after these had once been vested with authority. Some of the lowest actors were in fact ready enough in other cases to exceed such limits. Men imprisoned on suspicion, or private information, were sometimes half-hanged, (as the act was termed), or strangled almost to death, be fore their guilt or innocence could be ascertained by trial, by such men as serjeants in the militia, without the knowledge, as I suppose, of their officers. Reflecting loyalists were much concerned at the permission or impunity of such acts, which tended so strongly to confirm the prejudices already so laboriously excited by the emissaries of sedition.

Among the causes which, in the troubled interval of time, previous to the grand insurrection, contributed to the general uneasiness, were the insults practised by pretended zealots, to the annoyance of the truest loyalists as well as malecontents, on persons who wore their hair short, or happened to have any part of their apparel of a green colour, both of which were considered as emblems of a republican or of a revolutionary spirit. Short unpowdered hair had been affected by persons in Britain, supposed to be republicans; yet the same was also worn by many loyalists for convenience. The term croppy, however, was

Short hair, about which so senseless a bustle was made, was found so convenient, that it was generally adopted after the rebellion, even by those who had instigated outrages on account of it.

adopted in Ireland to signify a revolutionist, or enemy to the established government, without regard to the length or form of the hair. As green had been adopted by the Irish malecontents as the revolutionary colour, in imitation of the shamroc, it was justly an object of reprobation, when worn intentionally as a badge of party; but accidentally, and without reflexion on the consequence, many loyalists, particularly among the fair sex, had this colour in some part of their dress, as handkerchiefs with green stripes, green bonnets, green petticoats, green ribbons, or green shoes. * Persons of malevolent minds took advantage of these circumstances to indulge their general malignity or private malice, when they could with impunity. On the heads of many who were selected as objects of outrage, were fixed caps of course linen or strong brown paper, smeared with pitch on the inside, which in some instances adhered so firmly as not to be

* I heard a clergyman (not now indeed in the diocese of Ferns) boasting of the following act of an officer, as if it had been really an heroic exploit. Two young ladies, in passing some soldiers and an officer in Dublin, jocularly pronounced a word well known at that time to have been in use among the united Irish. The officer immediately seized the ladies, and finding, as he said, green garters on them, caused them to be tied back to back, and to remain some hours in that position in the street under a guard. Did this hero afterwards fight the rebels? If he were commander in a battle, he would kill vast numbers

on paper.

disengaged without a laceration of the hair and even skin. An insult of this kind attempted on a mistaken object in Wicklow, in April, 1798, was in danger of being followed by fatal effects. A detachment of the North-Cork militia, in their march to Gorey, meeting and beginning to maltreat a soldier with short hair, of the Downshire .militia, who, being servant to an officer, was not at the time dressed in military uniform, were furiously repulsed by some of the Downshire soldiers, who ran to the rescue of their colleague, and a bloody conflict would have ensued, if it had not been prevented by the extraordinary exertions of the officers on both sides, three of whom, beside many of the soldiers, were wounded in the fray.

Among the species of injuries to which men were innocently exposed, in the turbid state of the kingdom, preceding the grand insurrection, was this, that numbers of malignant persons, mostly, I suppose, perhaps all, of the united party, made it a practice to seize violently such as they thought proper, or were able, and to crop or cut their hair short, which rendered them liable to the outrage of the pitched cap of those who were, or rather pretended to be, strenuous partisans of the established constitution. Handkerchiefs, ribbons, and other parts of dress marked with the obnoxious colour, were torn or cut away from females unconscious of disloyalty,

and undesignedly bearing the imaginary badge. Various other violent acts were committed, so far as to cut away pieces of men's ears, even sometimes the whole ear, or a part of the nose: nor could the stanchest loyalists be certain always of exemption from insult by being clear of all imaginary marks of disloyalty; for on the arrival of a detachment of the army in any part of the country where the inhabitants were unknown to the officers and soldiers, which was almost always the case, private malice was apt to convey in whispers false intelligence, marking individuals, perhaps the best members of society, as proper objects of military outrage.

That those who were most active to commit these outrages, or to instigate others to the commission of them, were not the best friends of government, I have good reason to suppose. Their conduct, whatever may have been their motives, was evidently adapted to augment the number and rage the malecontents, which, in concurrence with other circumstances, might have produced very fatal effects: besides, that in the hour of danger, when the great insurrection took place, and government stood in need of the most vigoTous exertions of its friends, most of these agitators of insult stood aloof, and the rest, so far as my experience and information extends, were very shy in their movements against the rebels, and cautious of their personal safety; a conduct

which implied either a defect of courage or of loyalty. The following instance of this mode of proceeding touches the extreme. A young gentleman of a robust frame and healthy constitution, a furious declaimer against croppies, and a private instigator of military insult, fled at the commencement of the insurrection to a town twenty miles distant from the lines of the rebels, where he remained very quiet until the rebellion was totally suppressed: he then returned to his habitation, and with becoming modesty resumed his former language of ostentatious loyalty, together with a flaming suit of military uniform, and a martial air.

By the system of secret accusation and espio nage, necessarily adopted, with other extraordinary measures, in this dangerous crisis, government unavoidably made ample room for the exertions of private malice. Magistrates and military officers were empowered to receive informations, to keep the names of the informers profoundly secret, and to proceed against the accused according to discretion. I shall not suppose that any magistrate could have pretended to receive information, which he had not received, for the indulgence of his private spite against any individual; but some of the gentlemen invested with these new powers were led into grievous errors by false informers, whose names notwithstanding have never been divulged. One in