BOOK 1795. be against landlord oppression, they had a more immediate quarrel with the Catholic tenants who had been intruded into the Antrim farms over the heads of so many of themselves. The spread of Defenderism and the fierce eagerness of the Catholics to obtain arms aggravated their suspicions, and the devilish outbreak of ferocity in the mutilators of the Barclay family had already determined the best of them to shut their ears to the United Irishmen, and refuse to help forward an insurrection which was too likely to turn, like its predecessors, into universal massacre. The effects of the recall of Fitzwilliam in the Catholic provinces were still more alarming. The Defenders, who were all Catholics, fell back into an attitude of open defiance. Defender lodges were formed in every county in the island, and the Catholic peasantry were universally sworn in. The blacksmiths went to work to hammer pikes. Private houses were again entered in search of guns and muskets. Two thousand stand of arms were taken in Roscommon alone. In Longford in eight months there were one hundred and fifty-seven robberies and murders. Stray parties of militia were set upon and plundered. A revenue officer and nine men were waylaid and killed, and the bodies were horribly mutilated.1 A deadly and determined spirit was silently spreading, to which even the well-affected did not dare to refuse obedience. Servants left their places with tears in their eyes, telling their employers they were afraid to remain with them. These symptoms were frightfully suggestive. The 1 'Pelham to the Duke of Portland, April 27.' 'Account of the insurrection in Roscommon, for warded by Lord Camden, May 1795.' S. P. O. massacre of 1641 had not yet been resolved into a legend by steady lying and sentimental credulity. It remained in the memory of every Irish Protestant a definite and dreadful fact, which might recur if opportunity served; in Armagh and Antrim especially the small Protestant farmers combined, in fear and exasperation, to disarm in time the Catholics settled among themselves; and at last, when nothing else would serve, to expel them out of Ulster and force them to return into the South. The friends of liberty made the air ring with eloquent shrieks. Protestant girls might be ravished. Protestant farmers and gentry might be murdered. No matter. It was but punishment overtaking tyranny. When a Catholic was injured by a Protestant, the very heart of humanity was invited to bleed. To such persons it did not occur to enquire why the Catholics, who were forbidden to possess arms, were in such haste to obtain them. But the question occurred very strongly to the Protestants, in the midst of whom these persons were living. When they found and felt that they were in the midst of a conspiracy which was enveloping the island, they resolved naturally that they would not be caught sleeping a second time. If they were rough, violent, and unscrupulous, the blame lay most with those who had brought Ireland into incipient insurrection. Such a temper was a formidable obstacle to Wolfe Tone and his friends. They could carry with them. the city mob at Belfast, but Jacobin clerks and shopboys were poor creatures beside the rugged and determined countrymen. Many an effort had been made to compose the feud between the two wings of the intended army of insurrection. After two CHAP. II. 1795. BOOK 1795. years of exertion, Tone believed that he had accomplished his object. On the 18th of September a peace was formally signed at Portadown between the Peepof-day Boys and the Defenders, and the hatchet was apparently buried. But the incongruous elements were drawn together only for a more violent recoil. The very same day, Mr. Atkinson, one of the Protestant subscribers, was shot at. The day following a party of Protestants were waylaid and beaten. On the 21st both parties collected in force, and at a village in Tyrone, from which the event took the name by which it is known, was fought the battle of the Diamond. The Protestants won the day, though far outnumbered. Eight-and-forty Defenders were left dead on the field, and the same evening was established the first lodge of an institution which was to gather into it in succeeding years all that was best and noblest in Ireland. The name of Orangemen had long existed. It had been used by loyal Protestants to designate those of themselves who adhered most faithfully to the principles of 1688. Threatened now with a general Catholic insurrection, with the Executive authority powerless, and determined, at all events, not to offer the throats of themselves and their families to the Catholic knife, they organized themselves into a volunteer police to prevent murder, to see the law put in force which forbade the Catholics to be armed, and to awe into submission the roving bands of assassins who were scaring sleep from the bedside of every Protestant household. They became the abhorrence of traitors, whose designs they thwarted. The Government looked askance at a body of men who interfered with the time-honoured policy of overcoming sedition by tenderness and soft II. 1795. ness of speech.1 But the lodges grew and multiplied. CHAP. Honest men of all ranks sought admission to them as into spontaneous vigilance committees to supply the place of the constabulary which ought to have been, but was not, established; and if they did their work with some roughness and irregularity, the work nevertheless was done. By the spring of 1797, they could place twenty thousand men at the disposition of the authorities. In 1798 they filled the ranks of the yeomanry, and beyond all other influences the Orange organization counteracted and thwarted the progress of the United Irishmen in Ulster, and when the moment of danger arrived had broken the right arm of insurrection. 1 Lord Camden took the most unfavourable view of the Orange men: 'A spirit of another kind,' he said, 'has manifested itself in Armagh. The Protestants in that county, finding themselves the most numerous, have been induced to commit acts of the greatest outrage and barbarity against their Catholic neighbours; and, notwithstanding the exertions of Government, the BOOK IX. BOOK 1795. CHAPTER I. THE FRENCH AT BANTRY. SECTION I. THERE are persons who believe that if the King had not interfered with Lord Fitzwilliam, the Irish Catholics would have accepted gratefully the religious equality which he was prepared to offer them, and would have remained thenceforward for all time contented citizens of the British Empire. There are those also who say that if Fitzwilliam had not been sent to give them encouragement, they would not have entertained the hopes the disappointment of which drove them into rebellion. To the careful student of Irish history these positions are alike incredible. The Catholic cannot be content with equality when he can command ascendency. The Irish patriot sets his heart on separation from England, and values political concessions only as advancing his parallels nearer to the citadel which he means to storm; and though Fitzwilliam may have precipitated the crisis, a convulsion became inevitable from the moment that England allowed the Catholics of Ireland to see that she was afraid of them. Humble and even abject so long as she dared assert her strength, they pressed |