CHAPTER III.

Subject continued. Subornation.

One thousand

bills of indictment found in two days. Confis cation on a large scale.

"Wo to them that devise iniquity, because it is in the power of their hand; and they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.". -Micah ii. 1, 2.

I DO not pretend that all the depositions carry their own condemnation indelibly stamped on their foreheads, like those quoted in the preceding chapter. No: it would be very extraordinary indeed, if, among the army of perjurers, who were suborned for the purpose of swearing away the lives of the pre-condemned Irish, there were none who could frame a consistent story. But there is so much of undeniable fraud, and falsehood, and perjury established in the evidence, as to discredit the whole. He who swears that a man was "cut, and hacked, and his entrails taken out, without bleeding,"102 must be a perjurer: but it does not thence follow, that he would have been other than a perjurer, had he omitted the miraculous part of the story.

102 Temple, 88.

I said, "suborned for the purpose of swearing away the lives of the Irish." This is not a rhetorical flourish, calculated to delude or to deceive the reader. It is a melancholy and heart-rending truth, that such was the depraved and deplorable state of the morality of the administration in Ireland, that money was lavished to purchase evidence for the nefarious purpose above stated. And so barefacedly and profligately was this trade of corruption carried on,—so totally lost were the privy council to all sense of principle and decency, and so well was their character established on this point, that one of the agents employed in the business of subornation, actually applied to them, in their public capacity, for the wages of his iniquity. This single fact, established on the unimpeachable evidence of the duke of Ormond,* would of itself be sufficient to induce

*"Indictments had been found against them" [Lord Dunsany, Sir John Netterville, and other noblemen and gentlemen of high standing]" and ABOVE A THOUSAND OTHERS, by a grand jury, IN THE SPACE OF TWO DAYS. There was certainly too much hurry in the finding of these indictments, (of which above three thousand were upon record) to allow time for the examination of each particular case, and they were too generally found upon very slight evidence. The Roman Catholics complained that there were strange practices used with the jurors, menaces to some, promises of rewards, AND PARTS OF THE FORFEITED ESTATES; and though great numbers of the indicted persons might be really guilty, there was too much reason given to suspect the evidence. I am the more inclined to suspect there was a good deal of corruption and iniquity in the methods of gaining the indictments, because I find a very re

so deep

the world, in any other history than that of Ire-
land, to reject the whole of the evidence, even if
it extended to one hundred folio volumes, instead
of thirty-two, which are swelled to this immode-
rate extent, by silly tales of what "this body
heard another body say.'
99103 But the history of
Ireland is an exception to all the general rules on
the subject of history. The allegations against
the Irish have been so often reiterated,
rooted has been the hatred excited against the
nation, and so deplorable has been the credulity
of the world on this topic, that a fabulous tale,
resting wholly on such incongruities and absurdi-
ties as we have seen, has been adopted, without
investigation, by nine-tenths of those who have
written on English or Irish affairs: and there are
in this country, as well as in England, many, even
among those who pride themselves on the extent
of their reading, who are so far duped as to give
as implicit credit to the story of the hundred and
fifty-four thousand murdered in Ulster alóne in

markable memorandum made by the marquis of Ormond, in his own writing, of a passage in the Council, on April 23, 1643. There was then a letter read at the Board, from a person who claimed a great merit to himself, in getting some hundreds of gentlemen indicted, and the rather for that he had laid out sums of money to procure witnesses to give evidence to a jury, for the finding those indictments. This was an intimate friend of Sir William Parsons, and might very well know that such methods would be approved by him."104

103 Warner, 146.

104 Carte, I. 423.

three months, as to the account of the revolution of 1688, or the accession of the Hanoverian family to the throne of England.

I trust the reader will well weigh, and ponder on, the naked detail contained in the preceding note, which exhibits a scene of atrocity unparalleled in the history of fraud, forgery, and perjury. What a stupendous, what a sickening fact is the finding of one thousand bills of indictment in two days! And, be it observed, these bills were principally against the wealthy classes, the "noblemen, gentlemen, and freeholders."105 These were the men whom it was worth while to indict, men whose estates would recompense the trouble, pay for the subornation of hired witnesses, and sate the avarice of the prime movers of the business.

Above one thousand bills of indictment in two days! Suppose the jury sat twelve hours in each day, from six in the morning till six in the evening, without obeying any of the calls of hunger, it was at the rate of forty-two bills in an hour, or two every three minutes. Well may Carte observe, that they did not "allow time for the examination of each particular case." This is a most feeble mode of stating the affair, which he ought to have stigmatized in terms of the strongest reprobation. He might have said, and with perfect truth, that they did not "allow time to

105 Carte, I. 454.

read the bills, and little more than was necessary to sign them." They must have been huddled over en masse, barely reading the titles, marking them true bills, (how true, heaven knows) and annexing the names of the jurors.

And these bills of indictment-(who can read the fact without shuddering?)-decided on the lives and fortunes of the principal of the "nobility, gentry, and freeholders" of Ireland, of whom, on these, and indictments equally just and honourable, "two thousand were prosecuted to outlawry by Sir Philip Percival, clerk of the crown,' and their estates confiscated.

""106

Will it be deemed extravagant, to assert that the annals of the world can produce no similar circumstance, and that never was rampant and profligate injustice so completely triumphant? This was the time, when, in those halls nicknamed courts of justice, "the benches," (to use the strong and energetic language of the duke of Ormond, in his speech to the Irish Parliament) "were crowded or oppressed with the throng and wicked weight of those who ought rather to have stood manacled at the bar."107 How deplorable the case of a noble nation, exposed to the “tender mercies" of such juries and such judges!

I intended to have closed this chapter with the above paragraph; but it appears that some further reflections are demanded on the subject. It 107 Borlase, App. 84.

106 Carte, I. 454.