prop and strengthen the arm of the law, it insolently identified itself with Government, and put the Country at issue. Lord West The master Turbu lence of try en divides The year 1794 was particularly important to the interests of Ireland, as far as they were affect- the couned by the workings of the Protestant ascendancy, creased. So turbulent was then the state of the country, Mr. Pitt that Mr. Pitt found it requisite to abandon the the Whig system of coercion, and confide the reias of Go- party in England. vernment to a person possessing other qualities, than these of mere subserviency. moreland's recall was resolved upon. stroke of Mr. Pitt's policy, was the the Whig party in England. That event would not have happened, had not the Duke of Portland been assured by Mr. Pitt, that he and his friends should have the entire management of Ireland, with full authority to redress grievances, reform abuses, and especially, as his grace openly avowed at Court, when he kissed hands on his promotion, to bring forward the question of Catholic Emancipation in the ensuing session. charges * Mr. Fofter, who had ever systematically False opposed the Catholics, and some of his family against were mainly inftrumental in raising certain sus- & others. Q ་་་ picions * Hist. Rev. of the State of Ireland, 2 vol. 441. & seq. Mr Fay picions, which led to the false charges against Mr. Fay of Navan, Mr. Dowdal, Mr. Bird of Drogheda, and several Catholic Gentlemen of respectability in that neighbourhood, for the murder of the Rev. Mr. Butler, and the general system of Defenderism, which had then settled in an open system of lawless robbery. The Catholics had suffered from it more than their Protestant neighbours and to its suppression they had more generally, and as largely subscribed. The plot appeared deeply. 'laid under great political influence, to stigmatize the body of Catholics, through the crimination of Mr. Fay, and the other Catholic Gentlemen of established respectability. Just providence defeated it by opening to view the base machinations and perjuries of the informer Lynch, and other such miscreants raked out of the neighbouring Goals, 'who had been hired and suborned to swear away the lives of the victims pointed out. Their honourable acquittal, and the bare-faced exposure of the Conspiracy covered the party with shame, and for a time kept them quiet in these parts of the Country. Of these trials, Mr. Curran in 1 his *This Gentleman, who is the présent Master of the Rolls in Ireland, during the whole of his Political Career in Parliament never did an action, in which the staunchest Patriot would not have gloried in concurring, nor uttered a speech, of which the most eloquent might not have boasted, his place in the Senate, said," he could speak as an eye witness, declaring them to be scenes "of more atrocity and horror, than he had ever 60 seen exhibited in a Court of Justice. It was. "what the Catholics might have expected, when they found their avowed enemies continued in authority, and the malice of an implacable Go-! "vernment left to indemnify itself by vengeance, "what it had lost by law." Catholic Emanci It was necessary, that Mr. Pitt should convince Mr. Pitt's conspirahis Whig Neophites of the sincerity of his engage- cy against ment, to leave the entire reform of Ireland to them. Messrs. Grattan and Ponsonby were there- pation fore sent for, to form the new Irish Administration; and the virtuous Fitzwilliam was selected to meet the eager expectations of the nation. On the other hand, Mr. Beresford went over to England on a counter-project; and by secret negociations, successfully laid the train, by which Lord Fitzwilliam's instructions to give the Catholic question a handsome support on behalf of Government, were to be counteracted, and the Protestant ascendancy was to be made finally to triumph over National Union, Parliamentary Reform, and Catholic: Emancipation. This perfidious manœuvre afforded Mr. Pitt a treble triumph. It exposed the impotency of his Whig proselytes. It displayed Persecu tion in ་་ His played the extent of his personal authority. It 4 The unexpected triumph of pesecuted inno-" Armagh. cence in Meath drove the baffled party to ano ther scene of action, where their physical force was larger, where their instruments were better organized, and where the magistracy was more generally devoted to their designs. The Protestant County of Armagh, had long been the field of contest, between the Peep of Day Boys," and the Defenders. This acrimony, which had for some time been soothed into natural repen-1 tance and shame at their past errors, was rekindled by secret agents, and converted into a fe rocious warfare of religious contention. The ascendancy ascendancy party was worked into an enthusiastic ebullition of renovated fury, by the Sermon of a Rev. Divine of the Established Church, Mr. -Mansell of Portadown, who some days previous to the 1st day of July 1795, had from his pulpit given very marked notice to his congregation, that all persons disposed to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, in the true spirit of the institution, should attend his Sermon on that day. This Evangelical labourer in the vineyard of the Lord of peace so worked up the minds of his audience, that upon retiring from service, on the different roads leading to their respective homes, they gave full scope to the antipapistical zeal, with which he had inspired them; falling upon every Catholic they met, beating and bruising them without provocation or distinction, breaking the doors and windows of their houses, and actually murdering two unoffending peasants, who were digging turf in a bog. This unprovoked atrocity of the Protestants revived and redoubled religious rancour. The flame spread and threatened a contest of extermination. A like assault was offered to some Catholics of Peaceable the town of Lurgan, but no lives were lost in resoluti ons of the that affray. Mr. Bernard Coile an eminent Catholics Muslin and Cambrick manufacturer, with others of Lur gan. |