the fields to complete the same work of devastation."* Mr. Scott, the magistrate already alluded to, testifies that he saw two Orangemen trying to set a house on fire; and that, in order to prevent it, he struck one and took the gun from the other. Mr. Tighe, another magistrate, deposes that he saw an Orangeman firing into the thatch of a house for the purpose of setting it on fire, but admits that he made no attempt to arrest him. Mr. Curry, police inspector, testifies that he entered six burning houses; an old woman was struggling to escape from one, but the door was partly closed and the blazing thatch falling over it. A policeman rescued a girl eighteen years old from another house. Sub-Constable Fair took a woman out of a house on fire, blackened and wounded. Another constable testifies that he saw an Orangeman strike a woman with the but of his gun, as she was trying to escape from the flames. Mr. Fitzmaurice, stipendary magistrate, testifies that he stopped a man in the act of firing at a girl who was rushing from her father's house. An old woman of seventy was murdered; and the skull of an idiot was beaten in with the buts of Orange muskets. The Roman Catholic chapel, the house of the Roman Catholic curate, and the National school-house were fired into and the windows broken, and a number of the surrounding houses of the Roman Catholic inhabitants were set on fire and burnt, every article of furniture having been first wantonly destroyed.t

We pause here for a moment to remark that doubtless many of our readers will wonder why the Orangemen would attack a national school-house, since the national schools are those established by the British government and over which the Catholics had no control. Yet their burning the schoolhouse was no accidental occurrence. It was sufficient for them that Catholics were admissible to those schools; accordingly they gave them all the opposition in their power. We have now before us copies of many resolutions passed with acclamation at their public meetings, of which the following will serve as a specimen: "That as Protestants we reprobate

* Ib.

† Berwick's Report to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. See also Ed Rev., vol. 91, p. 103.

the new system of National Education, and that we will not listen to any pastor whom we see to encourage it, or whom we know to approve of it."*

There is abundance of testimony in the Reports, and other works before us, to show that this was not the only point in which they wished to control their pastors. In illustration of this, we may remark that the Rev. Mr. Brydge, a Presbyterian clergyman, was expelled from his church because he refused to give evidence in favor of an Orangeman named Richy, charged with murdering several Catholics, and burning their houses. We quote a fragment from the sworn testimony of Mr. Bell:

"They threatened him; they came into the meeting-house, yelling and shouting, and threatening him when he was in the pulpit, and ordered him from it, and he remonstrated with them and begged of them to hear him in his own defence; and if they did, that he was certain they would all give him credit for what he had done; for that he had acted conscientiously, that he was afraid of doing harm to the young man, and they would not hear him.

“6795.—Have you fully related what occurred on the second day? No, not fully.

"6796.-State all the important circumstances of that day? I went so far as my going for a magistrate; he came and remonstrated with the people, and they would not attend to him by any means. They said, 'Away with him;' they said they would not suffer him there; that they would have neither trial nor anything else, but put him away, in consequence of his not supporting this man: then after leaving the place they were likely to trample us down, Mr. Brydge and his friends, but we escaped on that day. I suppose I need not take up the time of the Committee in stating a number of particulars that I cannot be precise about, but the rage of the Orange party was such that we could not stand before them at all, nor could we be heard. When Mr. Brydge called a meeting of the Presbytery, the only authorized body to investigate the matter which was complained of, they pulled down several seats in the meeting-house, and destroyed part of the pulpit and windows."t

Our readers are aware that at the present day it is the Catholic priests that are accused of opposing schools, and wishing to keep their people in ignorance; and the accusation

* Irish Report, 3, Appendix, p. 32. Ed. Rev.. vol. lxii., p. 479.

†Those who cannot see the Parliamentary Rep, are referred to the Brit. and Foreign Rev pp. 370-1.

is made consistently enough by the members of a party who really have opposed education. It is very true that the priests of Ireland have been opposed to schools established for the express purpose of proselyting; but no class of educated men have taken more pains to aid in establishing schools. We can bear testimony ourselves, as eye-witnesses, that in numerous instances those much abused Irish priests have become teachers themselves in their own parishes, and taught the poor gratis when they had no other means of instruction. We can also testify that some of the most learned and most accomplished private teachers we have met in Ireland, or anywhere else, belonged to this class. But intelligent Americans, such as we have the honor of addressing, need no testimony at the present day to satisfy them that Catholic priests are not enemies of education. The number of colleges which they have established throughout the United States, chiefly for the benefit of the poorest classes of our adopted citizens, not to mention academies, seminaries and schools, would not only fully acquit them of any such charge, but prove that no other class evince a more earnest, indefatigable zeal in favor of the good cause.

A similar charge is made against them, in regard to favoring aristocracy; but the truth is that their teaching is more republican than that of any other clergy whatever, and for this, much more than for their "Popery," have they been so much disliked by the Tory landlords of Ulster. But of all parties or sects, none have been more in favor of aristocracy in its worst form than the Orangemen of Ireland. There is little research necessary in order to find sufficient evidence of this. At the very meeting at which the resolution against the National schools, which we have just quoted, was unanimously passed, another resolution was passed with equal unanimity, which runs thus: "That the support we speak of means to encourage Protestant tenants on the one hand, and to defend Protestant land owners on the other; to preserve a Protestant population, and to keep at its head an aristocracy truly Protestant." These resolutions were adopted at a meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge of the county Tyrone, which was held on the 27th of April, 1832, Joseph Green, Esq., Grand

Master, in the chair. Many similar resolutions have been passed within the last decade, but we prefer quoting these because they are to be found in works which are accessible to our readers.*

The "resolutions" passed by the Orangemen at their public meetings may well seem intollerant and absurd, but their petitions to the reigning sovereign are, if possible, still more so. We cannot give our readers a more correct idea of these curious documents than by quoting a stanza or two from Moore's "Petition of the Orangemen of Ireland," which can hardly be called a burlesque, so faithfully does it represent the spirit, if not the letter of the real "petitions," as duly approved by such pious divines as the Rev. Mr. Mortimer O'Sullivan, the Rev. Sir Harcourt Lees, &c.:

"That, forming one-seventh, within a few fractions,

Of Ireland's seven millions of hot heads and hearts,
We hold it the basest of all base transactions

To keep us from murd'ring the other six parts:

"That 'tis very well known this devout Irish nation
Has now, for some ages, gone happily on,
Believing in two kinds of substantiation,

One party in Trans and the other in Con;

"That we, your petitioning Cons, have, in right

Of the said monosyllable, ravaged the lands,
And embezzled the goods, and annoy'd day and night,

Both the bodies and souls of the sticklers for Trans."

We have already given a glimpse of the sort of efforts made "to preserve a Protestant population," &c. We will now give a further insight of the modus operandi, although we have but little space left for that purpose. Returning to the bloody performances at Mayeramayo, we quote a passage or two from the testimony of sworn witnesses, promising that this is the only instance in which we adduce the evidence of Catholics; although their testimony is corroborated in every important particular by Protestant magistrates, inspectors of police, &c. Some of the

Vide Ed. Rev. for Jan. 1836, p. 479.

scenes which took place in the houses, and which have already been alluded to, are best described in the simple, unvarnished language, of the poor people on whom the attacks were made:

"Bridget King-I know Pat King, who was killed on the 12th of July; he was taking care of his mother on that day; the door was shut. I saw the Orangemen fire at the house; they broke in the door ; they pulled him over the garden ditch, and stabbed him; he died in ten minutes afterwards; he was not out of the house that day."

"Margaret King-I was in the house when the door was broken and my uncle Pat King killed; the house filled with Orangemen; one of them hit him on the head with a stone; three of them then took him down to the low room; I got into a field; one of the Orangemen said-'D-n your soul for a Popish b-h,' and knocked me down off the garden ditch with a stone; when I returned to the garden, three of them had my uncle down and were stabbing him; I got into a byre and hid in some hay; some of them came in and stabbed the cow in two places, broke the stake, and let her out. When I could do so with safety I went to my uncle, and got his head on my knee; he lived about ten minutes after that. The dragoons came up just as my uncle was dying; one of them said-'Maybe he'll come to again.' They (the Orange) d-d my grandmother, who is an old bed-ridden woman the last year and a half-spat in her face, hit her on the head with a stone-cut her arms, and then smashed a chair on her forehead.”—Berwick's Report to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1849.

On the same occasion Arthur Traynor was shot in the cheek. On the police coming up he was made prisoner, although Mr. Beers, Orange Grand Master, admitted that he was a peacefully disposed man. Besides being dangerously wounded, his house was burned and all his property destroyed, while no one could pretend that he was guilty of any misconduct; but the Orange magistrates boasted of their impartiality because they did not send him to jail for some months with other "Papists" who had been in the Orangemen's way in a similar manner. His wife testifies as follows:

66

Margaret Traynor-The men with sashes on them fired into my house, and burned it, and destroyed it; they chased the old woman who is dead into the byre, and followed her; I saw her after they went away; she was then drawing breath, but she died in about an hour afterwards. They shot my husband in the check and made a prisoner of him. I saw Pat King a killing; they dragged him out of his house; he begged for mercy; he got away from them and ran into the garden;