them to join with this faction that has taken their part at the fairs, and having once formed themselves into a body, they feel they have the power to be mischievous, and under the pretence of regulating wages and all those things, they go on to do what they please."-H. C., 1832, No. 3462.

At the same time it is to be observed that, although factions minister to disturbances, the two evils are not co-extensive. The King's and Queen's Counties have been seriously disturbed during the last five years; but the faction-spirit does not prevail to any great degree in these comparatively civilized parts of the country. On the other hand, Kerry, a wilder and ruder district, has been, on the whole, very free from outrage; but the clannish spirit which belongs to an uncivilized state of society exists in it to a great extent. About two years ago, there was a fight between two rival factions in the neighbourhood of Listowel in Kerry, in which large numbers were engaged, and in which several persons, including some women, were killed with circumstances of great atrocity.

It may, however, be added that the existence of factions has contributed to favour the crime of abduction of unmarried women, which is viewed by the peasantry as a kind of Whiteboy offence. This crime is usually committed as follows: a party of men go by night to the house of the young woman, who is generally a farmer's daughter, with a small fortune, and somewhat above the rank of the intended husband; carry her away by force, and on horseback; and lodge her in some hiding place with the man who intends that she should be his wife. Sometimes the parties are married forthwith; sometimes a communication is made to the father that the man is willing to marry the girl, if her fortune is paid. The father, therefore, finding himself

compelled either to sanction the marriage, or to take back his daughter in an impaired state, usually adopts the former alternative. In every case these abductions, which are sometimes collusive, arise from an interested motive. Their frequency was at one time so great in parts of Ireland as to affect the marrying habits of the population.

Rev. M. Duggan, P.P. of Moyferta, county of Clare.

"Have you known any instances of abduction where the women had no property?—I have not.

"Then if that be so, how do you account for the system of abduction increasing the numbers of marriages among the lower orders of people ?-All those under my observation are of the lower orders, with few exceptions, and who in general had a little money in former years; the facility with which the crime of abduction and an attempt at it, escaped punishment, created apprehension in the body of the people for their daughters, and induced them to dispose of them in marriage before they were hardly arrived at the age of puberty; the practice of marrying young became general, and a subject of imitation, and settled into a fashion, so much so, that it was a reproach on a young girl to exceed twenty before she was married."-H. C., 1824, p. 210.

Abductions of this kind, which in Ireland were at one time not unknown among a higher class than the peasants, have, however, become less frequent of late years*.

*The following description of the condition of the State of the church, at the end of the sixteenth century, affords an example of a state of society in which the clannish spirit is still prevalent among the peasantry. The Scottish clans offer a less precise parallel, as they included the highest as well as the lowest.

"There were still, in some places, especially in Romagna, independent communities of peasants. These were large clans, supposed to be descended from a common stock; lords in their own villages, all armed, well-trained in the use of the arquebuss, for the most part halfsavage. They connected themselves with the different factions in

...

the State of the church. The Cavina, Scarbocci, and Solaroli were Ghibellines; the Manbelli, Cerroni, and Serra were Guelfs. The Serra had in their country a hill which served as a kind of asylum for those who had committed any crime. The most powerful of all were the Cerroni, who also reached over the frontier into the Florentine territory. This clan had split into two branches, Rinaldi and Ravagli, who, in spite of their affinity, were in a state of constant feud. They were in a kind of hereditary connexion not only with the chief families of the cities, but also with jurists, who supported one or the other faction in their litigations. In the whole of Romagna there was no family so powerful that it could not have been easily harmed by these peasants. The Venetians always had an officer among them in order to be sure of their assistance in case of war."-Ranke's Römischen Päpste, vol. i., p. 391.

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CHAPTER V.

EFFECTS OF IRISH DISTURBANCES.

HAVING now explained the character and objects of the local disturbances in Ireland, and the means by which those objects are sought to be attained, it remains to state briefly what are the effects which the operation of this system produces on the several classes of the community who are affected by it.

The existence of a perpetual warfare of the poorer against the upper classes, of tenants against landlords, naturally tends to alienate each class from the other, and to widen and perpetuate the separation which originally caused it. The gentlemen, finding themselves the objects of constant hostility on the part of the peasantry, cannot avoid feeling towards them that distrust and dislike which must grow out of the consciousness of their position. A landowner in a county where the Whiteboy spirit prevails knows that he owes his security only to his means of defence, and sees in every peasant, even in his own labourers, a concealed or a future enemy. The Irish landlords have been often accused of harshness and unkindness to the poor: but so long as the present system prevails, and that they are unable to change it, can we wonder that persons, with the feelings and failings of men, should fall short of the gospel-rule of loving their enemies?

"Whoever (says Chief Justice Bushe) confines his estimate of the consequences of such a confederacy to the mere out

rages and crimes it produces, has, I fear, but superficially examined the subject. Such consequences may be occasional and transient, but the moral influence upon society of such a diseased state of human character must be deep and permanent. -the bad passions let loose, the charities of life extinct, those relations dissevered which between the higher and lower classes are the offspring of reciprocal protection and dependence— confidence displaced by suspicion, and fear and hatred in all classes, vitiating and corroding the heart of man :—these are productive seeds which threaten a fearful growth, and if the mischief be not put down, every reflecting man will look forward to the necessary influence of such a state of things upon the future destinies of Ireland, as operating far beyond the local disturbances of a provincial district *."

The peasantry, on the other hand, experience all the pernicious moral influence which arises from using bad means to accomplish what is considered a good end, and are depraved and even brutalized by the sanguinary and atrocious practices, the cool-blooded assassinations, the mutilations, the beatings, and the burnings, to which they have recourse in order to enforce their law. Many people have wondered at the singular and apparently wanton cruelty which characterizes the Irish crimes: the killing of children, the cutting out of tongues, the mutilation of ears and noses, the cardings and severe beatings, and the shocking maimings of animals, all these betoken a mind thoroughly reckless about the infliction of pain t.

* Maryborough Special Commission, p. 5.

+ Colonel Verner, in his evidence before the Committee on Orange Lodges, in 1835, gives an account of a celebrated outrage committed in 1791, on one of a Protestant colony, founded at Forkhill, in the county of Armagh. "In the attempt to establish this colony (he says) the persons who came to reside there were frequently threatened by the Roman Catholics, and told that they should not come into that part of the country. One of the schoolmasters had also been frequently threatened.