which he had joined only from a vague instinct of selfpreservation.

We must moreover guard against an error, not unfrequently committed, of attributing to insurgents a fixed design, and a consistent course of policy. We see how wavering and changeable are the plans even of settled governments; the members of which can openly meet, and discuss their intended proceedings; who are always supplied with early and authentic intelligence; who have every facility of communication; and whose proceedings are necessarily limited in great measure by traditionary constitutional maxims, by the routine of office, and by the various barriers with which custom and opinion have hemmed in the path of a government. How much less unity of purpose and consistency of action is to be expected in bands of ignorant peasants, unaccustomed to the management of business, meeting only by stealth and at long intervals, unable to communicate with one another, and scantily supplied with information; when they rise in small scattered bodies over a considerable tract of country. In Wat Tyler's rebellion, when the peasants of Kent rose, in order to shake off the burdens of villeinage, and, after their first success, marched to London, they are said to have meditated the destruction of all nobles, judges, lawyers, bishops, legal documents, &c.; projects which, Rapin observes, they probably made over their cups when on their way to London. The peasantry of Ireland, like the villeins of Kent, have doubtless been conscious of intolerable suffering on account of their relation to the owners of the soil, and they have organized a system of self-protection, in order to shake off this immediate and pressing evil; but they have

never raised their minds to the contemplation of so lofty an object as the triumph of a religious creed, more than, in the rebellion of 1798, they were able to comprehend the meaning of political liberty, which they were told was to be the result of their success*.

Finally, it may be remarked, in reference to the supposed influence of religious feelings on the conduct of the Irish Whiteboys, that there appears to be a disposition to attribute insurrections of the peasantry rather to the mistaken religious zeal of the insurgents themselves, than to the real cause, the oppression of their masters or landlords. The insurrection of the Bagaudæ in Gaul, in 287 A.D., has been attributed by some modern writers to the opposition of the new christianity to paganism t. Wat Tyler's rebellion has been referred by Catholic historians to the influence of Wycliffe's doctrines; and the German peasants' war in 1525 has been repeatedly imputed to Luther's writings and the Reformation§. On the other hand, it is insinuated that the risings in England in the time of Edward VI. (of which the declared object was to prevent the enclosure of commons) arose, if not wholly, in great part at least, from the distaste of the people for the recent changes in religion. Explanations of this kind appear in general to be the efforts of a sectarian spirit to throw discredit on a heterodox form of

* See above, p. 38, note.

Wachsmuth, Aufstände der Bauer im Mittelalter, in Raumer's Historiches Taschenbuch for 1834, p. 288.

Lingard's History of England, vol. iv. p. 236, 238. See Wachsmuth,

p. 374.

§ Pfisters Geschichte der Teutschen, vol. iv. p. 72.

|| Lingard's History of England, vol. vii. p. 57-61. It certainly appears (and the difference is remarkable, as bearing on the history of the reformation in the two countries) that Protestantism was the popular cause in Germany, whereas the converse was the case in England.

religion, by imputing to it mischievous temporal effects. Even if the agitation produced by the recent religious changes may have unsettled the minds of the English and German peasants in the sixteenth century, and rendered them prone to insurrection, it is clear that their movements were exclusively directed to worldly objects, and that if they had no economical grievances, the religious excitement would never have driven them to take up the sword.

Before we close this part of the subject, it may be proper to advert to the alleged connexion between Whiteboy disturbances in Ireland and political agitation. Those persons who seek to represent all the evils of Ireland as springing from Catholicism, either as a religious system or as a political party, are fond of attributing local disturbances to the discontent produced by the speeches and writings of the Catholic leaders. If no weight is to be allowed to Mr. O'Connell's repeated disclaimers of any desire to promote Whiteboy outrages; if no weight is to be attributed to such documents as Dr. Doyle's Address to the People against the Whitefeet and the Blackfeet; it may at least be expected that persons who require additional evidence will be satisfied if it can be shown, that the leaders of the Catholic party have no interest in fomenting these crimes. The great strength of the Catholic party in Ireland consists in their legal combination to carry their own objects, or, at the most, in their legal resistance to the law. This combination and this passive resistance are organized by persons of a high class, and are intended to produce results which will affect the rich far more than the poor. On the other hand, the weakness of the Catholic party in Ireland consists in the turbulence of the peasantry, which

enables the Government to direct severe coercive measures against them, and which exposes them to the imputation of savageness and atrocity, and thus throws a discredit on the whole Catholic body. Nobody, who considers the state of Ireland without party bias, can doubt that Mr. O'Connell is perfectly sincere in exhorting and imploring the poor Catholics (as he has frequently done) to abstain from crime and outrage. When Dr. Doyle told his diocesans, that "he had witnessed with the deepest affliction of spirit the progress of illegal combinations under the barbarous designation of Whitefeet and Blackfeet;" that "he had laboured by letter and by word, by private admonition and by public reproof, to arrest and to suppress this iniquity;" when he "instructed the faithful, that whosoever assists, encourages, aids, or abets the Whitefeet, Blackfeet, &c., by command, advice, consent, by praise or flattery, becomes an accomplice in their guilt, and a partner in their crimes *;" he was as earnest and sincere as when he openly called on the people to resist the payment of all dues to the Established Church, and prayed that "their hatred of tithes might be as lasting as their love of justice." The scattered, intermitting, and (as Mr. O'Connell calls them) driftless acts of outrage which are committed by the Whiteboys, can have no tendency to weaken the Protestant party, and only serve to prejudice the Catholic cause t. In fact, the

* Dr. Doyle's Admonition to the Clergy and People within the Dioceses of Kildare and Leighlin.-H. C., 1832. App. ix., p. 116. See also the Pastoral Letters of Irish Catholic Bishops, mentioned above, p. 30.

It was with this feeling that Mr. O'Conor, in a letter to Dr. Curry, written in March, 1763, said, “I lament, for the sake of all our people, the new insurrection in Munster. I think, however, that it must be soon over."-O'Conor's Hist. of the Irish Cath., Part I., p. 303.

great difficulty which the advocates of that cause have had to contend with, is not so much the weakness of their case as the bad character of their clients. They have had to struggle not only against the hostility of party men to their religious tenets, but also against the repugnance of moderate men to the violence and brutality too often apparent in the outrages of the Catholic peasantry. It would be strange, indeed, if they sought by apparently sincere exhortations to lead their followers into a course which they thought pernicious to themselves, but which was in fact beneficial.

That the subordinate persons who carry on the work of political agitation in the country are not spared by the Whiteboys, is testified by Colonel Johnson.

"Do you think there is any connexion between the Whitefeet in Queen's County and those you denominate demagogues? -I think they are led by them.

"Do you think the demagogues advise them to break the law? They tell them not to break the law, but I have no doubt they sincerely wish them to do it.

"Have not some of the demagogues suffered in their property? Yes, some of them have.

"Is it likely they would instigate them to do that by which they would be sufferers?-1 do not think they contemplated they should be attacked; but, by courting popularity, they thought they were making friends for themselves.

66

It has turned out the reverse ?—Yes.

"Have not those individuals you think in some degree the authors, and remotely the promoters, of this mischief, suffered themselves?—Yes, they have.

66

Have they been attacked in their houses?—Yes; and some of the farmer agitators in the Queen's County are the most oppressive people in the country.

"Have they been served with notices?—Yes.

"What have they been desired to do?-To treat their