squeeze him with his damp and nerveless hand,uttered in a whisper, and with a smile of mournful triumph, the dying words of Pierre- We have deceived the senate.""

The trial of Mr. Jackson has been rendered memorable by a result which followed it after a very long interval. It was the first of the state trials in which it was decided that, in Ireland, one witness was sufficient to convict in a case of high treason. The bench pronounced that this was the doctrine of common law, in both England and Ireland-a doctrine changed by a statute in one country, but unaltered in the other. In the life of Mr. Curran, this distinction between the law of the two countries was strongly commented on, and Lord Holland, whose attention was called to the fact by some observations in the Edinburgh Review, introduced a statute, the 1st and 2nd of William 4th, to correct the anomaly.

The report of Mr. Jackson's trial, however, makes it clear, that he experienced no injustice, and was denied no indulgence which he might reasonably claim. The impression on the minds of impartial men may be inferred from the following expression in a letter of Lord Charlemont :

"Jackson has been found guilty on the fullest evidence. A gentleman, who attended the trial, assures me, that there was twenty times more proof of real guilt brought forward in this case, than in all the London prosecutions put together."*

Jackson's was the first trial for high treason in Ireland, during the century.

The "trials of the Defenders," which follow next in order, commencing December 14th, 1795, and ending March 3rd, 1796, occupy a considerable portion of the volume, and are preceded by an introduction which professes to give an historical and faithful account of the origin and objects of the system framed by these deluded men. They were, at the time when the trials took place, exclusively Roman Catholics, or, at least, were required to be so, by the rules of the society. If we may credit Wolfe

Tone's report, they were, so early as 1794, nearly co-extensive with the Roman Catholic population in the humbler walks of life and in the rural districts. If we are to receive the opinion of Mr. M'Nevin, they were a society entitled to the name they bore, composed of men who entered into alliance with each other, and who took arms with no other object or design than that of resisting aggression, and sustaining themselves against an hostile faction.

They

"But the Peep-o'-Day Boys were an association of a different character,"(From the Hearts of Oak, &c.)—“ influenced at one and the same time by bigotry and avarice. Intolerant of the religion of the Roman Catholics, and desirous to possess their land, the Peep-o'-Day Boys combined the gratification of both passions, by the adoption of a system of outrage and robbery against the persons and the property of the Catholic peasantry of the north of Ireland. They were chiefly, if not entirely, Protestants who assumed the sanctions of Protestantism, for conduct abhorrent from the spirit of all religion. Originally, they were confined to the county of Armagh. Their career commenced in 1784, and has been variously described. drew upon the stores of history, and found a precedent in the Puritan regicide's edict, to hell or to Connaught' and they proceeded very systematically to drive the Catholic population of Ulster beyond the Shannon. At the earliest dawn, they visited their houses, under the pretence of seeking for arms-the common trick of the tyrant in Ireland is a search for arms-and, even in the guarded language of the advocate of the flagellations and pitchcaps, 'committed the most wanton outrages, insulting their persons and breaking their furniture.'t But domiciliary visits soon gave way to ejectment. Expulsion from farms became general; it was a proceeding by which the Protestant wrecker, Peep-o'-Day Boy, and eventually purple Orangeman, specially occu pied the re'inquished acres, and sat down, a conqueror, to enjoy the fruits of his invasion. The facts are undeniable; at a period little later than these trials, not less than 7,000 Catholics had been burned out of Armagh. Plowden adds, that the ferocious banditti who had expelled them, had been encouraged, connived at, and protected by govern

into

ment.' It is certain the magistrates had been supine, and had given passive encouragement to the Peep-o'-Day Boys, who had changed their name Orangemen. The charitable and Christain portion of the northern Protestants looked with horror and disgust at the enormities practised upon the wretched peasantry, and falsely said to be practised under the sanctions of Protestantism; but men of that class were not the majority; nor were they found in any great numbers amongst those to whom was consigned the guardianship of the peace. The magistrates-whether from secret sympathy, or want of energy, it matters little-allowed the houses of the people to be burned or unroofed, and the people themselves to be driven, under fierce threats, out of their native dwellings, without any active interposition to save them.

"The consequence was natural. The unprotected people sought protection from themselves. They felt that they were the victims of a conspiracy between guilt and power-burnt out of their houses, shot, or robbed, by the first; unprotected, unredressed, by the last; and they looked to their own strength and despair for that defence which the law refused, and hence came the Defenders. Their oppressors were men of the lowest rank among the Protestants; the Defenders were in the lowest rank of the Catholics; but the crimes of neither can, with justice, be imputed to the spirit of their religion. The Peep-o'-Day Boys were vulgar men, using the name of religion as a mask for robbery and aggrandizement; the Defenders were a society of affrighted peasants, agitated by despair or vindictiveness, and driven to wage a defensive war against violence and robbery."

Mr. M'Nevin, consistently with this representation, discredits the usual account of the origin of feud between the northern factions. The "supposition" that they had their rise in a quarrel which took place in the fair of Portnorris, between two of those sectaries, whose personal enmity soon extended itself to the entire body of each,' ""is," he says, "very absurd and manifestly false, as might be expected, coming from Sir R. Musgrave, even in the character of Veridicus." Had Mr. M'Nevin remembered that Hardy, the biographer of Lord Charlemont, countenances the "supposition" of Sir R. Musgrave, he would

have been, perhaps, less damnatory in his strictures upon it; had he made sufficient inquiry into the subject, he would have known that the supposition so far from being absurd or false, is nothing more or less than the strict and well-known truth.

It is

But although an incident of this description may have furnished occasion for the formation or division of parties, the cause must have lain deeper, and the elements of division must have been already accumulated in the public mind. Much doubt and uncertainty is said to prevail as to the priority of aggression in the conflicts between the original Peep-o'-Day Boys and Defenders, and speculation has been busy even as to the circumstances under which the latter party adopted their name. said that organised disaffection in Ireland has very craftily benefited by a frequent change of name, and has thus succeeded in misleading more than the superficial into a belief that an insurrectionary system had no continuity of plan or purpose. It has been said that the name Defender was taken up by a party who had previously denominated themselves "the Brest Fleet," ("fleet" was the name assumed by each of the local factions in the north,) and had thus incurred suspicion of cherishing some treasonable purpose. If there be truth in this allegation, it throws much light on the nature of the contest carried on in the north. We have not adequate means of deciding the question.

There are, however, considerations which ought not to be so much neglected as they are by those who proffer information on such subjects as these. Why are the factious or party proceedings of the North judged of and pronounced upon, as if Ulster held itself estranged from the other parts of Ireland? Why is the question respecting priority of outrage determined by a reference to that province only, in which the particular disorders have had their evil consequences? It is well known that in the earliest insurrectionary movements in the South and West of Ireland, there was a reference to some secret power or principle which had authority in the North,and that even to a later day this reference was continued.

How is it possible to believe that Northern disaffection did not take cognizance of, and keep up intelligence with insurrection as it made progress in the South? How is it possible to suppose that the contests between "Peep-o-Day" boys and Defenders, by which the North of Ireland was disturbed in the year 1785, are to be judged of apart from all consideration of the "Right" boys, who in the same year showed themselves in such commanding force in the South, and made and marked their progress wherever they were withstood, by the mos execrable cruelties-" cruelties," as Lord Clare observed, "too horrible even for savages to be thought guilty of?" These men met, observed the noble lord, in a Roman Catholic chapel, and there took an oath to obey the laws of Captain Right, and to starve the clergy; thence they proceeded in bodies, frequently unarmed, amounting to thousands, swearing in the people of every district so as to make their organization universal. If there was resistance, or any serious violation of their laws, woe to the offender; mutilation-whipping, were among the most merciful of their inflictions. Instances were known in which a wretched man was set naked on a saddle covered with thornsburied alive in a grave lined with thorns. But the cruelties of this barbarous confederacy are too shocking to be dwelt on. We pass away from them, and we ask, is it reasonable to imagine that the system from which they emanated had not its influence in the North, and was not feared there? We profess ourselves honestly unable to say whether in the North of Ireland the "Peep-o'-Day" boys or the Defenders took the lead in their warfare of mutual outrage. We have inquired extensively, and minutely, and unsuccessfully. Roman Catholics, of age to remember, have contradicted Protestants of equal age and of equal soundness of mind. Both have agreed in condemning the lawless factionsdescribing them as, on the one side and the other, the idle, disorderly, and worthless; but both have persisted in disclaiming for their respective coreligionists the discredit of commencing civil strife.

This doubt, however, hangs over only the first stage of Northern discord. Mr. M'Nevin writes as if he

had not made the necessary distinction between the Defenders of 1785 and those who became dreadfully conspicuous in some years after. The first feuds were staid the "Peep-o'-Day" boys ceased their matutinal, and the Defenders their nocturnal invasions of each other's domestic quiet, and a season of repose succeeded. When the disorders broke out again, in 1791, the Defenders had the unequivocal discredit of their commencement, and the infamy, all their own, of signalizing their opening proceedings by an atrocity unparalleled perhaps in the annals of the civilized world. We allude to what we dare not dwell upon, the unutterable cruelties perpetrated on the family of the schoolmaster at Forkhill. If such an outrage, and the fiendish menace which it was designed to exemplify, had not alarmed and aroused all whose ears were shocked by the report of it, the principles of foresight and 'caution would have been imparted to us for no good purpose. And yet the Protestants of the North, persecuted and menaced as they continued for some years to be, were slow to combine for their mutual protection and support. The Defenders were organized as a bodyhad plan and purpose in their movements had secret signs and passwords by which they gained the advantage of recognition as members of the same fraternity and used all these advantages in their assaults upon Protestants, scattered and defenceless. We have heard men of the strictest integrity speak of that season of terror with all the freedom of conscious truth-describe the boastful array of their enemies as they appeared at times in bands of several hundreds, and marched through fairs or markets-the manner in which multitudes of unknown enemies would sometimes suddenly appear, and by some mysterious bond of concert, act together in an outrageous attack upon them; and we have had described to us the manner in which, not unfrequently, the bedding of a whole family would be employed as a barricade on some night of alarm, while the threatened household caught by turns, as in turn they kept watch, a chill and unrefreshing slumber. Such was the state of extensive districts in the North of Ireland from the year 1792 until the formation of the orange societies in

Such was the interpretation almost universally assigned to the word by Protestants. We could wish to hear a better explanation given with an air of authority. It is unhappily certain, that the disclosed purposes and the acts of Defenders gave a semblance of truth to the sinister interpretation; and it is not irrational to believe, that the readiness with which vile calumnies circulated with respect to the Orange society were received by the antagonist party, was, to some extent, an acknowledgment that their own views were of the same kind which they were so prompt to believe of others.

As respects the Orange body, time, and the very searching inquiry into their system-we may add also, their uniform conduct has disproved the foul slanders industriously circulated to defame them; the societies also against which they united for their defence, have had their objects and purposes to some extent ascertained, and the effect has been to establish the very worst of the charges, and confirm the worst suspicions ever entertained respecting them.

On "the trials of the Defenders," reported in Mr. M'Nevin's volume, the principal witness was a person of the name of Lawler. He appears to have been a young man, originally brought up as a Protestant, and afterwards led astray by falling into the society of persons who entertained the infidel notions, and the revolutionary principles then unhappily prevalent. From stage to stage of rash and criminal speculation he passed eventually into the Society of Defenders; and being

more than ordinarily free from religious preferences, announced himself, by the advice of the party introducing him, as a Roman Catholic. After some time he learned the more secret purposes of the society, and finding that a general massacre of Protestants was among them, some good instincts stirred within him, and in a state of agitation, denoting horror at the intelligence, he communicated it to a friend, and besought his council. Arrests and trials followed. It is of little moment now to enter into detail of the particulars proved as affecting individuals. As regarded the society at large, it appears to have become connected with France, to have entertained a purpose of exterminating Protestants, and to have meditated a general rising, which was to commence in the North after the harvest had been saved. It is unnecessary to remind the reader how amply evidence to this effect was borne out by the well-known state of Ulster, and especially by the battle of the Diamond, fought September, 1795. The consequence of that unhappy, though providential, engagement was to arrest the Defenders in their career of wickedness-to rescue the North of Ireland from their power, and thus eventually, through God's blessing, to save the country.

The remaining trials in the volume are characterized rather by the great forensic ability displayed in them than by any thing of universal importance in their circumstances. One is the trial in which Mr. Peter Finnerty was convicted of a libel; the other that in

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