Since the troubles here alluded to (which originating in the Courtenay estate in the county of Limerick, spread over that and other adjoining counties, and lasted for several years), there have been the disturbances of the Terry Alts in the counties of Limerick and Clare, in the spring of 1831; and at a later period, the serious outrages which prevailed chiefly in the county of Kilkenny, and the King's and Queen's Counties, and which gave rise to the Coercion Act passed in 1833; renewed, with some alterations, in 1834, and finally reduced to a milder measure in 1835 (5 and 6 Wm. IV., c. 48). 45 CHAPTER II. THE Irish House of Commons resolutely abstained from instituting any inquiry into the causes of the tumults among the peasantry in the last forty years before the Union*; nor was it till the year 1824 that the local disturbances in Ireland were made the subject of a systematic parliamentary inquiry. Select Committees of both Houses of Parliament were appointed in that year to inquire into the nature of the Irish disturbances; and having continued their labours in the following session, they collected a great mass of valuable evidence, on this and other questions connected with the state of Ireland. A Committee of the House of Commons in 1832, to whom a petition from the King's County, praying for a renewal of the Insurrection Act, was referred, likewise made an extensive inquiry into the causes and character of the disturbances in question. The investigations of these three Committees (together with the Papers on the state of Ireland laid on the table of both Houses of Parliament in 1834) have almost exhausted the subject; and little now remains to be done, except to arrange and comment upon the evidence which has been thus obtained. In undertaking this task, I propose to consider the question under two general heads; viz., 1st, the causes of Irish * See 7th Irish Debates, pp. 37-8. The House even went so far in 1764 as to suppress a Report on the late insurrections in the North, which had been actually prepared, and which the Chairman of the Committee had begun to read. Irish Debates in 1763 and 1764, vol. ii. pp. 663-6. bodies, throwing down fences, rooting up orchards, cutting down trees, destroying bullocks, and doing various injuries to property. The general character of their proceedings may be collected from the preamble of an Irish Act passed in 1775, "to prevent and punish tumultuous risings of persons," (commonly called the Whiteboy Act,) which recites that— "It has frequently happened of late years, in different parts of this kingdom, that several persons calling themselves Whiteboys, and others, as well by night as in the daytime, have in a riotous, disorderly, and tumultuous manner, assembled together, and have abused and injured the persons, habitations, and properties of many of his Majesty's loyal and faithful subjects, and have taken away and carried away their horses and arms, and have compelled them to surrender up, quit, and leave their habitations, farms, and places of abode; and have, with threats and violence, imposed sundry oaths and solemn declarations contrary to law, and solicited several of his Majesty's subjects, by threats and promises, to join with them in such their mischievous and iniquitous proceedings; and have also sent threatening and incendiary letters to several persons, to the great terror of his Majesty's peaceable subjects; and have taken upon themselves to obstruct the exportation of corn, grain, meal, malt and flour, and to destroy or damage the same when intended for exportation; and have also destroyed mills, granaries, and storehouses provided for the keeping of corn; which, if not effectually prevented, must become dangerous to the general peace of this kingdom and his Majesty's government therein." It appears, both from this recital and from accounts of particular outrages, that from the very beginning * This is stated by Crawford, vol. ii., p. 318. The Whiteboys of 1762 destroyed bullocks with the same view that the Terry Alts of 1832 turned up grass land, viz., in order that the ground being under tillage might be let at a cheaper rate for setting potatoes. 15 & 16 Geo. III., c. 21. the Whiteboys used the same means for enforcing their will as have since been unhappily so common in Ireland; intimidation, by threatening notices, of persons who refused to join their combination, or who disobeyed their orders; and punishment for disobedience by destruction of property, personal violence or murder. The singular cruelty which has characterized the combinations of Ireland appears very early in the proceedings of the Whiteboys. Thus we are told that they ordered a peasant at Cappoquin to refund some money upon pain of having his tongue drawn through his under-jaw, and fastened with a skewer*. The following affidavit of William Abraham, a Protestant farmer of Bohereed, in Queen's County, sworn before a justice of that county on the 27th December, 1774, may probably be relied on as a statement of the means then employed by some of the Whiteboys : "That a report had prevailed for some time that the Whiteboys intended to carry off examinant the night of the 15th instant; that a party of them, blowing horns, and armed with muskets, and dressed in white shirts and frocks, entered his house, and put him behind one of them on horseback; that his wife, endeavouring to prevent their doing so, received a stroke of a musket in the small of the back; that before examinant was mounted, they gave him a violent blow in the head with the lock and hammer of a gun, which inflicted a deep wound therein, and rendered him stupid and senseless; they carried him off mounted behind one of them, with only his breeches and a loose great coat on; that in their progress, they beat, battered, and abused him with their guns, and the man behind whom he rode wounded him severely in the legs, with long nails in his heels, commonly called heel spurs. They carried him ten miles off, to a place near Ballyconra, where * Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxxii, p. 182, quoted above, p. 5. ears, they held a consultation whether they should cut out his tongue, or pull out his eyes; and at last agreed to cut off his which they did with circumstances of great barbarity; that after having administered to him many unlawful oaths, they buried him up to his chin, though mangled, in a grave lined with furze*.” pro The following is Arthur Young's account of the ceedings of the Whiteboys, soon after their first appear ance : "It was a common practice with them to go in parties about the country, swearing many to be true to them, and forcing them to join by menaces, which they very often carried into execution. At last they set up to be general redressers of grievances, punished all obnoxious persons, and having taken the administration of justice into their own hands, were not very exact in the distribution of it, forced masters to release their apprentices, carried off the daughters of rich farmers, ravished them into marriages, of which four instances happened in a fortnight. They levied sums of money on the middling and lower farmers, in order to support their cause, by paying attornies, &c., in defending prosecutions against them; and many of them subsisted for some years without work, supported by these contributions. Sometimes they committed several considerable robberies, breaking into houses, and taking the money under pretence of redressing grievances. In the course of these outrages, they burnt several houses, and destroyed the whole substance of men obnoxious to them. The barbarities they committed were shocking. One of their usual punishments (and by no means the most severe), was taking people out of their beds, carrying them naked in winter on horseback for some distance, and burying them up to their chin in a hole filled with briars, not forgetting to cut off one of their ears. In this manner the evil existed for eight or ten * Musgrave's Rebellions in Ireland, Appendix I., 8. Crawford, vol. ii., p. 241, states that the Whiteboys placed men quite naked on horseback, on saddles covered with the skins of hedgehogs. |