By the Union, carried in 1800, it was intended that a more equal system of government should be introduced into Ireland; by which the motives for resistance to the English influence would be weakened. The policy of its authors, though tardily and imperfectly followed, was at length adopted under the pressure of necessity; and the plan of administration pursued since the Union has at least prevented the existence of such widespreading discontent and disaffection as prevailed in Ireland at the end of the last century.

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The Union, however, only affected the surface of the Irish community; the under-currents of society still flowed in their former directions. To the peer or landholder, who lost his place in parliament; to the barrister, who found his profession inconsistent with a seat in an English House of Commons; to the various persons who were concerned in the management of liamentary majorities, the distribution of places, and the exercise of ministerial influence; the loss of (what was termed) national independence must have produced a mighty change; but to the Munster or Connaught peasant, who still was forced to pay rent and tithe, to the same persons, at the same rates, and under the same laws, the change was only nominal, and scarcely had more influence on his condition than the contemporaneous transfer of the French sovereignty from the Directory to the First Consul. Accordingly we find that the local troubles arising from the misery

ing to the usual process of Whiteboyism; which in all its violence never was used to contemplate more than a redress of real and almost intolerable oppressions. Upon this occasion, stretching itself far as it did beyond its accustomed range, surrounded by temptations, and irritated with the difficulties and hazards of its enterprise, yet it failed not to respect the throne of the monarch."-Vol. ii., p. 205.

of the peasantry proceeded without interruption, and have continued to the present day.

The first disturbance in Ireland after the Union, not of a political nature, was that of the Thrashers, in 1806. At this time, "the entire province of Connaught, with the exception of one county, and two counties on the north-west circuit (Longford and Cavan), were overrun by insurgents so formidable, that the king's judges upon a special commission could not move through the country, except under a military escort; so formidable, that the sentence of the law could not be executed in one particular county town till a general officer had marched from a distant quarter, at the head of a strong force, to support the civil power*."

The Thrashers of Connaught, like the Whiteboys of Munster in 1786, appear to have had two principal objects in view, the regulation of the parson's tithe, and of the priest's duest. The purposes of these insurgents and their proceedings are thus described by the Attorney-General in his opening speech at Sligo :

"These persons have discovered that the existing laws are not to their mind; they have found out that there are errors in the state and in the church, and they have conceived that they are the proper persons to undertake the task of reforming them. But not satisfied with infringing the law in their own persons individually, they become associated for the purpose of saying that no person in the community shall dare to obey the law. So that the first act of those who profess to interfere upon principles of liberty, is to exercise compulsion over the consciences of others, and to say that no man shall presume to form an opinion for himself, nor act upon it, unless

* Chief Justice Bushe on the Maryborough Special Commission, p. 10.

See above, p. 28.

it meet the approbation of these self-created reformers. The pretext upon which these illegal confederacies is framed is a repugnance to the payments in support of the legal establishment of the church of the country, and also of the fees which have been usually paid, without any law to enforce them, to the clergymen of the Catholic persuasion. The mode taken to accomplish this object has been by assembling themselves at night in disguise, sometimes with arms, going to the houses of such persons as refuse to associate themselves in their body, and, if necessary for their purpose, breaking open the houses of those persons, and robbing them of their property; inflicting torture upon those who become objects of their enmity; and, if necessary for the final completion of their designs, if any person be honest or bold enough to give information against them, the business which began in lawless combination is consummated by murder*."

"The first object of the association (says Mr. Dennis Browne, at Castlebar) was the reduction of tithes and priests' dues; when it travelled into this part (Mayo), it assumed that and also another shape, that of attacking the wages of weavers and other artificers, and latterly farmers. In different stages of its progress it professed different objects; all kinds of payments, whether of tithes, industry, labour, or farming; assemblies of people collected in disguise, and wearing badges and armed, appeared in different parts of the country. It showed itself in posting up written notices exciting people to rebellion under various different pretences. When I took steps in different parts to stop the consequence of these notices by tearing them down and offering rewards, they adopted another mode of exciting disturbances, by delivering messages in the chapels, threatening the priests, and calling upon the congregations, that if they did not lower their dues, avoid the payment of tithes, and alter the wages of labourers, the Threshers would visit them, and that the priests might have their coffins

* Report of Proceedings under a Special Commission in the Counties of Sligo, Mayo, Leitrim, Longford, and Cavan, in December, 1806, by W. Ridgway, Barrister-at-Law, p. 9.

prepared, and that the flesh would be torn off their bones; which messages have had more effect than any mode which was before resorted to*."

An instance of the delivery of one of these messages occurs in a trial at Castlebar. One witness states

that

"He went to mass, and after Mr. Nolan came out to shake the holy water among the people there assembled, the prisoner said to the priest, that he was sworn to come to him, and told him that he should marry persons for half-a-guinea, baptize for nineteen-pence halfpenny, read mass for thirteen-pence, and at any house to which he came to confession, if he got hay and oats for his horse, to take it, but if not, to go away on pain of suffering for it."

Another witness gives a similar account:

"When the prayers were over at mass, and the priest was shaking the holy water, the prisoner said he was sent with a message against his will to the priest. He said he was ordered to tell him not to charge more than half-a-guinea for marriage, thirteen-pence for mass, and nineteen-pence halfpenny for christening. He said he should lower his fees, and sinking his voice, said, if not, to have his coffin convenient.""

Mr. Serjeant Moore gives the following description of the confederacy of the Thrashers in the county of Longford, in his first speech on behalf of the Crown.

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Gentlemen, it seems to me that its general character is that of an association, certainly of very wicked and evil-designing persons, but not of any rank or influence in the community; and, what must be a consolation to the mind of every good subject, not, as I conceive, partaking of any political complexion, or confined to any particular party or persuasion of people. Their professed object is that of regulating the payment of tithes, and certain dues customarily taken by the Ibid. pp. 136-143.

* Report of Proceedings, p. 134.

clergymen of the Roman Catholic persuasion, and the rates and prices of manual and manufacturing labour. These appear, at least, to be their professed objects; and the great instruments by which they seek to attain their ends seem to me to be alternate terror and delusion, hope and fear, vain and wicked promises, daring and atrocious threats, amplified and false reports of the numbers, and strength, and success of the association, of the benefits which they profess to achieve, and of the grievances which they pretend to redress*."

In the year which followed the disturbances of the Thrashers, the Insurrection Act, first passed in 1796, during the tumults of the Defenders, was renewed. The system of Whiteboy outrage and intimidation continued nevertheless still to prevail among the peasantry of the centre and south, and it broke out into open violence at various intervals.

"In 1807 the county of Limerick was alarmingly disturbed. In 1811 and 1812 the counties of Tipperary, Waterford, Kilkenny, Limerick, Westmeath, Roscommon, and King's County, became the theatre of the same sanguinary tumults. In 1815 a great part of the county of Tipperary, considerable portions of the King's County, and county of Westmeath, and the whole of that of Limerick, were placed under the Insurrection Act.

"The counties of Limerick and Tipperary, however, continued in a dreadful state, and they remained under the Insurrection Act until that Act, after a temporary renewal in 1817, finally expired in 1818.

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In 1817 part of the county of Louth was subjected to the Insurrection Act.

"In 1820 came the disturbance in the county of Galway; and in 1821, the actual deplorable outrages in that of Limerick†."

* Report of Proceedings, p. 275.

Mr. Charles Grant's speech, 22nd April, 1822, on Sir John Newport's motion on the state of Ireland, pp. 6 and 7.