James Farrell, were entirely innocent of the fact for which they had suffered death; and that nothing in this world, but the preservation of his own life, which he saw was in the most imminent danger, should have tempted him to be guilty of the complicated crimes of perjury and murder, as he then confessed he was, when he swore away the lives of those innocent men."

On Saturday morning, May 3d, 1766, the convicts were hanged and quartered at Clogheen. Their behaviour at the place of execution was chearful, but devout; and modest, though resolute. It was impossible for any one in their circumstances, to counterfeit that resignation, serenity, and pleasing hope, which appeared strikingly in all their countenances and gestures. Conscious of their innocence, they seemed to hasten to receive the reward prepared in the next life, for those who suffer patiently in this. For, not content to forgive, they prayed for and blessed their prosecutors, judges, and juries, as likewise all those who were otherwise instrumental in procuring their deaths. After they were tied up, and just before they were turned off, each of them, in his turn, read a paper aloud, without tremour, hesitation, or other visible emotion, wherein they solemnly protested, as dying christians, who were quickly to appear before the judgment-seat of God, "that they had no share either by act, counsel or knowledge in the murder of Bridge; that they never heard an oath of allegiance to any foreign prince proposed or admipistered amongst them; that they never heard,

that any scheme of rebellion, high treason, or a massacre, was intended, offered, or even thought of, by any of them; that they never knew of any commissions, or French or Spanish officers being sent, or of any money being paid to these rioters. After this, they severally declared, in the same solemn manner, that certain gentlemen, whose names they then mentioned, had tampered with them at different times, pressing them to make, what they called useful discoveries, by giving in examinations against numbers of Roman catholics of fortune in that province (some of whom they particularly named) as actually concerned in a conspiracy and intended massacre, which were never once thought of. But above all, that they urged them to swear, that the priest, Nicholas Sheehy, died with a lye in his mouth; without doing which, they said, no other discovery would avail them. Upon these conditions, they promised and undertook to procure their pardons, acquainting them at the same time, that they should certainly be hanged, if they did not comply with them." Thus did those virtuous men, prefer even death to a life of guilt, remorse, and shame, the just punishment in this world of their tempters, as well as the wretches seduced by them..

Such, during the space of three or four years, was the fearful and pitiable state of the Roman catholics of Munster, and so general did the panic at length become, so many of the lower sort were already hanged, in jail, or on the informers lists, that the greatest part of the rest fled through fear; so that the land lay untilled,

for want of hands to cultivate it, and a famine was with reason apprehended. As for the better sort, who had something to lose (and who, for that reason, were the persons chiefly aimed at by the managers of the prosecution), they were at the utmost loss how to dispose of themselves. If they left the country, their absence was construed into a proof of their guilt: if they remained in it, they were in imminent danger of having their lives sworn away by informers and approvers; for the suborning and corrupting of witnesses on that occasion, was frequent and barefaced, to a degree almost beyond belief. The very stews were raked, and the jails rummaged in search of evidence; and the most notoriously profligate in both were selected and tampered with, to give informations of the private transactions and designs of reputable men, with whom they never had any dealing, intercourse or acquaintance; nay, to whose very persons they were often found to be strangers, when confronted at their trial.

In short, so exactly did these prosecutions in Ireland resemble, in every particular, those which were formerly set on foot in England, for that villainous fiction of Oates's plot, that the former seems to have been planned and carried on entirely on the model of the latter; and the same just observation that hath been made on the English sanguinary proceedings, is perfectly applicable to those which I have now, in part, related, viz. "that for the credit of the nation, it were indeed better to bury them in eternal oblivion, but that it is necessary to perpetuate the remembrance of

them, as well to maintain the truth of history, as to warn, if possible, our posterity and all mankind, never again to fall into so shameful and so barbarous a delusion."*

The celebrated Arthur Young, in his tour through Munster, honestly declares, that there he saw the ne plus ultra of human misery. “The landlord of an Irish estate, inhabited by Roman catholics, is a sort of despot, who yields obedience in what concerns the poor to no law but that of his will. To discover what the liberty of a people is, we must live among them, and not look for it in the statutes of the realm: the language of written law may be that of liberty, but the situation of the poor may speak no language but that of slavery: there is too much of this contradiction in Ireland. A long series of oppressions, aided by many very ill-judged laws, have brought landlords into a habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, and their vassals into that of an honest, unlimited submission: speaking a language that is despised, professing a religion that is abhorred, and being disarmed, the poor find themselves in many cases slaves even in the bosom of written liberty. Landlords, that have resided much abroad, are usually humane in their ideas, but the habit of tyranny naturally contracts the mind, so that even in this polished age, there are instances of a severe carriage towards the poor, which is quite unknown in England.

Nay, I have heard anecdotes of the lives of the people being made free with, without any appreHist. Rev. Civil Wars of Ireland.

hension of the justice of a jury. But let it not be imagined that is common; formerly it happened every day, but law gains ground-The execution of the law lies very much in the hands of justices of the peace, many of whom are drawn. from the most illiberal class in the kingdom. If a poor man lodges a complaint against a gentleman, or any animal that chuses to call itself a gentleman, and the justice issues out a summons for his appearance, it is a fixed affront, and he will infallibly be called out. Where manners are in conspiracy against law, to whom are the oppressed people to have resource? They know their situation too well to think of it; they can have no defence but by means of protection from one gentleman against another, who probably protects his vassal as he would the sheep he intends to eat.

The colours of this picture are not charged. To assert that all these cases are common, would be an exaggeration; but to say that an unfeeling landlord will do all this with impunity, is to keep strictly to truth: and what is liberty but a farce and a jest, if its blessings are received as the favour of kindness and humanity, instead of being the inheritance of right?

Consequences have flowed from these oppressions which ought long ago to have put a stop to them. In England we have heard much of White-boys, Steel-boys, Oak-boys, Peep-of-dayboys, &c. But these various insurgents are not to be confounded, for they are very different. The proper distinction in the discontents of the