crificing conscience or honor to any worldly interest whatever; since rather than violate either by hypocritical professions, we have all our lives, patiently suffered so many restrictions and losses in our temporal concerns; and we most submissively beseech your majesty to look down on such trials of our integrity, not only as a proof of our sincerity in this declaration, but also as an earnest and surety of our future good behavior; and to give us leave to indulge the pleasing hope, that the continuance of that behaviour, enforced by our religious principles, and of your majesty's great and inherent goodness towards us, which it will be the business of our lives to endeavor to merit, may at length be the happy means of our deliverance from some part of that burthen, which we have so long and so patiently endured.

That this act of truly royal commisseration, beneficence and justice, may be added to your majesty's many other heroic virtues, and that such our deliverance may be one of those distin guished blessings of your reign, which shall transmit its memo. ry to the love, gratitude, and veneration of our latest posterity, is the humble prayer of, &c.

This remonstrance having been communicated to the late right reverend primate Stone, was approved of by his grace, and by as many of his most discerning and confidential friends. as he thought proper to shew it to, as he himself assured lord Taaffe; and nothing hindered its being then laid before his ma jesty, but those unhappy divisions and animosities which still subsisted amongst us, and the premature death of his grace, which followed not long after, to the sincere and lasting regret of all his majesty's good and loyal subjects of this kingdom; so that it never was presented to the king; and is now inserted here, with no other view, but to shew what endeavors have been used from time to time, for several years past, to obtain the emancipation of at least three parts in four of his ma jesty's useful and intoxious Irish catholic subjects from the gall ing fetters of the popery laws of queen Anne.

CHAP. XV.

Tumults in Munster considered.

ABOUT this time, great tumults had been raised, and some outrages committed in different parts of Munster, by cottiers and others of the lowest class of its inhabitants, occasioned by the tyranny and rapacity of their landlords.* These land. lords have set their lands to cottiers far above their value, and

• "The landlord of an Irish estate," says the learned and impartial Mr. Young, "inhabited by Roman catholics, is a sort of despot, who yields obedience in whatever concerns the poor to no law but that of his will, To discover what the liberty of a people is, we must live among them, and not look for it in the statutes of the realm: the language of written law may be that of liberty, but the situation of the poor may speak no language but that of slavery: there is too much of this contradiction in Ireland. A long series of oppressions, aided by many very ill-judged laws, have brought landlords into a habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, and their vassals into that of an honest unlimited submission: speaking a language that is despised, professing a religion that is abhorred, and being disarmed, the poor find themselves in many cases slaves even in the bosom of written liberty. Landlords that have resided much abroad, are usually humane in their ideas, but the habit of tyranny naturally contracts the mind, so that even in this polished age, there are instances of a severe carriage towards the poor, which is quite unknown in England.

66

Nay, (says the same ingenious writer) I have heard anecdotes of the lives of the people being made free with without any apprehension of the justice of a jury. But let it not be imagined that is common; formerly it happened every day, but law gains ground............The execution of the Jaw lies very much in the hands of justices of the peace, many of whom are drawn from the most illiberal class in the kingdom. If a poor man lodges a complaint against a gentleman, or any animal that chuses to call itself a gentleman, and the justice issues out a summons for his appearance, it is a fixed affront, and he will infallibly be called out. Where manners are in conspiracy against law, to whom are the oppressed people to have recourse?.........They know their situation too well to think of it; they can have no defence but by means of protection from one gentleman against another, who probably protects his vassal a, he would the sheep he intends to eat.'

"

"The colours of this picture are not charged. To`assert that all these cases are common, would be an exaggeration; but to say that an unfeeling landlord will do all this with impunity, is to keep strictly to truth: and what is liberty but a farce and a jest, if its blessings are received as the favor of kindness and humanity, instead of being the inheritance of IGHT?"-Young's Tour, Dub. Edis, vol. ii. p. 40-41.

to lighten their burthen, had allowed commonage to their tenants. Afterwards in despite of all equity, contrary to all compacts, the landlords inclosed these commons, and precluded their unhappy tenants from the only means of making their bargains tolerable."

Another cause of these people's discontents was, the cruel exactions of tithe-mongers: these harpies "squeezed out the very vitals of the people, and by process, citation, and seques. tration, dragged from them the little which the landlord had left them. These are the real causes of the late tumults in Munster, and it may be safely affirmed (adds my author) that there is no nation that has not had tumults from such or the like causes, without religion coming into the question."

The riots, however, of these few forlorn men, were soon construed into a general popish conspiracy against the govern ment; because, indeed, the greatest part of them were papists,* at least in name; although it was well known that se veral protestant gentlemen and magistrates of considerable influence in that province, did all along, for their own private ends connive at, if not foment these tumults, and although we were assured by authority, "that the authors of these riots coneisted indiscriminately of persons of different persuasions, and that no marks of disaffection to his majesty's person or government appeared in any of these people."

2

This authentic declaration was grounded on the report which had been made to government, by persons of distinguished

• An Enquiry into the Causes of the Outrages committed by the Levellers. 2 Dublin Gazette.

"Consequences have flowed from these oppressions (says Mr. Young) which ought long ago to have put a stop to them. In England we have heard much of white-boys, steel-boys, oak-boys, peep-of-day-boys, &c. But these various insurgents are not to be confounded, for they are very different. The proper distinction in the discontents of the people is into protestant and catholic. All but the white-boys are among the manufac turing protestants in the north. The white-boys, catholic labourers in the south from the best intelligence I could gain, the riots of the manufacturers had no other foundation, but such variations in the manufacture as all fabrics experience, and which they had themselves known and submitted to before. The case, however, was different with the white-boys; who being labouring catholics met with all those oppressions I have described, and would probably have continued in full submission had not very

loyalty and eminence in the law, sent down and commissioned. some time before to enquire upon the spot into the real causes and circumstances of these riots; which report was afterwards confirmed by the going judges of assize, and by the dying protestations of the first five of these unhappy men, who were executed in 1762 at Waterford, for having been present at the burning down of a cabin, upon the information of one of their associates, who was the very person that with his own hand set fire to it. These men immediately before their execution, publicly declared and took God to witness, "that in all these tumults it never did enter into their thoughts to do any thing against the government."

CHAP. XVi.

The same subject continued.

BUT the person most obnoxious on this occasion, and whose life seems to have been most eagerly sought after, on a real or affected belief of his having primarily stirred up, and with French money and officers, supported these rioters, for the purpose of a future rebellion, was one Nicholas Sheehy, parishpriest of Clogheen. This man was giddy and officious, but not

severe treatment in respect of tithes united with a great speculative rise of rents about the same time, blown up the flame of resistance; the attrocious acts they were guilty of made them the object of general indignation: acts were passed for their punishment, which seemed calculated for the meridian of Barbary; this arose to such a height, that by one they were to to be hanged under circumstances without the common formalities of a trial, which though repealed by the following sessions marks the spirit of punishment; while others remain yet the law of the land, that would if executed, tend more to raise than quell an insurrection. From all which it is manifest that the gentlemen of Ireland never thought of a radical cure from overlooking the real cause of disease, which in fact lay in themselves, and not in the wretches they doomed to the gallows. Let them change their own conduct intirely, and the poor will not long riot. Treat them like men who ought to be as free as yourselves: put an end to that system of religious persecution which for seventy years has divided the kingdom against itself; in these two circumstances lies the cure of insurrection, perform them completely, and you will have an affectionate poor, instead of oppressed and discontented vassals."-Young's Tour, vol. ii. p. 41-42.

ill-meaning, with somewhat of a Quixotish cast of mind towards relieving all those within his district, whom he fancied to be injured or oppressed; and, setting aside his unavoidable connexion with those rioters, several hundred of whom were his parishioners, he was a clergyman of an unimpeached character in all other respects. In the course of these disturbances, he had been often indicted, and tried as a popish priest, but no sufficient evidence having appeared against him on that charge, he was always acquitted, to his own great misfortune; for, had he been convicted, his punishment, which would be only transportation, might have prevented his ignominious death, which soon after followed.

In the year 1765, the government was prevailed upon by his powerful enemies, to issue a proclamation against him, as a person guilty of high treason, offering a reward of three hundred pounds for taking him, which Sheehy in his retreat happening to hear of, immediately wrote up to Secretary Waite, "that as he was not conscious of any such crime, as he was charged with in the proclamation, he was ready to save to the government the money offered for taking him, by surrendering himself out of hand, to be tried for that or any other crime he might be accused of; not at Clonmel, where he feared that the power and malice of his enemies were too prevalent for justice (as they soon after indeed proved to be), but at the court of king's bench in Dublin." His proposal having been accepted, he was accordingly brought up to Dublin and tried there for rebellion, of which, however, after a severe scrutiny of fourteen hours, he was honorably acquitted; no evidence. having appeared against him but a blackguard boy, a common prostitute, and an impeached thief, all brought out of Clonmel jail, and bribed for the purpose of witnessing against him.

But his inveterate enemies, hwo like so many blood-hounds had pursued him to Dublin, finding themselves disappointed there, resolved upon his destruction at all events. One Bridge, an infamous informer against some of those who had been exe'cuted for these riots, was said to have been murdered by their associates, in revenge (although his body could never be