lived magnificently. The edifices they erected, both in town and country, the scale of their household establishments, their equipages, were magnificent. In their manners there was l'air grand; their very rascality was of magnificent dimensions. There was no paltry peddling about them. You could hardly have found one of them capable of selling himself, like the Scotch Lord Banff, for the paltry trifle of eleven guineas. The abandon, the laisser-aller principle was carried amongst them to the greatest extent compatible with social politeness. Whatever was bad, bigoted, or unnational in the aristocracy was duly adopted and improved on by their industrious imitators, the small squires. Whatever tended to mitigate the evils of bigotry was beyond the imitation of the squireen class, because it was beyond their comprehension. How deeply are the Catholics of Ireland indebted to O'Connell for removing from them the galling indignities entailed by their political inferiority to such a thoroughly contemptible class!

An amusing volume might be written on the exploits of the Orange squires in Ireland.

Vulgarity of soul was of course often found among the possessors of thousands a year, as well as of hundreds. The squireen magistracy were a curious generation. While the smaller sort of justices occasionally rendered their judicial decisions auxiliary to the replenishing of their poultry-yards, those whose wealth gave them greater weight were in frequent communication with the Castle, recommending "strong measures to keep down the people, such as the increase of the constabulary or military force, the proclaiming of the disturbed districts, the enforcement of the Insurrection Act, or the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. Complaints against obnoxious individuals were frequently made in these communications. The Government were earwigged by the Loyalists," as the oppressors of the people thought fit to term themselves; and doubtless many a poor devil who never dreamed of plots or conspiracies, has been indicated to the executive as concerned in revolutionary projects.

66

One ludicrous instance of this species of volunteer espionage is deserving of record. The officious informant of the Government flew at higher game than ordinary. He was a magistrate, a grand juror, a man of family and fortune. The object of his attack was also a magistrate and grand juror, and of lineage and station at least equal to his own. They were both "good Loyalists." The former gentleman

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79

amused his leisure hours with a corps of cavalry yeomanry of which he was captain, and which he seemed to consider indispensable to the stability of British connexion.

These dignitaries quarrelled with each other. It was a private dispute-I do not know its nature; perhaps it concerned the comparative merits of their foxhounds. The Accusing Angel (whom I shall call Mr. A.) conceived that the most exquisite revenge he could take would be to procure the dismissal of his foe (Mr. B.) from the commission of the peace.

Mr. A. was in constant communication with the Government. He wrote frequent letters to the Viceroy or his secretary, expatiating on the demoniac disposition of the people, on the perpetual perils besetting the well-affected, and in especial on his own great merits. The literary qualities of his correspondence must have amused the official critics at Dublin Castle, for his orthography was unfettered by the usual rules, and he sometimes introduced a colloquial oath by way of giving additional emphasis to his statements. His despatches, with some such announcements as these, that "By the country was in a truly aweful situation" -that" they ought to look sharpe to Mr. Murtogh O'Guggerty," etc., had been usually received with such respectful consideration by official persons that at last he began to consider himself all-powerful with the Irish. Administration. His correspondence was private and confidential; so that he revelled in the double confidence of power and secrecy.

He accordingly wrote to apprise the Lord Lieutenant that Mr. B. was a political hypocrite, who, while wearing the outward marks and tokens of loyalty, was destitute of its inward and spiritual graces. One specific accusation, of which I was informed by Mr. B.'s son, was that persons of disloyal politics were hospitably entertained at his father's table. Mr. B. was represented as a dangerous character, who ought promptly to be struck off the list of magistrates. Mr. A. did not entertain a doubt that the return of the post would bring with it a supersedeas for his enemy from the Lord Chancellor; and he chuckled with anticipated ecstasy over B.'s mortification, and his ignorance of the quarter whence the arrow was aimed.

Although they had quarrelled, yet they had not quite discontinued their acquaintance. Mr. A., therefore, was not very much astonished when he saw Mr. B. one morning

approaching his house on horseback. "Perhaps," thought he, "B. is coming to make up matters, if he can. I wonder has he heard of his dismissal yet?"

The visitor, seeing the man of the house on his hall-door steps, hastened forward, reached the mansion in a few moments, sprang from his saddle, and, horsewhip in one hand, presented with the other a written paper, saying:

"There, sir, is the copy of a document signed with your name, which I have received from Dublin Castle by this morning's post. It foully and falsely accuses me of being a disloyal subject, and demands my dismissal from the magistracy. I have come to ask whether you are the author of this rascally document ?"

Mr. A. was so thunder-stricken at the suddenness, the total unexpectedness, of such an accusation, that he was quite at a loss what to answer. He stammered out an

admission that he had written the letter.

"Then," said B., "walk into the house this instant, and write a contradiction of it, which I shall dictate."

Mr. A. could not choose but comply. B. immediately dictated a very full and unqualified contradiction, which A. duly wrote, and of which, the instant it was written, B. took possession. He then quitted the house with scant ceremony, and despatched to the Chancellor the exculpation he had extorted from his accuser. Of course he was not dismissed from the magistracy. Nor was his accuser dismissed; the Government probably attributing his escapade to an exuberance of loyal zeal.

Of the accusing justice the following anecdote was told me by a beneficed clergyman of the Established Church. His worship had an inveterate habit of profane swearing. At a meeting of magistrates, presided over by the Protestant rector of the parish, who was also a magistrate, he, as usual, gave emphasis to his opinion by a blasphemous oath. The rector, scandalised at the impiety, said: "I shall fine you tenpence, sir, for swearing in Court."

"Here it is, by " said the other, handing up the tenpenny-piece (it was before the days of the shillings) and accompanying the coin with a repetition of the blasphemy.

"Another fine for that," said the rector. The justice tendered a second tenpenny with a similar profane accompaniment. And so on, the magistrate swearing, and the rector fining him, until he had emitted some eight or ten oaths, and got rid of a corresponding number of tenpennies.

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His worship probably considered the affair an excellent joke.

This gentleman was the juror who, at the Cork assizes, presented to the Court, in the character of foreman, the verdict of "guilty," which he had spelled "gilty."

"That's badly spelled," said the counsel for the defence,* who was near the box, and seized the paper in transitu.

"How shall I mend it?" inquired the foreman, abashed and confused at this public censure.

"Put n, o, t, before it," returned the counsel, handing back the paper for the emendation, which the former immediately made, in bewildered unconsciousness of the important nature of the change.

"There-that will do," said the counsel, taking the amended document, and handing up "Not Gilty" to the Court. A fortunate interposition. The juror in question had a mania for hanging. He had, in his impetuous haste, handed in the issue paper without consulting his brethren of the jury-box. But if the prisoner in that instance escaped death, in how many instances were the miserable victims sacrificed? A verdict of guilty was easily obtained from jurors who belonged to a class that deemed accusation sufficient to establish criminality, and with whom the received policy was that of hanging the accused, "to make an example, and to preserve the quiet of the country."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ZEAL OF A PACIFICATOR.

A man he was, to all the country dear.

GOLDSMITH.

THERE occurred in 1816 an incident strikingly illustrative of the Protestant ascendency policy of making examples to preserve the quiet of the country.

The gentleman who officiated as peace-preserver on the occasion to which I now allude, was the Rev. John Hamilton, Protestant Curate of Roscrea, in the King's County, and a magistrate. The reverend gentleman had been transplanted to Roscrea from the County Fermanagh. In politics he was an enthusiastic Orangeman; his per

* Harry Deane Grady.

G

sonal disposition appears to have been romantic and ad

venturous.

Mr. Hamilton, on receiving his appointment to the magistracy, promised, as he afterwards boasted, to distinguish himself by his zeal in discharging the duties of his office. He speedily set about redeeming his promise. The Monaghan militia commanded by Colonel Kerr, were at that time quartered in Roscrea. They were all of redhot Orange principles; and it was the familiar practice of the reverend gentleman to obtain from the commanding. officer parties of the men, who scoured the country, firing shots, playing party tunes, and thus exhibiting their ardent loyalty in a sort of irregular ovation of perpetual recurrence. But these triumphant feux-de-joie, and the accompanying martial music, could not long furnish serious occupation to a spirit so adventurous as that of the Rev. John Hamilton.

There resided at Roscrea two highly respectable Catholic distillers, the Messrs. Daniel and Stephen Egan. There was also in that town a rival distiller named Birch, a wealthy Protestant, in whose family the reverend gentleman had officiated as tutor for some time after his appointment as curate.

It occurred to the Rev. Mr. Hamilton, J.P., to evince his magisterial zeal by implicating the Messrs. Egan in a criminal conspiracy to murder the Protestant gentry of the neighbourhood. He possibly also desired to serve the commercial interests of his patron, Mr. Birch, by getting the rival manufacturers of whisky hanged. He was bustling, active, and artful; and finding in many of his neighbours the ready credulity of prejudice, he soon succeeded in creating serious alarm in their minds. He procured the aid of a confederate named Dyer, who was groom or stableman in the employment of Mr. Birch (the reverend gentleman's patron); and Dyer, being duly drilled by Mr. Hamilton, swore informations, bearing that several persons engaged in the murderous conspiracy aforesaid, occasionally rendezvoused in a valley called the Cockpit, situated in the domain of the Hon. Francis Aldborough Prittie, M.P., for the purpose of concerting their organisation, and also of practising the manoeuvres of military exercise.

Matters were not yet ripe enough to explode the plot against the Egan family. An assistant for Dyer was procured from Dublin, a dexterous practitioner in informations, named Halfpenny, alias Halpin. He was then in the police, an