions asserting the necessity of giving enlarged powers to magistrates to search for arms and to make arrests. On the reading of |