*

down to posterity any authentic trace of the outrages of their protected exterminators, he cautiously kept out of the resolutions, and out of the acts, the very name of the County of Armagh, though at that time labouring under more turbulence and outrage, than any other part of Ireland. These resolutions and bills were expressly introduced for the purpose of giving extraordinary powers to the magistrate to put down extraordinary turbulency in the country; yet would it be impossible for the future historian to collect from the record of those acts of parliament, the slightest evidence of the county of Armagh having been at that time disturbed by an exterminating banditti, who drove the whole Catholic population of the county from their homes, merely because they professed the Roman Catholic Religion.

The debate in the House of Commons upon the passing of those bills is the chief historical

source

• Notwithstanding this studied caution to keep the name of Armagh, and any specific reference to those Protestant outrages out of the acts, yet it is evident, that as far as the indemnity of the magistrates went, the legislators had their eyes anxiously rivetted to the whole persecution of Armagh, up to that hour. They meant not to leave the Armagh magistracy uncovered, even for a moment. The indemnity. was made to operate inclusively from the 1st day of July, 1795, that notorious day, on which Mr. Mansell so successfully opened his extraordinary mission at Portadown.

source of information for the truth of the Ar magh persecution. The suppression of the very nature of the Orange delinquency by the Attorney General, spoke a language too clear to be misunderstood by any man of impartiality. The protecting tenderness for this Prætorian guard of the Protestant ascendancy went to complete impunity. Mr. George Ponsonby, in urging the amendment proposed by Mr. Grattan, said, that "the enormities, which the governor of that county had declared, exceeded any, that ever disgraced any country, were such as the existing laws were not calculated fully to reach : they were of that kind, that a fair and im"partial Government should be glad to catch

16

at every opportunity to prevent. If Admi"nistration were sincere in wishing to protect "the unfortunate sufferer in that county, as they were to punish offenders in other parts,

they would not hesitate for one moment to adopt the amendment."

amend.

That amendment was to make it obligatory (not Nature of leaving it optional, as the bill did) on the county proposed to pay the countryman, whether labourer or manu- ment to facturer, full compensation for his damages and the Attar ney Gelosses to his person, family, or dwelling, suffered neral's in consequence of violent mobs. of violent mobs. Mr. Grattan observed, that if the compensation were left optional to the grand jury, nothing would be done.

That

bill.

That the grand jury would readily present for damages suffered by magistrates or witnesses; but they probably would not, in the county of Armagh particularly, give any adequate, or indeed any satisfaction for the losses sustained by the Catholic weayer or peasant; and therefore it was not enough, that grand juries should have the power; it was indispensable to impose the obligation. Government trifled with the northern weaver, when it sent him for satisfaction to a grand jury composed of those very magistrates, whose supineness or partiality or bigotry had been the cause of his losses and his emigration. The bill, as framed, contained no remedy for such a case. In the different preambles the grievance was not set forth in the various provisions no remedy was comprehended. The bill proposed to give extra powers to magistrates; this might be very effectual, as to certain parts of the country but what was the grievance of Armagh That the magistrates had not used the ordinary powers, and in some cases had abused those powers in such a manner, that the subject had not been protected, and the rioter had been encouraged. Without such an obligatory clause the bill was not faithful to its own principle. Unless amended, it would be a bill of partial coercion and partial redress: it punished (as it stood) disturbance in one part of the kingdom: it compromised disturbances in another;

another; it protected the magistrates, and left exposed the poor of the North. It says, if you murder a Magistrate, you shall pay his representatives: but if you drive away whole droves of weavers in Armagh, you shall pay nothing, except those persons please, by whose fault they have been driven away, and scattered over the face of the earth. Without such amendment. the bill would give no redress to the sufferers in Armagh. It was contended by ministers, that the existing law sufficed to repress the disturb ances in Armagh. It certainly did to a certain extent punish the offences committed there: it equally punished the offences committed elsewhere. But it was unfounded to say, that the existing law punished those offences in such a summary manner, as was necessary to restrain them in Armagh. The bill did not look at their

case.

duct of the

In debating the Insurrection Bill,* Sir Lau- Outragerence Parsons grievously lamented the discon- ous content, which it must necessarily create in the Orange county of Armagh, by enabling the Magistrate Magis to send out of the kingdom any man he might Armagh, think guilty. "In that county it had been fre

quently proved on oath, that several Magistrates refused to take the examinations of the

G

• Vid. Parliamentary Debates of these times,

injured

trates in

"

injured Catholics. By some of those Magis

trates, they had been most cruelly persecuted: "others would hear them only out of the win"dow, and some actually turned them from the "doors with threats. If such men were to be "entrusted with a power of transporting men "at pleasure, what was there to be expected, "but the most gross and flagrant violation of justice." In the same debate, Colonel (now General) Craddock assured the House, that he had lately been sent down to that part of the country with the most decided instructions from Government to act 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 he could be of no use. He admitted, that the conduct of the Protestants, called Peep of Day Boys (then calling themselves Orangemen), in the county of Armagh, was at that time most atrocious, and that their barbarous practices must certainly be put down.

With

This marked redundancy in the orders of Government bespeaks doubt, consciousness, or charge that equal and impartial justice had not been previously administered in those parts. The order would otherwise have been an insult to the officer, who received it.