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CHAPTER III.

CHARACTER AND OBJECTS OF IRISH DISTURBANCES.

HAVING thus attempted to trace the causes of the Whiteboy disturbances in Ireland, we now proceed to consider their nature and character, and the objects which the persons concerned in them seek to attain.

In order to comprehend the peculiar character of the offences springing from the Whiteboy system in Ireland, it is desirable to consider all crimes as divided into two classes, not according to the ordinary distinction of crimes against the person, and crimes against property, but with reference to the motive with which they are committed, or the effect which they are intended to produce.

Under one class may be arranged those which are intended to intimidate, to determine men's wills, to produce a general effect, not necessarily even limited to the individual whose person or property is the object of the crime, but at any rate calculated to influence his conduct in respect of some future action. Such are threatening notices, malicious injury to property, beatings, murders, &c., in consequence of some act of the party injurious to a particular person, or to classes of persons. The object of these is either directly to prevent, or to compel the performance of some future act, which a specified individual is supposed to be likely to perform or not to perform; as when a man is threatened, either orally or by a written notice, that he will

be killed if he ejects or admits such a tenant,-if he dismisses or does not dismiss such a servant,—if he prosecutes or gives evidence against such a party; or, secondly, it is to punish a party for having done some act; as when a person is killed or beaten, his house or ricks burnt, his cattle maimed or mutilated, his wife or daughter ravished, because he has ejected or admitted such a tenant, because he has dismissed or not dismissed such a servant, because he has prosecuted or given evidence against such a party. In the former of these two cases, the party is called on to do, or forbear from some designated act, on pain of a threatened evil; in the latter, the evil is actually inflicted on him, for having conducted himself in a manner either known by public fame to be obnoxious, or contrary to express orders conveyed to him. In both these cases, it will be observed, the offenders undertake to carry into effect their wishes, by means not of moral but of physical sanctions; to give to their opinion the weight of the law of the state, by arming it with sanctions as painful as those employed by the criminal law; viz., death, corporal punishment, and loss of property. The outrages in question are committed by the offenders as administrators of a law of opinion, generally prevalent among the class to which they belong. In this character they look, not merely to particular, but also to general results; not merely to the present, but also to the future; not merely to themselves, but also to those with whom they are leagued, and with whom they have an identity of interests. The criminal, who acts with these views, is as it were an executioner, who carries into effect the verdict of an uncertain and nonapparent tribunal; and it usually happens that others

profit more by his offence than he himself who committed it.

:

To the other class may be referred those crimes whose effect is limited to that which is actually done by the offender, without reference to any influence on the future conduct of any individual: as when a homicide is committed from motives of personal vengeance, or under the momentary excitement of drunkenness or party quarrel: when a house is broken open simply to obtain property when a man is robbed on the highway when a woman is carried away and forced to marry a particular person. In these cases no general or prospective result is intended; the criminal merely seeks to gratify his own malice or avarice, or to satisfy his own personal and present want by the act. It is obvious that the same act might fall under the one or the other of these two classes, according to the motive with which it was done : for example, a homicide committed by a burglar merely to facilitate his robbery would belong to the latter class: but if it was done in order to punish a man, and to let the world know that all who acted in a similar manner would be similarly treated, it belongs to the former class.

Now the characteristic difference between the crimes of Ireland, and of England, France, and indeed of almost every civilized country in the world, is that in a large part of Ireland the former class appears to preponderate considerably beyond the latter: whereas, in other countries, the former class of crimes is so small, that at ordinary times it can scarcely be said to have any existence *. The preponderance of the exemplary or

* M. Guerry, in his important work on the Moral Statistics of France, p. 31, gives the following table for France, of the apparent motives of the

preventive crimes may be particularly seen in certain districts of Ireland: thus in Munster, in the year 1833, illegal notices, administering unlawful oaths, assaults connected with combination, attacks on houses, burnings, maiming of cattle, malicious injury to property, and appearing in arms, nearly all of which were of this description, comprehended 627 out of a total of 973 crimes and even of the others, as homicides, firing at persons, rescues, illegal meetings, &c., many were doubtless committed with the same motive*.

The only crimes recently committed in England with the same general intention are, the fires and riots produced by the administration of the poor-laws, which had the effect of intimidating the overseers and magistrates, and of inducing them to give a higher scale of allowance to paupers †. The crimes committed by

four most serious crimes, viz., poisoning, murder, manslaughter, and Out of 1000 crimes

arson.

1. Hatred, vengeance, resentment

3. Quarrels in gambling or in public-houses

264

2. Domestic dissensions, hatred among relations

143

113

4. Theft (in order to accomplish it or to prevent punishment

for it)

102

5. Accidental quarrels and encounters

94

80

7. Adultery

64

53

6. Disputes arising from interest or from neighbourhood

8. Incontinence, concubinage, seduction

9. Desire of obtaining a succession or extinguishing an annuity 26 10. Desire of obtaining a sum of money insured on lives or

Nothing can offer a stronger contrast than this table, in which everything is personal, to the ordinary motives of the worst crimes in Ireland. * See note (B.) at the end.

"Labourers who had been refused relief had been heard to leave their vestries saying almost aloud, 'You all want a few more good fires!' Intimidation, however ashamed they may be to confess it, in many cases

H

members of trades' unions, or by their procurement, were also of the same complexion: thus the murder of Mr. Ashton by Garside and his accomplice, was intended to punish him for his violation of the laws of the union, and to strike terror into those mill-owners who might otherwise be inclined to transgress them.

It is to the state of things which we exhibited in the last chapter, to the wretched condition of the mass of the Irish peasantry, their inability to obtain employment for hire, and their consequent dependence on land; to the system of combination and self-defence this engendered; in short, to the prevalence of the Whiteboy spirit*, that this peculiar character of Irish crimes is to be attributed. It has been already explained, how the Irish peasant, constantly living in extreme poverty, is liable by the pressure of certain charges, or by ejectment from his holding, to be driven to utter destitution,-to a state in which himself and family can only rely on a most precarious charity to save them from exposure to the elements, from nakedness, and from starvation. It is natural that the most improvident persons should seek to struggle against such fearful consequences as these: that they should try to use some means of quieting apprehensions which (even if never realized) would themselves be sufficient to embitter the life of the most thoughtless: and it is had been successfully exerted, and designing men were still endeavouring to promulgate to the disaffected the maxim that fire would produce relief, and that relief alone conld extinguish fire.”—Sir F. Head's English Charity, p. 94.

* We use the term Whiteboy, in a general sense, to include all those disturbances and outrages which have been carried on not only by the Whiteboys, but also by the Rightboys, the Threshers, the Whitefeet, and Blackfeet, the Terry Alts, Captain Rock's men, &c., as it is the best known expression, and as the Act specially meant to put down this class of offences, and which describes them in the recital, is called the Whiteboy Act. Above, p. 10.