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state, and every murmer against a proctor or tithe-jobber exaggerated into a confederacy against the Church. Yet to the discredit of the county of Cork in particular, every dwarf is metamorphosed into a giant. Tithe-jobbers strained every nerve to alarm the fears of Government, in order to secure themselves in their extortions, by painting the deluded peasantry as unworthy of the least compassion. In the Reverend author of the letter found on the road between Cork and Cloghnakilty, addressed to Dr. O'Leary, they found a favourite Historian, who, in peasants going before day for sand to manure their spots of ground, could discover Orlandos and Orsons. The sport of school-boys was magnified into sieges. In Monkstown, where ladies and gentlemen pass a good part of the summer for the benefit of bathing, what uproars and alarms: two wags, for the sake of diversion sounded an old horn in the dead of the night, and threw all the ladies and gentlemen into a panic terror. In the space of three weeks this nocturnal sport appeared in the distant prints a serious blockade by Captain Right, at the head of five hundred men; in this manner, at a distance from the scene of action, were numbers alarmed at the report of the taking of Umbrage.* To give a history of the false accounts propagated in the public papers, and of the manoeuvres of tithe-dealers, would be an endless task: I must hasten to the vestries, as the Lord Bishop of Cloyne complains that they were intimidated from purchasing the elements for the holy communion.

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I have heard but of one vestry in his diocese relative to which there has been any intimidation. The people who complained of tithes complained of the rise of the parish rates, and requested the gentleman who had the superintendance of the vestry, not to increase them. In the year eighty, church-rates in some parts of the diocese of Cloyne, were but 11. 2s. 6d. The people, both Protestants and Catholics, finding that their piety did not increase in proportion to the

* As the words require an explanation, for the instruction of several, it is fit to remark, that when it was reported in the papers that the French had taken Umbrage at the proceedings of the English, some wiseacres imagined that Umbrage was the name of some great city. The mistake of the meaning of a word often leads into error > and of this error are guilty those who confound Whiteboyism with a Popish Confederacy.

rapid rise of the ecclesiastical revenues, and that the clergy were not more holy and disinterested in the year eighty-six, than they were in the year eighty, thought fit that sanctity should not be distanced by so many odds by the price of sanctification. They brought both within nearer view of each other, and hence this mystery of popery controuling vestries, and depriving souls who did not choose to pay too much for their canonization, is unravelled. With regard to the notice ordering a church to be left for a mass-house, and threats to burn a new one, I ridiculed the very idea of it in my last address to the Whiteboys. He says that they bound themselves by oath, in presence of the church-wardens, to burn the new church, if the old one was not left for a masshouse. Who were those who bound themselves by oath to commit such a deed? Does his church-wardens know them? If he does, let him bring them to justice? If he does not know them, how does he know their religion? And have they fulfilled their engagement? Was mass said in the old church? Is the new church burnt? It is very likely that a set of men who have not heard prayers from their own pastors in the long space of fourteen months, and who had flocked to his churches, for the sake of impunity, would (as I remarked in my letter to them) indulge such fervour as to have a church for a mass-house, and die martyrs for prayers. Apago nugec!

If the Bishop of Cloyne believes this a serious affair, I applaud him for the strength of his faith. Under the apprehensions of terror the imagination realizes phantoms. We read in history that armies in the dead of the night encamped on the summit of a hill, imagining that the enemies were drawn up in battle array in a distant plain.* The out-scouts at the dawn of day discovered, to their surprise, that it was an extensive field covered with overgrown thistles, nodding with the breeze, and seeming to beckon to their pursuers to advance. Doctor Woodward's imagination creates similar foes. Nor can we discover any danger to Doctor Woodward's old church or new church, except what he figures to himself in his pamphlet.

* The army of the princes in the reign of Louis the Eleventh. See Father Daniel's History of France.

But will Mr. O'Leary deny that such notices were posted up, and such letters, threatening to cut out tongues, &c. were written? By no means: Mr. O'Leary is not a man to controvert facts vouched by the Bishop's authority, except when he has facts to counterbalance them. In that case he will humbly take the liberty of being guided by his own judgment. He does not believe the Pope's infallibility; much less will he place infallibility in the Bishop of Cloyne's oracles when he delivers them from his tripod. But he is humbly of opinion that such notices and letters came from other quarters. Tithe-proctors, tithe-jobbers, and others were interested in alarming the nation, and awakening the fears of Government. They dreaded the least alteration in the present system, and knew that the best method to secure success to their plan, was to blacken as much as pos sible deluded men who were already but too obnoxious. Hence the exaggerated accounts of the Whiteboys circulated in the distant prints; all provisions, and every communication between town and country cut off. Yet our markets were supplied as usual.

A lady of consequence, who spends her time and income in encouraging arts and manufactures, on whose estate the little girl of five earns her bread by knitting; whose tenants wear shoes and stockings, clean shirts and warm frize, whilst the tenants of several are shivering with cold and pinching with hunger; who, when the peasant dies, gives the warm cabin, and a spot of ground rent-free to the widow and orphans, until the eldest son is able to provide for them; who has diffused a spirit of industry and vigour amongst the naked and unemployed inhabitants of barren rocks; and who, like another Zenobia, has a manly heart in a female breast.This lady intended to drain part of a lake, in order to enlarge her improvements. A grateful peasantry flocked to the work. It was enough. We soon read in distant papers that a thousand Whiteboys had thrown up intrenchments, and had formed a regular encampment

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her lands. Numberless falsehoods have been industriously propagated, to the dishonour of the country. No honest man would justify any breach of the public peace, and no man who pays any regard for justice or truth would propagate falsehoods and infamy.

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Before the relaxation of the Popery laws, a wretch, after having quitted his house, set fire to it in the dead of the night, and swore to damages which were to be made good to him at the expense of the innocent. The villany was proved in open court. Had the Lord Bishop of Cloyne made enquiries, perhaps he would find that some tithe-jobbers tampered with their hirelings to set fire to their own corn. By this manœuvre they expected that a tenfold gain would com. pensate for this wilful loss. I doubt not then the reality of the notices, however absurd, nor the threats, however unlikely to be carried into execution. But I suspect the quarter from whence they came. Interest and vengeance combined, are capable of giving greater alarms, but the judg ment must not be captivated to the yoke of an implicit belief, when the motives of credibility are dubious; and anony. mous letters are bad vouchers. No man intent upon the murder of another, ever forewarns him of the danger. If a person wrote me a letter, threatening to cut out my tongue, I would not be under the least apprehension that he would deprive me of the organ of speech. If he were in earnest, he would watch his opportunity without putting me on my guard. Be this as it may, we all deplore the peace of society disturbed; the property of individuals injured by nightly excursions, and the distraction of the community.

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But the duty of the historian confines him within the li mits of truth, and in relating events when he cannot know the real causes, he must assign the most probable. The Bishop's favourite layman, talks of people hanging in gallowses, noses and ears cut off, &c. Will the Bishop of Cloyne be his voucher. For while I am on the spot, I shall controvert the legendary tales of any modern Sir John Temple.—No ; the Bishop cannot produce one single instance of any man's being murdered by the Whiteboys, in the counties of Cork or Kerry, and as for noses, had he discovered any of them to be cut off by the Whiteboys, his zeal for religion would have induced him to collect and fix them in the face of his pamphlet to ornament his picture of persecution, and give it its due proportions. I enquired about those noses and

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ears, I can get no information. The operations then of a campaign of fifteen months, (a campaign, which has attracted the attention of all Europe, thanks to our tithe journalists,) have confined, as I remarked before, to two or three proctors, buried without being dead, and rising immediately without waiting for the sound of the last trumpet; the burning of some few ricks of corn, and the cropping of nine or ten garrans which are still at the plough; and notabene, the two last garrans that were cropped after Lord Luttrell's first excursion to Munster, though the oldest in studd, were cropt with as much nicety as if a young miss's ears were to be pierced for the reception of ornamental pendants. A small flit! but great noise. Such is the number of the wounded by the Whiteboys in the counties of Cork and Kerry: but where is the number of the slain? The slain and mortally wounded were the deluded bipeds, whom the Bishop of Cloyne did not exhort, nor banish from his churches; and who goaded by oppression on one hand, and the expecting impunity from hypocrisy on the other, gave into those wild and extravagant measures against which Mr. O'Leary cautioned them. Du ring the disturbances, the Catholic clergy and laity suffered more than their Protestant neighbours of the same respective orders. And when the Lord Bishop of Cloyne promised his readers a general account of the rise and progress of the insurrections in Munster, we little expected that his account would be inclosed in a nutshell, of which five or six Protestant clergymen were the kernel, whilst the persecuted Catholic clergymen are omitted, as the withered leaves of the tree, left out of his historical dessert.

Such is the plain, candid, and unadorned account of the disturbances, in the suppression of which I have taken so active a part, whilst the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, as an unconcerned spectator, stood gazing upon an eminence at a great distance from the field of battle. After a large fabric has been on fire for more than twelve months, it is laudable in him to come forward with the doleful news, that a few rafters have been burnt. He should have been the first to put his hand to the engine, in order to bring the fire under, and to prevent it from communicating to the adjacent buildings,

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