sure. With respect to the last of the resolutions—that which related to the investing of the magistracy with new powers--he should not now, he said, give any opinion. Of the others he heartily approved, though he could not help expressing a wish, that they had taken some notice of the wanton and barbarous outrages, which had been committed by the Peep of Day Boys, as well as those of which the Defenders had been guilty.

On the next day upon the attorney general's resolutions being read, Mr. Grattan observed, that he had heard the right honourable gentleman's statement, and did not suppose it to be infla med; but he must observe at the same time it was partial: he did indeed expatiate very fully and justly on the offences of the Defenders; but with respect to another description of insurgents, whose barbarities had excited general abhorrence, he had ob served a complete silence: that he had proceeded to enumerate the counties that were afflicted by disturbances, and he had omitted Armagh ;-of that, neither had he comprehended the outrages in his general description, nor in his particular enume ration of those outrages, he had received the most dreadful accounts; that their object was the extermination of all the Catholics of that county; it was a persecution conceived in the bitterness of bigotry, carried on with the most ferocious barbarity, by a banditti, who being of the religion of the state, had com mitted with the greater audacity and confidence, the most horrid murders, and had proceeded from robbery and massacre to extermination: that they had repealed, by their own authority, all the laws lately passed in favour of the Catholics, had established in the place of those laws, the inquisition of a mob, resembling lord George Gordon's fanatics, equalling them in outrage, and surpassing them far in perseverance and success.

That their modes of outrage were as various as they were atro cious: they sometimes forced, by terror, the masters of families to dismiss their Catholic servants-they sometimes forced landlords, by terror, to dismiss their Catholic tenantry-they seized as déserters, numbers of Catholic weavers-sent them to the county gaol, transmitted them to Dublin, where they remained in close prison, until some lawyers, from compassion, pleaded their cause, and procured their enlargement-nothing appearing against them of any kind whatsoever. Those insurgents, who called themselves Orange Boys, or Protestant Boys, that is, a banditti of murderers, committing massacre in the name of God, and exercising despotic power in the name of liberty-those insurgents had organized their rebellion, and formed themselves into a committee, who sat and tried the Catholic weavers and inhabitants, when apprehended falsely and illegally as deserters. That re bellious committee, they called the committee of elders, who,

when the unfortunate Catholic was torn from his family and his loom, and brought before them, in judgment upon his case-if he gave them liquor or money, they sometimes discharged himotherwise they sent him to a recruiting office as a deserter. They had very generally given the Catholics notice to quit their farms and dwellings, which notice was plastered on the house, and conceived in these short but plain words: "Go to Hell, Connaught "won't receive you-fire and faggot. Will Tresham and John "Thrustout." That they followed these notices by a faithful and punctual execution of the horrid threat-soon after visited the house, robbed the family, and destroyed what they did not take, and finally completed the atrocious persecutions by forcing the unfortunate inhabitants to leave their land, their dwellings, and their trade, and to travel with their miserable family, and with whatever their miserable family could save from the wreck of their houses and tenements, and take refuge in villages, as fortifications against invaders, where they described themselves, as he had seen in their affidavits, in the following manner: "We "(mentioning their names), formerly of Armagh, weavers, now "of no fixed place of abode or means of living, &c." In many instances this banditti of persecution threw down the houses of the tenantry, or what they call racked the house, so that the family must fly or be buried in the grave of their own cabin. The extent of the murders that had been committed by that atrocious and rebellious banditti he had heard, but had not heard them so ascertained as to state them to that house; but from all the inquiries he could make, he collected, that the Catholic inhabitants of Armagh had been actually put out of the protection of the law; that the magistrates had been supine or partial, and that the horrid banditti had met with complete success, and from the magistracy with very little discouragement. This horrid persecution, this abominable barbarity, and this general extermination had been acknowledged by the magistrates, who found the evil had now proceeded to so shameful an excess, that it had at length obliged them to cry out against it. On the 28th of December thirty of the magistrates had come to the following resolution, which was evidence of the designs of the insurgents, and of their success :"Resolved, That it appears to this meeting, that the county of "Armagh is at this moment in a state of uncommon disorder; "that the Roman Catholic inhabitants are grievously oppressed "by lawless persons unknown, who attack and plunder their houses by night, and threaten them with instant destruction, "unless they abandon immediately their lands and habitations." It was said by the mover of the resolutions, that of the Defenders, multitudes had been hanged, multitudes had been put to death on the field, and that they were suppressed, though they were not

extinguished; but with regard to the outrages of the Orange Boys he could make no such boast; on the contrary, they had met with impunity, and success, and triumph; they had triumphed over the law, they had triumped over the magistrates, and they had triumphed over the people. There persecution, rebellion, inquisition, murder, robbery, devastation and extermination had been entirely victorious.

The passing over these offences in the statement introducing the resolutions, would be of little moment, if they were not also passed over in the resolutions themselves: the resolutions described four different kinds of offences: 1st, attempts to assassinate magistrates; 2d, to murder witnesses; 3d, to plunder houses; 4th, to seize by force the arms of his majesty's subjects; but of attempts to seize the persons of his majesty's subjects, and to force them to abandon their lands and habitations, the resolutions said not one syllable; crimes not less great, nor less notorious, and more emphatically calling for the interposition of the state, because they had triumphed over the supineness of the magistracy, and had no chance of being checked, but by the interposition of government or parliament. In the other resolution, which described that kind of armed insurgency, which the magistracy were to prevent by extraordinary exertions, the crime of driving away his majesty's subjects, is also omitted: the words were, that from the many attempts which have been made on the houses of individuals, by large bodies of armed insurgents, for the purpose of taking arms and money by force, and murdering those who had spirit to enforce the law, or give information against offenders, it will be necessary to give the magistrates enlarged powers; attempts made on the houses of the individual to rob or take arms; attempts to murder witnesses; those were the offences which attracted their notice; but the attempt to exterminate his majesty's subjects-attempts in part completed, which were very different from seizing arms, or taking money, or murdering witnessesthese attempts and perpetrations, as notorious as horrible, appeared to be neither in the contemplation of the resolutions, nor of the member who moved them. Thus the silence of the resolutions might become a hint to the supineness of the magistracy, and where they should have counteracted their partiality, gave it countenance. On a further examination of the resolutions, he found them not merely defective, in describing the offence, but they seemed to have omitted the remedy: certainly the giving magistrates further powers to search for arms and ammunition, or to prevent from assembling or meeting, bodies of men assembling for the purpose of taking arms and money, or murdering witnesses; or the giving the magistrates enlarged power to seize vagabonds for the fleet or army, did not go to the case of Ar

magh, where the subjects complained, that they had been seized as deserters, falsely and illegally, through the supineness or par tiality, or connivance of the magistrates; and through the same supineness, to say no worse, had been by force driven with impunity from their lands and habitations: many of the weavers of Armagh had at that moment sworn affidavits against the magis trates. To give the magistrates extraordinary powers as the means of redressing the complainants, seemed to him, however, a remedy for some part of the kingdom, but a very inadequate one for another. In short, the measure of the right honourable gentleman, in its present shape, did not go to the whole of the situation of the country: it did not go to redress the North; it was, therefore, a defective measure, it was a partial description of the outrages of the kingdom, and a partial remedy: it proposed to suspend the operation of the constitution, with a view to produce peace, leaving at the same time, in one great county, violence and insurrection in a state of triumph. It left the fa milies of Armagh, whom a violent mob and a supine magis. tracy had caused to abandon their dwellings; it left them without any certainty of redress, so that they might carry themselves and families, and tales of woe, to their brethren in the other parts of the kingdom, and spread the flames of discontent, and spirit of retaliation, notwithstanding the member's bills and resolutions.

On a principle, therefore, that it was necessary for the redress of that description of subjects who had suffered in Armagh, that the magistrates should be called upon to act for the protec tion of the subject, and that the county should be obliged to pay those inhabitants, who had been aggrieved, full compensation for all their losses, charges and distresses, he had taken the liberty to suggest to the right honourable member amendments, which he did not move, because the attorney general ought to have moved them, and made them his own measure.

The amendments he suggested, were after the words "to "seize by force of arms," to add "and also the persons of his "majesty's subjects, and to force them to abandon their lands "and habitations ;" and in the third resolution, after the words "murdering those who had spirit to give information,” to add, "also attempting to seize the persons, and obliging his majesty's "subjects by force, to abandon their lands and habitations."

Sir Lawrence Parsons arraigned government for not having timely sent a general officer and a military force to the disturbed parts of the North, as they had done to the South, particularly as lord Camden had avowedly come over to resist the Catholic claims.

The attorney general opposed Mr. Grattan's amendment. He said he had, throughout the whole of those resolutions, avoided making any distinction as to persons. They were intended for general good, and persons of every class would partake of their benefits; were the amendment received, they would have a different complexion. If no

Mr. secretary Pelham followed on the same ground. general officer was sent to the North, it was because they were all before engaged. An officer, however, was sent, and an experienced officer (colonel Craddock), on whose capacity and character he delivered a high encomium. He mentioned that lord Camden did not come over to oppress any part of his majesty's subjects, but to afford equal protection to all.

Colonel Craddock avowed, that he had the most decided instructions from government, to act in the commission, in which he had been employed, with equal justice to all offenders. He had been assisted by general Nugent, and such was the nature of the disturbance, that after repeated consideration, they could see no possible way in which the troops could be employed: he therefore recommended his recall in letters to government, as he thought that he could be of no use. He admitted, that the conduct of the Protestants, called Peep of Day Boys, in the county of Armagh was at that time most atrocious, and that their barbarous practices must certainly be put down; but at the same time he must mention, that in September last, the Catholics were the aggressors.

Mr. Grattan, in reply, observed, that the amendment appeared the more necessary, from what fell from an honourable gentleman, a magistrate of the county of Armagh, who dissenting from every other person, had spoken of the use of what he called Orange Boys, of the services rendered by these murderers; this atrocious banditti; the northern rebels, whose barbarity exceeded modern times, and brought back the recollection of ancient ferocity and bloodshed. He asked gentlemen who had heard the magistrate apologize for such murderers, whether the increasing the power of the magistracy would be of itself sufficient to redress the sufferings of the northern Catholics.

He must therefore persist in recommending to the right honourable gentleman his amendments, which, if he persisted to refuse, it was vain for him to move them; lamenting at the same time, that he should have lost an opportunity of so clearly displaying what he must presume he wished-impartiality and jus

tice.

The attorney general presented the bill, which was read a first time, and ordered to be read a second time the next day.