of that county too much justice. Upon the first rumour of the possibility of disturbance, they repaired to their houses. All sects and all religions united themselves, and have checked completely the system. . . . . . Mayo has been disturbed only in a trifling degree, and the rest of Connaught is yet quiet.'1

Other letters from different sources corroborate the statement, that the juries over a great part of Ireland no longer feared to convict, and that many of the worst criminals were detected and punished.2 I must not, however, omit to mention, that there is painful evidence that in at least one county, Orange fanaticism, and the blind passion and resentment produced by a long course of outrages, had begun to invade the law courts. The reader will have noticed a significant sentence in the letter of Lord Camden, which has been just quoted, relating to the Queen's County. This county had usually been one of the most prosperous, peaceful, and apparently best administered in Ireland, and it contained a large resident gentry, but for several weeks parties of savage banditti had been ranging through it by night, attacking and plundering houses, and committing many murders. McNally, though secretly in the pay of the Government, was the favourite advocate of the prisoners, and he wrote from Maryborough an earnest remonstrance to Cooke about the manner in which the trials in this county were conducted.

He wrote, he said, in court, with the shrieks of men, women, and children sounding in his ears. 'Thirteen

1 Camden to Portland, April 23, 1798.

2 See the statements of Cooke and Beresford (Auckland Correspondence, iii. 392, 401.) Beresford says: 'Our gentry have acted well this assizes,

and

I must say the Roman Catholics of property who have been on the juries have done their duty. There was but one man escaped as yet, who, in my opinion, ought not, and that by direction of the judge.'

men have received sentence of death-a sight most piteous, however just, and two of them are to die on Monday. . . . In my opinion, many of the convictions were not so much owing to conclusive evidence, as promptitude of juries, determined on making examples; for the defences set up by the prisoners were treated too often with inattention, laughter, and contempt; everything against them received as truth. In some cases the judge's authority could scarcely preserve the decorum necessary to a court of justice, and this conduct was severely felt, and bitterly complained of by the lower people to those in whom they could confide. I apprehend it has instilled more resentment than terror, and that they consider the sufferers under sentence, objects of vengeance rather than of justice.' In the Queen's County, McNally says, 'the plan of insurrection' was rather of the Defender than of the United Irishman type, though the latter which was politically by far the more dangerous-would probably follow; and the fact that there was no subscription for lawyers to defend the prisoners, proved to him that the northern organisation did not yet exist. He added: "The landed men in this county are strongly connected. In my judgment, they have strength and influence sufficient to quiet the people. Yet I never knew a peasantry bear a more inveterate antipathy to their superiors, owing, as I understand, to great oppressions under which many of them suffer; but I do not say this is general. I observe that in this county, the distinction between Protestant and Papist is more inveterately and invidiously kept up than in any other place. Some gentlemen of fortune wore orange ribands, and some barristers sported orange rings with emblems. Such ensigns of enmity, I assure you, are not conducive to conciliation. Are they necessary to any good purpose? On several of the trials the witnesses were Roman Catholics, and a family of

that persuasion beat and apprehended the leader of a most dangerous gang.'

I will conclude this chapter by a few remarks illustrating the designs and the secret dispositions of the English Government towards Ireland at the eve of the rebellion. There is, I believe, no evidence that they at this time contemplated a legislative Union as likely to be introduced in the immediate future, or even that they had formed any fixed determination that the existing Parliament was to be the last in Ireland. It is indeed abundantly evident, that they looked forward to an Union as the ultimate solution of the Irish question; that with this view they were determined, in accordance with the Irish Government, to maintain unaltered the borough system, which made the Irish Legislature completely subservient to the Executive; and that they wished Catholic emancipation, as well as parliamentary reform, to be adjourned till an Union had been carried. But in none of the confidential correspondence which took place at the time of the election for the Parliament which met at the beginning of 1798, is there, as far as I am aware, any mention of a legislative Union; no opinion appears to have been as yet formed about the time or circumstances of introducing it, and beyond the lines that I have indicated, it is not, I think, true, that English Ministers were directing Irish policy with that object. In general, they allowed the administration of Ireland to be almost wholly shaped by the Irish Government; and even when they interfered with advice, they did so with little energy or persistence. When Fox and Lord Moira introduced into the British Parliament a discussion upon the military outrages, the ministers. replied that those matters were within the sole competence of the Irish Parliament and Government. If they

1 J. W. (Maryborough), April 8, 1798. VOL. IV.

R

resented Sir Ralph Abercromby's order, it was because it was certain to furnish a formidable weapon to the English Opposition; if they opposed an absentee tax, it was chiefly because it would affect men who had great political influence in England. They assisted the Irish Government, by intercepting the correspondence of suspected rebels, and by collecting evidence through confidential agents on the Continent, and they more than once assisted it by loans in the great financial crisis of the war. On the other hand, they insisted that a considerable though much diminished number of lucrative Irish posts should be bestowed on Englishmen, and they wished to make the Irish peerage in some measure a reward for English services. For the rest, they only asked that Ireland should not be an embarrassment; that England should derive trade advantages from her connection with her, and that Ireland should contribute larger forces to carry on the war, than were needed for keeping her in her allegiance.

The advice of the English Government was usually in the direction of moderation, and especially in the sense of conciliating the Catholics. To separate as much as possible the Catholics from the Dissenters, and the Catholic question from the question of reform, was for some considerable time the keynote of the Irish policy of Portland. He was much struck with the fact that Protestant Ulster was the most disaffected of the four provinces; that at least five-sixths of the leaders of the United Irishmen were Protestants; that Munster, though now profoundly disturbed, had shown itself perfectly loyal during the French expedition at the end of 1796; that Connaught, the most purely Catholic province in Ireland, was the one province which was still almost untainted. He believed with good reason that the genius of the Catholic Church was essentially opposed to the revolutionary spirit, and that the higher

clergy, at least, were sincere in their hostility to it, and he probably hoped that the influence of the Papacy might contribute something to the peace of Ireland.

The great French war which was raging, had among its other consequences produced, for the first time since the Revolution of 1688, a close and friendly communication between the English Government and the Vatican. In 1794 the 12th Lancers had gone from Corsica to Civita Vecchia, where they remained for three months, mounted guard, and discharged other garrison duty. Their officers were presented to Pius VI., who took one of their helmets in his hands and blessed it, and who on the departure of the regiment gave each commissioned officer a gold medal, and each non-commissioned officer a silver one, as an expression of his gratitude for the excellent behaviour of the English troops. Lord Hood's fleet, when excluded from the other ports in the Mediterranean, was, with the approval of the Pope, provisioned in the Papal dominions.2 Burke at this time strongly urged the policy of establishing a formal diplomatic connection with Rome. 'I would,' he wrote, 'if the matter rested with me, enter into much more distinct and avowed political connections with the Court of Rome, than hitherto we have held. If we decline them, the bigotry will be on our part, and not on that of his Holiness. Some mischief has happened, and

1 See Cannon's Historical Records of the British Army, 12th Royal Lancers, p. 19. Sir J. Hippisley, Substance of Additional Observations intended to have been delivered in the House of Commons on May 13 or 14, 1805, pp. 93, 94; Hippisley's Statement of Facts presented to Pius VII. pp. 73, 74; Bullen's Historical Outlines of Political

Catholicism, pp. 92, 93. In 1799 British sailors cleared the Papal dominions of their enemies the French, and British marines were sentries at Rome till the evacuation by the French.

2 Sir J. Hippisley, Substance of a Speech on the Motion of the Right Hon. H. Grattan, April 24, 1812 (with appendix), pp. 102-104.