corthy, horses were provided without any disagreeable circumstances, by the exertions of the Rev. William Eastwood, a magistrate, and the prudent conduct of Lieutenant Mahoni.*

Discontents rose high on account also of the militia bill, which enacted compulsory levies of soldiers for the internal defence of the kingdom. On a return of the names of the males in each district of the military age, lots were drawn, and those on whom the chance fell, were obliged to enlist as soldiers for four years, to find substitutes, or to pay fines. Some individuals, unable to pay, sustained the seizure and sale of their goods; and some for intemperate expressions of discontent were committed to gaol. To make the burthen bear more equally, subscriptions were generally proposed and adopted to raise money for the enlisting of soldiers; and these subscriptions were for the time a heavy tax on peasants and citizens; but it was only temporary-for when this new species of army was once embodied, small bounties were found suffi

When a man would solicit employment, at the rate of two shillings a day for himself and his horse, in the drawing of lime from the distance of ten miles, which is the case in my neighbourhood, and yet would avoid, by every possible evasion, the drawing of military baggage, in which his earnings. would be at least three times as great, we cannot suppose this preference to be without a cause. This cause arises from the inattention of officers, and the defective discipline of soldiers.

cient to entice recruits for the filling of augmentations, or vacancies.

Not relying wholly on its force at home, the chiefs of the society made application to the French government; and in April, 1796, an invasion of Ireland was promised by the latter for the subversion of the British power in Ireland, and the political disruption of this island from Britain. The offer was accepted, on condition that the invading army should act as auxiliaries under the direction and pay of the society, which, on becoming possessed of the dominion, should be bound to re-imburse the whole expences of the armament.*

The vigilance of government penetrated the design of internal hostility and external alliance; and as the existing laws were totally inadequate to stop the progress of the conspiracy, new powers were conceded by the legislature to the executive administration. In October, 1796, parliament suspended the law of Habeas Corpus, and thereby gave authority to imprison obnoxious persons without cause assigned, or definite period of trial. In the spring of the same year also, a temporary law, termed the Insurrection Act, had passed, levelled immediately against an irregular confederacy of men, who, under the name of defenders, infested the counties of Ros

Appendix to the report, &c. Nos. 6 and 31.

common, Leitrim, Longford, Meath, and Kildare, despoiling in the night the peaceable inhabitants of their arms, and latterly also of their money and valuable effects. By this act the lord lieutenant in council was authorized to proclaim, on the requisition of seven of its magistrates, assembled at a sessions of the peace, any county or district thereof, as in a state of disturbance, and thereby to invest the magistrates with an extraordinary power of seizing, imprisoning, and sending aboard his majesty's fleet, such persons as should be found at unlawful assemblies, or otherwise acting so as to threaten the public tranquillity.

The operation of these temporary laws was forcibly felt in the latter part of this, and in the course of the following year. Considerable numbers of gentlemen, or persons in respectable situations of life, were arrested on private informations of their engagement in the conspiracy, and lodged in prison, many for a great length of time without opportunity of trial. Many districts in the northern counties were proclaimed, and numbers of the lower classes of men sent on board of the king's navy.

These acts of severity, apparently inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution, were not without cause. A contest, or. trial of strength, scems to have arisen between the existing government and the association, which of the

two should overpower the other. Each vigorous measure, adopted on one side, excited another to counteract it on the opposite. To furnish themselves with arms, the lower classes, like the defenders, assembled in parties in the night, and disarmed those whom they regarded as the adherents of government. To save the produce of the soil to their friends in prison, and to testify their attachment to the gentlemen of their party, or those whom they imagined not hostile to their cause, they met in large bodies in the day to dig out the potatoes and reap the corn of several individuals. The greatness of the numbers assembled on these occasions, much exceeding what the specified purposes required; (for in some instances four or five thousand were said to be collected in one body)-their marching with music in a sort of military order, and their assembling on such other pretences as funerals and matches of football, gave cause to suspect that the real object of these meetings was to accustom the men to a readiness in repairing to appointed places of convention, to give confidence to their own party, and to intimidate their opponents. To frustrate the operations of the law, terror and bribery were employed with its agents. Various modes of persecution, and even sometimes assassination, were put in practice against magistrates who exerted themselves to arrest the members of the conspiracy, wit

nesses who appeared against them in courts of justice, and jurors who found them guilty; while the pecuniary subscriptions of the association were partly applied to assist the families of its imprisoned members, to bribe witnesses in trials, and to fee the most eminent pleaders of the law.

Acts of a violent and menacing nature in some of the northern counties, particularly the stealing of ten barrels of gunpowder out of the royal stores in Belfast, are specified in a proclamation of the lord lieutenant and council, bearing date the sixth of November, 1796, in which all magistrates and loyal subjects were strictly commanded to use their best endeavours for the prevention or punishment of such dangerous and treasonable proceedings; orders having been previously issued to the military officers to assist the civil in the execution of this duty. Notwithstanding the enforcement of this proclamation, the United Irish of Ulster would have obtained and employed the means of insurrection, if the French forces, embarked at Brest, for the invasion of Ireland, had effected their landing at Bantry-bay, where they arrived near the end of December in the same year. While the debarkation of the French army, stated at fifteen thousand in number, was prevented by a storm which divided the fleet, the exertions of the society to second the invasion were prevented by