to have very well deserved what he got; it was at least well known that he had many bad connexions, and associated with men of such principles, as fully warranted the suspicion of his own.' (p. 956). It is not difficult to imagine what Mr Ormsby meant. Colonel Bagwell, the member for Tipperary, declared, that not the slightest shade of suspicion attached to the character of Mr Wright, from the result of the investigation at which he was present; and his general character in point of morality, religion and politics, was most unexceptionable. (p. 957). The fact is, the poor man was a CATHOLIC-' a Carmelite scoundrel,' and had necessarily connexions among persons of that religion; and this was enough to induce a small and infuriated and favoured party, who thought their security and the oppression of their fellow-subjects were synonymous, to justify these atrocious proceedings; to esteem it nothing, that an innocent man should be subjected to the worst punishment which human nature could endure; to be cast, lacerated as he was, into a dungeon, to die wretchedly, or still more wretchedly to live. What was the sore back' of one Catholic? It was little indeed, in the wholesale distribution of vengeance and crime which took place during that unhappy period.-But every such act of injustice and cruelty snapped asunder the bonds by which Ireland is connected with this country-it alienated the affections of the Irish people-and we can never hope to regain them till we show more sympathy with their sufferings, and cease to rely for safety on the system which has given rise to them.

The instance we have related is one of sheer brutality; it would dignify it too much to call it either torture or punishment; but it shows into what hands the power of administering torture fell. This power, which no wise man has ever wished to possess, which requires temperance and discretion more than human, was often exercised by the most ignorant men, who, with characteristic confidence, pronounced every thing which they did not understand to be a sign of guilt, and who applied torture as a sure remedy for every defect of their industry or sagacity. It was not in the distant counties alone that torture was employed, as Mr Holmes expresses it, to extort confession,' or, to use a gentier expression, to obtain information. It was just as frequently used in the metropolis itself. We have here the testimony of Sir Richard Musgrave, to whom, even from the violence of his prejudices, attention is due on such a subject. He is the beau-ideal of a Protestant ascendancy man. He is an enemy to all kind of concession and compromise with the Catholics. He carefully brings together all the acts of atrocity committed by the rebels, but glosses over the excesses of the

Orangemen in the most holiday and lady terms;' and laments that such worthy men and discreet magistrates as Judkin Fitzgerald were not to be found in all parts of the kingdom. In his Memoirs of the different Rebellions in Ireland,' Vol. I. p. 264, he gives an account of the apprehension, on the 23d May 1798, of a man of the name of Murphy (by Sir John Macartney and a party of the Attorneys' Corps in Greek Street, Dublin), on whom some pike-heads were found, and of a man named Ryan, between whom and Murphy some connexion was supposed to exist, from the confession of the latter. We shall give Sir Richard's words.

'On examining this man at the guard-house, he said his name was Ryan, and that he was a stone-cutter; but declared that he was perfectly ignorant of Murphy: that he knew nothing of pikes or pike-heads, and that he fled into the churchyard merely to avoid the firing. And Murphy, on being confronted with Ryan, pretended that he was unacquainted with him; but on receiving a few lashes of a cat-and-nine-tails, their recollection being restored, they acknowledged that Murphy was sergeant in a company of united Irishmen,' &c. On the information of Ryan and Murphy, they apprehended many united Irishmen, and seized arms of various descriptions.'

In another part of his work, he incidentally tells the following story.

It was observable, that for some days previous and subsequent to the intended insurrection, the disaffected tradesmen, among whom the butchers were very conspicuous, would not take bank-notes. Though it had been defeated on the night of the twenty-third of May, the rebels were so confident of succeeding in another effort, that fellows were at different times employed in marking the doors of the loyalists, and particularly those of the yeomen. Seven men were detected and, seized on the thirtieth of May, in the act of doing so; and on being whipped by a party of the Attorney's Corps in the Old Exchange, they acknowledged that they belonged to a committee of fifteen employed in that service.' (Vol. I. p. 357.)

At p. 355 of the same volume, he says, speaking generally of the transactions at Dublin- Information was obtained from some notorious traitors, by whipping them, of the extent and malignity of the plot.' At page 281, and 319, Vol. I., he mentions instances of confessions obtained by flogging in other parts of the country. Mr Moore, a gentleman who is a staunch opposer of Parliamentary Reform, and rather indifferent to Catholic emancipation, in a pamphlet in favour of the Union, published when that measure was in agitation, speaks of the torture in Dublin as a matter of notoriety.

6

' I read,' he says, some resolutions in the papers, entered into

by the gentlemen of that persuasion (Roman Catholic) inhabiting the city of Dublin, stating, that the proposed incorporate union of the Legislatures of Great Britain and Ireland is, in fact, an extinction of the liberty of this country. I am very glad they find themselves so free and comfortable. But if I am not misinformed, they felt themselves a little disturbed in the enjoyment of this boasted liberty, when, about eighteen months ago, the stripes of flagellation, and the shrieks of torture, resounded in their ears.' (Moore's Observations on the Union, &c. 2d edit. 1800, p. 85.)

It was not merely by the application of torture to obtain information, but by summary modes of punishment on persons merely suspected, that the spirit of loyalty was displayed at this time. In April 1798, the North Cork militia appeared in Wexford, and brought the Orange system into that county. Mr. Hay, in his History of the Rebellion, there gives the following account of its proceedings.

It is said that the North Cork militia were also the inventorsbut they certainly were the introducers, of pitch-cap torture, into the county of Wexford. Any person having his hair cut short, (and therefore called a croppy, by which appellation the soldiery designated an United Irishman), on being pointed out by some loyal neighbour, was immediately seized and brought into a guard-house, where caps, either of coarse linen, or strong brown paper, besmeared inside with pitch, were always kept ready for service. The unfortunate victim had one of these, well heated, compressed on his head; and, when judged of a proper degree of coolness, so that it could not be easily pulled off, the sufferer was turned out, amidst the acclamations of his merciless torturers, and to the view of vast numbers of people who generally crowded about the guard-house door, attracted by the afflicted cries of the tormented. Many of those persecuted in this manner, experienced additional anguish, from the melted pitch trickling into their eyes. This afforded a rare addition of enjoyment to these keen sportsmen, who reiterated their yells of exultation on the repetition of the several accidents to which their game was liable upon being turned out; for in the confusion and hurry of escaping from the hands of these more than savage barbarians, the blinded victims frequently fell, or inadvertently dashed their heads against the walls in their way. The pain of disengaging this pitched cap from the head must be next to intolerable. The hair was often torn out by the roots; and not unfrequently parts of the skin were so scalded and blistered as to adhere, and come off along with it. The terror and dismay that these outrages occasioned are inconceivable, A sergeant of the North Cork, nicknamed Tom the Devil, was most ingenious in devising new modes of torture. Moistened gunpowder was frequently rubbed into the hair, cut close, and then set a-fire; some, while shearing for this purpose, had the tips of their ears snipt off; sometimes an entire ear, and often both ears, were com

pletely cut off; and many lost part of their noses during the like preparation. But, strange to tell, these atrocities were publicly practised, without the least reserve, in the open day; and no magistrate or officer ever interfered, but shamefully connived at this strange mode of quieting the people.'*

At this time, it will be remembered, there was a law which enabled magistrates to sentence to transportation persons convicted before them. Mr A. H. Jacob, one of the magistrates, paraded the country in the neighbourhood of Guniscorthy, with the yeomen cavalry, having in their train a regular executioner completely appointed, with his implements, a hanging rope and cat-o-nine-tails. Some of the persons, condemned at the Petty sessions, appealed to the General Quarter sessions at Wexford, held on the 23d of May 1798; and, as Mr Hay says, - in the course of the trials on these appeals, in the public courthouse of Wexford, Mr A. H. Jacob appeared as evidence against the prisoners, and publicly avowed the happy discoveries he had made in consequence of inflicting the torture. Many instances of whipping and strangulation he particularly detailed, with a degree of self-approbation and complacency, that clearly demonstrated how highly he was pleased to rate the merits of his own great and loyal services. p. 72.

Mr Gordon, a Protestant clergyman of the same county, gives an instance of the terror which the infliction of this torture produced.

On the morning of the 23d of May, a labouring man, named Denis Macdaniel, came to my house, with looks of the utmost consternation and dismay, and confessed to me, that he had taken the United Irishman's oath, and had paid for a pike, with which he had not yet been furnished, nineteen pence halfpenny, to one Kilty, a smith, who had administered the oath to him, and many others. While I sent my eldest son, who was lieutenant of yeomanry, to arrest Kilty, I exhorted Daniel to surrender himself to a magistrate, and make his confession: but this he positively refused, saying, that he should, in that case, be lashed, to produce the pike, which he had not, and to confess what he knew not. I then advised him, as the only alternative, to remain quietly at home, promising, that, if he should be convicted on the information of others, I would represent his case to the magistrates. He took my advice; but the fear of arrest and lashing had so taken possession of his thoughts, that he could neither eat nor sleep; and on the morning of the 25th, he fell on his

* History of the Insurrection of the County of Wexford, A. D. 1798, by Edward Hay, Esq. Member of the Royal Irish Academy p. 57, 58.

face, and expired in a little grove near my house.' Gordon's History of the Rebellion, p. 87, 88.

Mr Alexander, also a Protestant inhabitant of Ross, in his account of the Rebellion, p. 28, speaks of a man of the name of Driscol, who had been strangled three times, and flogged four times, during a confinement, on suspicion, because two Catholic prayer-books had been found on him; yet he was finally discharged, as no guilt could be proved to attach to him. In this same county of Wexford, all houses in which arms were found, or of which the owners were absent at night, were burnt; and as the inhabitants often fled from their houses, for fear of the military parties, and of being proceeded against in the new forms of trial which they practised, they had often an opportunity of inflicting this punishment on the contumacious. At Carnew, on the confines of that county and Wicklow, Mr Hay tells us, (p. 76), that, besides burning and torturing in all shapes, twenty-eight prisoners, some of whom were confined on suspicion, were shot, in a ball-alley, by the yeomen and a party of the Antrim militia; and Major Fitzgerald, an officer, who, by his activity, greatly contributed to the suppression of the rebellion in Wexford, bears testimony to the impartiality and veracity of Mr Hay.

All these atrocities were perpetrated previously to the breaking out of the rebellion in that county; they were not, therefore, acts of retaliation, but made up part of the system acted upon throughout Ireland. Indeed, the magistrates of Wexford fall under the censure of Sir Richard Musgrave, as too backward in the use of the cat-o-nine-tails and the halter. In his praise of the spirited and reasonable exertions' of Mr, afterwards Sir Judkin Fitzgerald, he says- a man of his sagacity and courage would have saved the county of Wexford from desolation and indelible disgrace.' (Vol. II. p. 282.) He then gives a specimen of the ingenuity of a friend of his, a Mr Otway, who, after Sir Judkin, was the most meritorious man in the county of Tipperary, who flogged a man of whom he had suspicion, but not being able to make him confess at that time, tied him up next day, when his skin was tender from the preceding whipping; which proceeding was, according to his account, attended with the happiest effects. Indeed it is evident, as Lord Clare might have proved, that the operation could not fail to be successful, if it was continued long enough. Guilty or innocent, the man must confess-or die ;--and, in neither case, could he complain of the infliction. Certainly the system, so far as it was carried, was not successful in the county of Wexford: The inhabitants did not all die with terror like M'Daniel; they