3

county committees, and in populous towns, district committees; and the provincial committees, one for each of the four provinces, were composed of delegates from the district and county committees, two from each, sometimes three, when the extent and population of the district seemed to require a more numerous representation. The supreme and uncontrouled command of the whole association was committed to a general executive directory, composed of five persons unknown to all excepting the four secretaries of the provincial committees; for they were elected by ballot in these committees, the secretaries of which alone examined the ballots and notified the election to none except the persons themselves on whom it fell. The orders of this hidden directing power were conveyed through the whole organized body by not easily discoverable chains of communication. By one member only of the directory were carried the mandates to one member of each provincial com. mittee, by the latter severally to the secretaries of the district and county committees in the province, by these secretaries to those of the upper baronials, and thus downward through the lower baronial to the simple societies,

The military organization was grafted on the çivil of this artfully framed union. The secre tary of each of the simple societies was its noncommissioned officer, sérjeant, or corporal; the

delegate of five simple societies to a lower baronial committee was commonly captain over these five, that is, of a company of sixty men; and the delegate of ten lower baronial to an upper or district committee, was generally colonel, or commander of a battalion of six hundred men, composed of the fifty simple societies under the superintendence of this upper committee. Out of three persons, whose names were transmitted for that purpose, from the colonels of each county to the directory, one was appointed by this executive body to act as adjutant-general of that county, to receive and communicate all military orders from the head of the union to the officers under his jurisdiction.-To complete the scheme of warlike preparation, a military committee, instituted in the beginning of the year 1798, and appointed by the directory, had its task assigned to contrive plans for the direction of the national force, either for the purposes of unaided rebellion, or co-operation with an invading French army, as occasion should require. Orders were issued that the members of the union should furnish themselves, where their circumstances allowed it, with fire-arms-where not, with pikes, To form a pecuniary fund for the various expences of this. great revolutionary machine, monthly subscriptions, according to the zeal and ability of the subscribers, were collected in the several societies,

D

and treasurers appointed by suffrage for their collection and disbursement. *

From this fund were supplied the demands of the emissaries commissioned to extend the union. Of these, considerable numbers were dispatched into the southern and western counties, in the beginning and course of 1797, where, though many had been sworn into the union, little progress for the effectual promotion of the system had been made before the autumn of 1796; and so little was made for some time after, that in May, 1797, at the eve of an intended insurrection, the strength of the association lay, exclusively of Ulster, chiefly in the metropolis and the neighbouring counties of Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Westmeath, and King's county. This body of political missioners received instructions to work on the passions, the prejudices, and feelings of those to whom they should address themselves.

The lower classes were informed that by a revolution, which, in the establishment of a democratic system of government, would give universal suffrage and equal rights, their condition would be exalted and rendered far more comfortable. Great pains were taken, contrary to the oath and original plan of United Irishmen, to revive the

*Appendix to the report, &c. No. 31. Report of the secret committee of the house of lords, 8vo. 1798, p. 6--9. See also the trials of Henry and John Sheares, John Mac Cann Oliver Bond, and William Michael Byrne.

old religious hatred of the Romanists, who con-: stitute the great mass of the people, where these. emissaries were sent, against their protestant fellow-subjects. To rouse this numerous body by terror and resentment into a preparation for hostility, which the chiefs of the Union might hope. to turn to their own purposes, dreadful accounts were invented and industriously propagated concerning the designs of the Orange association, the members of which were asserted to have entered into engagements to exterminate the Ro-. manists, to wade knee-deep, or even, if occasion should require, to ride saddle-deep in their blood; and, to impress the belief of this horrible falsehood, fabricated resolutions of Orangemen were printed and dispersed. Reports were from time to time circulated of intended nocturnal massacres of the Romanists by large troops of protestants; and such was the immediate effect, that the terrified inhabitants of the districts where these reports were spread, fled from their houses at the approach of night, and lay concealed in the fields till morning.

Societies of Orangemen took their first rise in the county of Armagh, where a mortal feud, originating, as it is said, from a private quarrel, had subsisted since the year 1785, between the lowest class of the presbyterians and Romanists. The former, denominated peep-of-day boys, from their appearing assembled in bands frequently about the dawn, having gained the superiority;

the latter associated under the title of defenders, and seem to have been regularly organized in the year 1789. Among the outrages perpetrated by these Romanists was the assassination of a family of the name of Barclay, at a place called Forkhill, in the above-mentioned county, in the year 1791. The master of the family who had been appointed to preside over a newly endowed protestant school, his wife, and his brother-in-law, the twó latter of whom died of their wounds, were maimed in a horrid manner; the first by the amputation of his fingers and part of his tongue: the second, a beautiful young woman, by the amputation of her breasts, her tongue, and the calves of her legs; and the third by a similar mutilation. For self-preservation against this religious confederacy, which had spread itself widely through the neighbouring counties, the protestants of the county of Armagh began at length, in the latter part of the year 1795, to form associations under the denomination of Orangemen, a denomination derived from King William the Third, Prince of Orange, who had rescued the protestants of Ireland by his arms, and given them that ascendency which they have since maintained. After the loss of many lives on both sides in the contest, the Orangemen obtained a decided superiority, and, as must be expected, the lower sort abused their victory, expelling from their houses and lands great numbers of the opposite party, who