to believe them, but to special accusations he desired to be able to give a special reply. The answer was painfully easy. The policeman who has stunned a man with his staff may appear a gratuitous savage till it has been shown that the man whom he struck was beating his wife to death. Camden had but to send authentic proof of the conduct and temper of the people with whom he had to deal. The Irish complaint reduced to plain language was simply this: You, English, they said in effect, have conquered this island, and we wish to have it for ourselves. We will not fight for it, but we require you to let us alter our Constitution so that we shall be free in spite of you. If you refuse, we will conspire with your enemies, we will murder your friends, we will make it impossible for you to govern us; your magistrates, your constables, your witnesses shall die if they put your laws in force against us; and if in return you dare to punish dare to punish us by shorter methods, we will proclaim to the world that what you call our crimes are the fruits of your own tyranny. For eighteen years the air had been filled with the windy declamations of Grattan, and the fierce and sullen spirit which lies at the bottom of the Irish nature like the sleeping fire of a volcano was now awakening in its dreadful reality. Camden and Pelham wrote at length in painful detail. Each morning's post brought with it some fresh tale of horror. Before the Viceroy had closed his letter, news came from the South that one magistrate had been murdered, another wounded; a constable had been found dead with his limbs hacked in 1 Pelham to Pitt, November 2, Lord Camden to the Duke of Portland, November 3. Private and secret."-S. P. O. pieces, and a label left in his hand threatening the same treatment to any one who should bury him. At Two Mile Bridge, near Youghal, a farmer, his wife, his servant, his pigs, his dogs, even his poultry, had all been slaughtered. The bowels of the man had been torn out, and on him too a label was lying, that such was the reward of an informer. Were these things to go on? were the tears of the friends of liberty to flow in streams for the sullen scoundrel who was flogged till he confessed to the store of secret arms which he had laid up for deeds of devilry; and was there to be no pity for the victims who were nightly sacrificed because they had dared to exert themselves for his detection and punishment ? 1 1 Let the reader who desires to understand Lord Camden's position study the following letter from Mr. Rolleston, of Green Park, Youghal, dated October 26, 1797. Mr. Rolleston had already reported the mutilation of some horses and cows, almost within view of his windows: .... "On the night of the 23d," he wrote again, "a day remarkable in history,1 a murder of the most atrocious kind was committed on three persons, at a village named Two Mile Bridge. The surgeons and physicians who went to view the bodies came away sickened. The deceased were a man, his wife, and a servant-maid. The head was a respectable, wealthy farmer, who first provoked the miscreants by not selling his milk at their reduced prices. For that they houghed his cows. He gave information to Mr Swayne, a magistrate here, and two men were taken up and sent to Waterford Gaol. The night but one following, this murder was committed, and the people of the village pretend to say they heard nothing of it, so determined are they on secrecy. The terror system is universal. We hear of fresh murders every day. Mr. Power had a tenant, whose bowels were torn out..... The clerk of Temple Michael parish has been murdered. Forty pounds are publicly offered for Mr. Swayne's head; but, in fact, all yeomen are proscribed. This day I got a hint not to join in out parties; that my father, my uncle, and myself were loved and respected, and that I should not wantonly deprive my children of their father. I answered, I preferred an honorable death to a dishonorable life. I would always endeavor to bring a murderer to justice, and defend my property. We were ready to hear any real grievances, but could not allow our properties to be torn from us. We have little composed sleep. cannot place entire confidence in any servants I have; they are either under 1 The anniversary of the outbreak in 1641. To drive the peasantry to madness forged Orange oaths were hung on the doors of the chapels, threatening Catholics with extermination. When the battle of Camperdown had destroyed their hopes of invasion, they were told that the Irish seamen in the fleet had won the day; that at the "moment when the blood and brains of generous Papists had adorned the last victory of the wooden walls of England, but not of Ireland, the bloody dastardly hand of tyranny was pointing the dagger at their hearts." They were reminded that while the honest United Irishmen were grasped with the iron hand of ferocity and cruelty, the infamous Orangemen, who thirsted after blood and murder, were caressed and encouraged by the heavenly Government." They were informed and the sham oath was referred to as a proof"that the Orangemen had sworn to be true to the King and Government, and to destroy the Catholics of Ireland." They were invited to believe that an Orangeman had invented a toast, "That the skins of the Papists should be drumheads for the Yeomanry," and that the framer of that toast had been appointed secretary at the Castle.1 A list was posted against a chapel door at Nenagh, of certain Protestants in the neighborhood, whom the people were desired by no means to injure, but were advised to remember their names.2 A little time will the influence of terror, or their minds are vitiated. show what our tenants mean to do. Tithes are not their real object - they have a much wider view. They want fairly to overturn us. If my house is attacked, we shall all go together, for the bloody ruffians did not leave a dog or a cat alive in the last massacre. I am well assured the Defenders' oath goes to a general massacre of all Protestants."-"Extracts of a letter from Mr. Rolleston, October 26, 1797."-S. P. O. 1 "Letter posted on the door of the Catholic chapel at Nenagh, November 1. Inclosed by Camden to the Duke of Portland."-S. P. O. 2 Ibid. In the condition of the public mind these stories were accepted as truth, reported in the papers, and gained credit even in England. Pelham thought at one time of going over and dragging before the English Parliament the situation in which the Castle was placed. He was deterred by the fear of exasperating further the bitterness between the two countries.1 Camden said that only dreary familiarity with details of outrage and cruelty prevented every one of his dispatches from being filled with accounts "of murders of magistrates, assassinations of informers and yeomen, and conspiracies against persons of rank." 2 Pelham, perhaps, would have been wiser if he had been less cautious. Lord Moria took advantage of the silence of the Irish Government in the midst of the clamor with which it was assailed to come forward a second time as the advocate of the miscreants, whom he represented as victims of Lord Camden's barbarity. He had been in Ireland in the autumn. If he visited his own estates he must have seen that they were the arsenal of the Northern rebels. As the advocate of Irish ideas he conceived, perhaps, that assassins could be best disarmed by caresses. "He had seen in Ireland," Lord Moira said in the English House of Lords, on the 22d of November, "the most disgusting tyranny that any nation ever groaned under, a tyranny creating universal discontent and hatred of the English name." The long nights were the murderers' opportunity; but to Lord Moria it appeared a monstrous thing that General Lake should have ordered the people to stay at home 1 "Pelham to Pitt, November 2."-S. P. O. after dark, or that where lights were seen in cabin windows the patrol should call and order the extinction of them. He appealed to British sentiment, and complained of the revival of the curfew, the badge of ancient slavery. He knew the superstitious horror felt by England for the name of the Inquisition. The Inquisition, he told the Lords, and through the Lords the English world, was in force in Ireland in all its horrors. Persons against whom no crime had been proved were torn from their families, flogged, racked, picketed, and threatened with the gallows. He did not tell the Lords that in no instance were severities resorted to except where the guilt of the parties was accurately known, or that by these means tens of thousands of pikes and muskets had been discovered. General Lake had required the people to surrender their arms. Lord Moira ignored the Insurrection Act, and insisted that the possession of arms was a constitutional right. The people, he said, felt a just indignation when their arms were taken from them, and to punish them for natural resistance was cruel and intolerable. Great Britain was justly jealous of the liberty of the press. Lord Moira forgot to say that the press of Ireland was inviting soldiers to break their military oaths, and was preaching the virtues of tyrannicide. He denounced the brutal soldiery which burst into offices of the journals that exposed their tyranny, and destroyed the printing presses, to prevent the truth from being published. "If the press was interfered with," he said, "the last spark of freedom was extinguished." If Lord Camden's Government continued, "Ireland would not remain five years longer connected with England." It was easy for Lord Grenville, it was easy for |