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CHAP. ishment. As this measure seemed not adequate to the end proposed, a proclamation from the chief governor was issued on the seventeenth of May, declaring the civil power inefficacious; the most effectual orders to have been sent to the military officers to use their utmost exertions for the suppression of treason and the king's most gracious pardon to be tendered to all such as, on or before the twentyfourth of June, should surrender to the magistrates, take the oath of allegiance, and if bail should be required, enter into recognizance for their future good behaviour. From pardon were excepted men guilty of some specified crimes. The proclamation was followed by orders from earl Carhampton, the chief commander, to the military officers to act without waiting for any authority from the civil power.

The houses and effects of those, who produced not the arms supposed to be in their possession, were consumed with fire by the troops, or plundered; and many persons to force a discovery were tortured by the picket or other instruments of pain. If the guilty alone had been sufferers, less might be regretted the suspension of civil government. But from undisciplined troops, with inexperienced officers, many of them fencibles and of low education, could accuracy of conduct be expected, when restraint was removed? Can we suppose informers to be always honest, malice to be never a spring of action, and military men to be never actuated by unfounded prejudice or caprice? When homicide

was

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was unpunished, the instances were too numerous. CHA P. A colonel Sparrow, found guilty, by a jury, of a remarkable murder, produced the king's pardon. The destruction of property, particularly in the commercial and wealthy town of Belfast, where military licence was rudely exercised, was prodigious, and the distress of ruined families, afforded a subject of melancholy reflexion. I have been assured by respectable men of undoubted loyalty, that the behaviour of some troops in Ulster, particularly a fencible regiment of Welch cavalry, called the Ancient Britons, seemed calculated to excite a rebellion, if none had been intended. That still more disorders were not committed is honourable to the officers of some regiments. Government acted doubtless on a conviction of a plan of revolt in that quarter, being so firmly consolidated, as to be capable of being broken by no other means than military execution; and on the maxim, that we should not scruple at partial evil for the attainment of a general good. The idea may have been just, but the dilemma was lamentable.

By private informations a plan of general insurrection had been discovered, intended to have taken place in Ulster before the end of June. But so many efficient members of the union were by acts of rigour forced into prison, exile, or inaction, that the system was disorganized, and except a trifling commotion near the mountains in the county of Down, rebellion was prevented. The term of surrendry and pardon was by proclamation prolonged to the

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CHAP. twenty-fourth of July. The inferior societies of the United Irish in that quarter discontinued in general their meetings, and their provincial committee became incomplete. Order was so far restored that the administration of justice was again committed to the civil power, and after August the interference of the military was in general discontinued. A smothered resentment was retained, however, by numbers, which on a future opportunity would have exploded with rueful force, if preventive circumstances had not fortunately intervened. Not discouraged by their present failure in the northern province, the leaders of the union were extending their system with zeal and assiduity in the southern and western parts. Their organization had assumed a military form, and was new-modelled in the August of this year. To particularize the several changes in the system is unnecessary, and to give briefly the general outline sufficient.

Organization of the

1797.

The association consisted of a multitude of sociIrish Union. eties, linked closely together, and ascending in gradation, like the component parts of a pyramid or cone, to a common apex or point of union. The lowest or simple societies consisted at most of twelve men each, as nearly as possible of the same neighbourhood, subject to the inspection one of another. An assembly of five secretaries, severally elected by five simple societies, formed a lower baronial committee, which had the immediate superintendence of these five societies. Ten delegates, elected one from each of ten lower baronial, composed an upper ba

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rational committee, which in like manner directed CHAP: the business of these ten lower committees. With the same superintendence over their constituent assemblies, delegates from the upper baronial, one deputed from each, formed in the counties country committees, and in populous towns district committees. The provincial committees, one for each of the four provinces, were composed of delegates from the district, and county committees, two from each, in some cases three. The supreme command was committed to an executive directory, composed of five persons unknown to all except the four secretaries of the provincial committees; for they were elected by ballot in these committees; the secretaries of which alone examined the ballots, and notified the election to none beside the persons themselves on whom it fell. The orders of this hidden directing power were conveyed through the whole organized body by not easily discoverable channels of communication. By one member only of the directory were carried the mandates to one member of each provincial committee, by the latter severally to the secretaries of the district and county committees in the province, by these secretaries to those of the upper baronials, and thus downward through the lower baronial to the simple societies,

tary organi

The military organization was grafted on the Its mili civil. The secretary of each of the simple societies zation. was its non-commissioned officer, serjeant, or corporal. The delegate of five simple societies to a lower baronial committee was commonly captain over 4 a 3

these

CHAP these five, that is, of a company of sixty men; and XLI. the delegate of ten lower baronial to an upper, or

Extension of the asso

ciation.

1797.

district committee, was generally colonel of a battalion of six hundred men, composed of the fifty simple societies under the superintendance of this upper committee. Out of three persons, whose names were transmitted from the colonels of each county to the directory, one was appointed by that body to act as adjutant-general of the county. To complete, the scheme, a military committee was appointed by the directory, but not before the beginning of the following year, to contrive plans for the direction of the national force, in unaided rebellion or co-operation with an invading army. All the members of the union were ordered to furnish themselves with guns or pikes according to their ability. To form a pecuniary fund for the expences of this revolutionary plan, monthly subscriptions, according to the zeal and circumstances of the mem→ bers, were collected in the several societies, and treasurers appointed by suffrage for their collection and disbursement.

In the May of 1797, the number of men in Ul ster enrolled as members of the society amounted to nearly a hundred thousand. The main strength of the union lay then in that province and in the metropolis, with the neigbouring counties of Kildare, Meath, Westmeath, and King's county. To other parts of the kingdom, where little progress had as yet been made, more emissaries were dispatched, instructed to work on the passions and prejudices

of