with a cut on the head from one of the missiles. The mob then turned to attack the houses of Beresford and the speaker, and were only dispersed by the bullets of the military.

Grattan's Emancipation Bill was of course doomed. There was a fierce debate in which Mr. Arthur O'Connor, a nephew of Lord Longueville, made an able maiden speech attacking the Government. But the venal crew of Castle place-men changed sides with the change of viceroys; and the bill was thrown out by 155 to 48. All hope, either of Roman Catholic emancipation or of reform, had vanished. Lord Clare and Protestant Ascendency had won the day; and the old coercive system was set upon its legs again.

JACKSON'S trial for treason took place in April. The case against him was clear. The wretched Cockayne, in abject terror of assassination, was kept under guard until the trial, and gave conclusive evidence against him. The miserable Jackson on the final morning of the trial, to anticipate judgment and sentence, and so save his little property for his widow, took arsenic on his way to the Court, and died in agonies in the dock. Tone shortly afterwards sailed for America; and passed thence to France, with avowed intentions of enlisting the sympathies of the French Directory.

The United Irishmen had been suppressed; but the more desperate members of that body, now that all legitimate means of carrying out their schemes of reform had failed, reorganized the society as a secret association. The branches were reconstructed and multiplied. Each branch was to consist of twelve members, who chose out of their own number a secretary. Five of such secretaries formed a committee, called "the lower baronial." Ten lower baronials chose each a

member to form the "upper baronial committee;" and each upper baronial in like manner sent a delegate to the "district" or "county committee." Two or three delegates from each county committee formed a "Provincial committee," and the provincial committees elected five of the number to constitute the "executive committee" or "directory," which formed the apex of the system. In this way a subtle organization was built up, which spread its ramifications through two provinces; and was so constructed that in a short space of time it could be converted, according to its later development, from a civil to a military organization. The secretary of every twelve was their petty officer. The delegate of the lower baronial was a captain of sixty men. The delegate of the upper baronial was colonel of a battalion of six hundred; and so on, until a formidable force was enrolled on paper numbering, in 1797, nearly 280,000 men. The reconstructed society bound each member by an oath of secrecy; and their avowed object was the wresting of Ireland from English control, and the erection of a Republican form of government, if necessary by force; if necessary also, by the help of foreign intervention. The organization of Ulster was completed in May, 1795. But it does not seem to have been extended further till the autumn of 1796, when emissaries were sent to form branches in Leinster. It was not till it was well established in Leinster that the military system was grafted on the civil. Russell, Neilson, Sims and Keogh were the early reconstructors of the society. Tone was privy to their

designs before his departure from Ireland. Thomas Addis Emmet an eminent barrister, Lewines an attorney, McCormick a Dublin manufacturer, and Dr. McNevin were prominent members. Mr. Oliver Bond became one of the Directory. Most of the leaders of the society were Protestants. Many of them were Ulster men.

Tone's plans for uniting the Protestants and the Roman Catholics had not resulted in the reconciliation of the two religious factions in Armagh. There the disgraceful civil strife was unabated. The authorities appeared content to permit the two fanatical parties to fight it out. Whenever they did interfere, strong partiality was shown to the Protestants. In September, 1795, a large body of Defenders came across a number of armed Peep-o'-day Boys at a village called the Diamond, where a regular battle took place, in which the Defenders were driven off with a loss of forty-eight killed and many wounded. The Protestants then set on foot a counter-organization to Defenderism, forming themselves into associations which they called Orange Lodges, and demanding an oath of secrecy from all who were enrolled. This organization grew rapidly. It acted promptly and with terrible effect. It declared war against the Defenders and openly professed as its object the complete expulsion of all Roman Catholics from Ulster. The Roman Catholics were attacked indiscriminately. Masters were compelled to dismiss Roman Catholic servants, landlords to dismiss Roman Catholic tenants. Decent farmers, quiet peasants, hard

working weavers, quite unconnected with the Defenders, received notices "to go to Hell, Connaught would not receive them." Their houses were burnt, their furniture broken up, and they and their families driven from their holdings.

Lord Gosford, the governor of Armagh County, in addressing the magistrates at quarter sessions in December, 1795, publicly declared that "neither age nor sex, nor even acknowledged innocence as to any guilt in the late disturbances is sufficient to excite mercy, much less to afford protection. The only crime which the objects of this ruthless persecution are charged with, is simply a profession of the Roman Catholic religion. A lawless banditti have constituted themselves judges of this new species of delinquency, and the sentence they have pronounced is nothing less than a confiscation of all property, and an immediate banishment." The persecution was bad enough as it was; but report magnified it until the awful rumour spread amongst the people, and was of course believed, that seven thousand persons had been driven from their dwellings. No protection could be obtained from the magistrates, whose sympathies were all with the Orangemen, and of whom many were themselves members of Orange Lodges. When at last the soldiers were sent down under General Craddock to restore order, it was found next to impossible to secure the bands of Orange depredators by reason of the timely information given to them of the movements of the troops, which enabled them to elude pursuit.