Geographical distribution of the different persuasions Inapplicability of the voluntary principle in Ireland, on account of the poverty of the Catholics 408 ERRATA. Page 37 line 9, for bodies read body. Page 149 line 9, for exclusively read almost exclusively. IRISH DISTURBANCES. INTRODUCTION. For the last seventy years Ireland has been the scene of constantly recurring disturbances; sometimes consisting only of the murder of a few persons, or the burning of a few houses, and sometimes rising to general insurrection. Successive governments have apparently exhausted every means in their power to suppress the evil, but without success. The statutebook has been loaded with the severest laws; the country has been covered with military and police; capital punishment has been unsparingly inflicted; Australia has been crowded with transported convicts; and all to no purpose. Committees and Commissions have collected piles of evidence; the most various plans of policy have been recommended by different persons; some have attributed the turbulence of the inferior Irish to their inherent barbarism; some to their religion; some to their hatred of England; some to their poverty; some to their want of education. Much new legislation has been tried, and in vain in a large part of Ireland there is still less security of person and property than in any other part of Europe, except perhaps the wildest districts of Calabria or Greece: and there are persons who altogether despair of establishing permanent tranquillity in Ireland, and who think that it is an exception to all the ordinary rules of government. Such reasoners sometimes even push their political fatalism so far as to conceive that there is an innate and indelible tendency in the Irish to disturbance and outrage; that Ireland has been cut off by nature : B from the rest of the civilized world, and been foredoomed to a state of endless disorder; so desponding, indeed, is their language, that they almost seem to view the Irish people in the same light as Don Juan d'Aguila, the Spanish commander, who (as we are told by Lord Bacon) after the battle of Kinsale, "said in open treaty, that when the Devil upon the mount did show Christ all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them, he did not doubt but the Devil left out Ireland, and kept it for himself *" At a time when many questions affecting the welfare of Ireland are under public discussion, and are likely soon to occupy a large portion of the attention of the legislature, it seems desirable that some attempt should be made to ascertain the true causes and nature of the disturbances in question; and to discover whether there is anything so extraordinary in the character of the poorer classes in Ireland as to bid defiance to the best established rules of legislation; or whether the appearances alluded to may not be explained without supposing any deviation from the general course of human nature. With this view, I propose, in the first place, to trace the history of the various local disturbances which prevailed in Ireland in the latter half of the last century (so far as the imperfect accounts of them given by contemporary writers will permit), and next, fully to explain, by means of evidence taken by several parliamentary committees, the nature of these disturbances, which have continued, with partial interruptions, but unaltered character, from about the accession of Geo. III. to the present day. * Of a war with Spain: Bacon's Works, vol. v. p. 276.-Ed. Montagu. CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF IRISH LOCAL DISTURBANCES FROM 1760 TO THE PRESENT DAY. By the settlement of Ireland after the revolution of 1688, the power of the new government was so firmly established, that no combined movement took place in favour of the ancient dynasty, not even during the Scottish rebellions of 1715 and 1745*. The system * The feeling so long and so ardently entertained by the Jacobites of Scotland in favour of the family of their former princes, did not prevail in Ireland to anything like an equal extent, notwithstanding the large numbers of Catholics in the latter country. "As to the Pretender (says Swift, in his 7th Drapier's Letter, written soon after 1724) his cause is both desperate and obsolete. There are very few now alive who were men in his father's time, and in that prince's interest; and in all others the obligation of conscience has no place. Even the papists in general, of any substance or estate, and their priests, almost universally are what we call Whigs, in the sense which by that word is generally understood." Vol. vii. p. 46. ed. Scott. "It is notorious (says Plowden, Hist. Review, vol. i. p. 336), that when Murray, the Pretender's secretary, gave up all the letters and papers relative to the last rebellion in Scotland, a scheme which had been planning and contriving for seven years before, it plainly appeared that the Jacobite party had no dependence upon, or connexion or correspondence with, any Roman Catholic in Ireland; the very name of that kingdom not having been once mentioned throughout the whole correspondence." Dr. Campbell, in his Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland, published in 1777, speaking of the common people of Athlone, says, "Curious to learn their sentiments as well as manners, I have entered into conversation with them as often as possible, and I could not find them so much attached to the house of Stuart as I apprehended. They have frequently spoke of James II. with indignation. He called the Irish cowards, and said that all was lost through their fault at the battle of the Boyne this they have not forgot, and do not fail to recriminate; they brand him with a name the most opprobrious in their language, and expressive of the most dastardly cowardice. Some of them have said to : |