count your Committee have inserted in their Appendix. On another occasion, some of the more immediate leaders of the new association met with some of the persons then lately liberated, and one of the most active of the latter description gave, under the name of "The tremendous Toast," "May the last of Kings be strangled in the bowels of the last of Priests!"

The assiduity with which these persons attempt to enlist in their cause every class of interested or visionary reformers is apparent, not only in the encouragement given to the Spensonian doctrines of Partition of Property, which yet they treat as chimerical and absurd, but also in the propagation of religious tenets, which have obtained some footing, and which lead (as among the enthusiasts in the reign of Charles the First), to the abrogation of all restraint from temporal authority. The doctrine of an approaching Millenium has found many converts, and is glanced at in some of the publications already noticed. The leaders of the new association, many of them secretly professing an utter disbelief in the Christian religion, and eveu considering it as a mark of incivism to be possessed of a Bible, but readily embracing any means of effecting the subversion of all religious establishment as a step towards the destruction of regal government, willingly lend themselves to this delusion, and direct their agents never to advance their own opinions in opposition to it, but to reserve them for the more confidential intercourse of the deeply initiated, and even to be provided with arguments on both sides of the question, in order to promote discussion in places of public resort, and draw attention to their own doctrines.

On the 19th of April last, several of the persons above referred to as principals of the new society, were apprehended under a warrant from the duke of Portland, while holding one of their meetings. The only papers discovered were another printed copy of the paper already referred to, and which had been previously transmitted to your Committee, and an address signed Hibernicus, directed to "Britons and Fellow Citizens," inserted in the Appendix.

Your Committee have thus detailed the proceedings of the disaffected carried on in the metropolis, and as directed principally to its disturbance; but they would afford a very inadequate representation of the extent of

dearness of provisions, and wishes for the aggravation rather than the alleviation of that calamity; and when early in the present year a systematic plan was first observed here, it first began to be rumoured among the disaffected there.

At the same period, seditious emissaries were first detected endeavouring to excite insurrection among the manufacturers of different parts of Lancashire. This was to be done by associating as many as possible under the sanction of an oath nearly similar to that adopted in London, and which, with an account of the secret sign which accompanied it, has been transmitted from various quarters to government, and laid before your Committee. Dangerous meetings were disguised, as in London, under the appearance of friendly societies for the relief of sick members: the persuasion of a general revolution shortly to take place, and consequently the inefficacy of all resistance, was studiously diffused throughout the country, with a view both to excite the disaffected, and to dishearten and disunite the loyal. On the same account, the numbers of those engaged in the confederacy were exaggerated, and stated sometimes as amounting to 60,000 trained to military exercise, at others, including Ireland, to no less than 1,500,000. The disposition of the people in the part of the country alluded to, being previously untainted to any extent with seditious principles, it was necessary to found the hopes of insurrection chiefly on the pressure arising from the scarcity of provisions. It was this feeling, fomented for other purposes by more artful instigators, that probably led those who took the oath in question to engage in those schemes of insurrection. The seditious emissaries well knew, that if they could promote a general rising of a large proportion of the inhabitants of a populous district under any pretext, it would be easy to draw them on, under more desperate leaders, to attempt the subversion of every establishment of the constitution within their reach, especially if aided by similar explosions at the same time in different parts of the country, and the alarm, or actual existence, of foreign invasion. Though this was the pretext of discontent, they themselves felt so little for the distresses which they

tunately prevailed in different parts of the country, and particularly in the West of England, on account of the dearness of provisions; conceiving that, although these may in their progress have been encouraged by the disaffected, and may have assumed an order and concert in their proceedings, from the example of secret confederacy, recently practised in both parts of the united kingdom, (which seems evidently to have formed a part of an extensive, digested, and methodized system), they were originally unconnected with the designs traced in this Report.

The enterprizes and connections of the new society in the metropolis, were not, however, confined to foment the discontents, or encourage the hopes of the disaffected in our own country: they certainly were disposed, if occasion offered, to avail themselves of any assistance that could be derived from the invasion of a foreign enemy, whose aid was solicited by some of their emissaries, both for this country and Ireland, and to whom they held out the hopes of a formidable cooperation from internal insurrection. Towards the end of last year, when, as has been already stated, the hopes of the seditious in England began to revive, it appears that representations were transmitted abroad of the progress of similar discontents in Scotland, by the agents concerned in fomenting them, and that they were described as connected with expected support from the North of England, and particularly with insurrections in London, the plan of which was described "as perfectly organized." On the other hand, hopes were held forth of a projected invasion from Holland on the coasts of England or Scotland, to co-operate with a general insurrection or "explosion," as it was called, to take place at the same moment both in England and Ireland. Early in the present year, when the plan in question is stated as having arrived at maturity in London, an agent from thence appears to have avowed the object of it, without reserve, on the continent; to have boasted of the progress it had made amongst the suburbs of the metropolis; to have explained the support to be expected from foreign invasion, the design of the insurrection breaking out at the same time in the principal towns of the country, and of the intention of directing the first attack against the government and magistrates of the country; and to have communicated these designs, and the means of availing themselves of them, to the government of the foreign enemy.

Your Committee have next directed their attention to the present situation of Ireland; both as disturbed within and threatened from without, particularly with reference to the necessity of those measures adopted by the parliament of that country before the Union for the suppression of the rebellion there, which have since been renewed for a limited period by that of the united king [VOL. XXXV.]

dom; and also of the manner in which the powers thus given have been exercised, and the effect produced by them. It appears, that though the efforts of the disaffected in that country have happily long ceased to assume the aspect of rebellion, arrayed in the field against the arms of their sovereign, and though the organization established by the United Irishmen may not have been kept up with any regularity, and that many parts of the kingdom present the usual appearance of peaceful industry and loyal subordination; yet, that at no time have there been wanting in others, demonstrations of the same systematic plan of insurrection, and marked with the same characters of unexampled atrocity. The principal traitors in Dublin continually send their emissaries through the country, to keep up the spirits of the disaffected, by the hopes of support from foreign invasion. About a year since, a new system of association was about to be established, and a new executive directory formed in Dublin. This was to originate in a head committee, who were to appoint those on whom they could depend to form regiments, of which each colonel was to provide the major and captains, each captain his subalterns, and they the private men. The communications were to be verbal, and the business conducted without elections, debates, or committees. This plot, however, being detected by government, its progress was checked, if not entirely stopped. It affords a remarkable coincidence with the intelligence above detailed, of what has been passing in England, that it appears to have been lately held out to the disaffected in Ireland, that whenever any insurrection shall take place in that country, which it is intended shall be universally on the same day, a similar explosion is to be made in several of the principal towns in England, particularly in London, where they are told the disaffected are acting on the same plans and principles as the United Irish. The manner in which the rebellion was originally organized, the secret springs of the confederacy, which set in motion, and directed to every enormity of private and public outrage, so large a mass of the inhabitants, have long been familiar to the House and to the public. The object of it being to disunite that country from this, by the co-operation of a foreign enemy, it may be imagined that the cause will never appear desperate to those engaged in it, while the continuance of the war still keeps alive the hope of that assistance, encouraged as it may be from time to time by assurances of support from their ally, or at least from those traitors to their country who still form, in the capital of that enemy, a central committee of rebellion, to instigate invasion on the one hand, and prepare insurrection on the other. Their emissaries are continually passing into Ire land for this purpose, where two of them are supposed still to be concealed. The views of

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this committee, and the means by which they are not ashamed to endeavour to accomplish them, will be sufficiently obvious from the address to the Irish sailors in our fleet, which has been printed in their name, and prepared on the continent for extensive circulation. Emissaries on the other hand, have not been wanting from Ireland, to interest the French government in support of their cause; one particularly has lately passed over to the continent, and opened a direct communication with the enemy accrediting himself with them as being deputed by a great body of the landed interest of his country, whom he represents as being, like himself, so dissatisfied with the Union, that they would engage in any concert with France to procure the means of establishing, under the guarantee of that power, some new form of representative government. With this view he affords them all the information in his power, of the state of the country, and of the force employed to protect it; and suggests the amount of that which he recommends to be sent against it. He stipulates, however, with his proposed allies, for the assurance of their property to all the present possessors, in opposition to any claim of the Catholics, whom he states still to look forward with hopes of establishing a Popish ascendancy; and it appears that he has been given to understand, that both the late Directory, and one of the principal ministers of the present government of France, had coincided in the justice and propriety of that stipulation.

The peculiarity of this situation of Ireland, both in its internal and external relations, would undoubtedly justify extraordinary measures of precaution, which seem called for, not more by attention to the security of the government at large, than to the happiness and even existence of the loyal part of the community. The system of terror originally adopted by the leaders of the United Irish, who first publicly recommended assassination, and then formed committees for the purpose of concerting and directing it, has been continued to the present hour, sometimes, as will be seen hereafter, with the same enormities; at others, with the less fatal, though scarcely less cruel, excesses of inhuman beatings and floggings. The ostensible objects to which these outrages were directed have been different, and are now more frequently, in the first instance, those of lowering rents, abolition of tithes, regulation of wages, and price of provisions, than those of an alteration in the form and constitution of government. This system could only be counteracted by the apprehension of prompt and efficacious punishment for the guilty, and the sense of security and protection for the innocent. The regular course of law affording only periodical occasions of trial, and providing in the interval no effechal means for protecting the witnesses from seduction or intimidation, or the jurymen

from outrage, was found inadequate to the pressure of the case; while the extension of the mischief, and the uncertainty where it might next break out into action, required a remedy equally prompt and universal. It appears from the minutes of courts martial held at Rathdrum, Limerick, Clanmell, Wexford and Leixlip, that during the year 1800, the counties of Wicklow and Wexford were infested by bodies of rebellious banditti, acting under the orders of regular leaders, and perpetrating from time to time, with every circumstance of aggravation, the crimes of robbery, burglary, and murder ;that in the counties of Tipperary and Limerick, the practice of breaking into houses, and cruelly beating or flogging the owners with reds made of thorns, in order to fix an arbitrary and inadequate price on the necessaries of life, frequently ending in, or accompanied with premeditated acts of murder, was very prevalent; and had spread such terror over the whole country in which it prevailed, as would have baffled all the exertions of the ordinary magistracy, if not counteracted by the vigour and energy of the new jurisdiction. The peculiar situation of that district, and the effect of the measures adopted to tranquillize it, are so fully and satisfactorily detailed in the evidence of Mr. Ormsby, a very eminent barrister, who was deputed by the lord lieutenant to preside at the courtsmartial which were to sit at Limerick, and from whom your Committee have been enabled to procure a degree of information, which no other person was so competent to supply, that they wish rather to refer to his account, than to impair the precision of it by incorporating parts of it in the body of their report. They have also added, in their ap pendix, the evidence of captain Bloomfield, assistant quarter-master-general in the same district during that period. Some particulars, however, arising out of those trials, seem so peculiarly characteristic of the spirit which still unfortunately prevails in that country, that they are desirous of submitting them to the attention of the House.

It appears established by satisfactory proof, that when a desperate conspiracy was formed, for surprising and massacring a detachment of his majesty's troops stationed at Cappagh. white, a principal inducement avowed by those engaged in it, for undertaking so ha zardous en enterprise, was, to demonstrate the readiness of that part of the country to engage in rebellion, as a pledge to others, with whom they had not before co-operated, of their readiness to join them, when they should have resumed their former treasonable proceedings; for they thought, as they them selves expressed it, "That Leinster would never rise till Munster would be up, as Monster did not rise when Leinster was up." On another occasion, the mode by which private assassination is planned and directed, was clearly developed. The persons concerned,