When William IV. Was King

by John Ashton

Ireland had not improved during the last twelve months; resistance to the payment of tithes had become open and systematic, and the question of the Repeal of the Union was openly advocated. Notices were scattered all over the country bidding the people to refrain from paying tithes, and threatening the police, should they interfere, with a similar fate to their brethren at Knocktopher, which has already been described. Says the Annual Register—

"Nor were these merely empty denunciations. The house and the barn-yard of the tithepayer were reduced to ashes; his cattle were houghed, or scattered all over the country; or, as happened in the County of Carlow, hunted over precipices. There was no mode of destroying property which ingenuity could invent, or reckless daring perpetrate, but was called into exercise. Scarcely a week elapsed which did not announce the cold-blooded murder of a proctor, or a process server, or a constable, or of some poor countryman who had thought himself bound to obey the law, and to pay his debts.

"An archdeacon in the neighbourhood of Cashel was in treaty with his parishioners for a commutation of his tithes. They could not agree on the yearly sum which he ought to receive. They surrounded him in sight of his own house, in broad daylight, and beat his head to pieces with stones. Several persons were ploughing in the field in which he was murdered, but either would not or dared not interfere. Whoever connected himself, in any manner of way, with the collection of tithe, had not one single hour's security for his property or his life. In the beginning of February the Irish Government found it necessary to have recourse to the "Peace Preservation Act," and proclaim certain baronies in the County of Tipperary to be in a state of disturbance.

"But a proclamation imposed no check on the outrages of men who now deserved, from the openness of their attacks, the name of insurgents. In the County of Westmeath, a body of two hundred of them assaulted and attempted to disarm a sergeant's guard, and a party of police stationed within a mile of a considerable town. In the County of Donegal, they marched about in military array, armed with guns, scythes, and pikes, compelling landlords to sign obligations to reduce their rents, and to pay no tithe. In Kilkenny, their deeds were even still more atrocious. They not only made domiciliary visits to compel the surrender of arms, but accompanied their lawlessness with unrelenting personal violence, and they perpetrated these enormities in the open face of day. A large body divided itself into smaller detachments. The latter took different directions to search the houses of farmers and proprietors; and, when their work was finished, they again united, at the sound of their horn, to renew their labours on the following day.

"In one instance they cruelly abused a farmer and his wife, because they would not give up their daughter. They then searched the house, found the young woman, who had concealed herself, and carried her off. A farm had been standing unoccupied because, on account of some unpopularity attached to its owner, no tenant would venture to take it. A tenant at last had entered upon it; a new house was built for him. He was immediately visited by these Irish legislators, and compelled, on pain of death, to give up his farm and his house. A farmer having refused to surrender a pair of pistols to a body of these wretches, they dragged him to the hearth, raked down the fire upon his feet, and continued this torture until their object was accomplished.

"An end was put, not merely to the payment of tithe, but to the payment of rent. A tenant ejected for non-payment was sure to have his revenge. If a new tenant entered, he had only to expect that his property would be committed to the flames, or he himself shot. The terror which was thus universally propagated went far to secure immunity to the offenders. To be connected with any attempt to execute the law against murderers, incendiaries, or robbers, was itself a high crime. To betray any activity in preserving order, was to become a marked man; to become a marked man was to be made the victim of open violence or hidden assassination.

"The parties accused of the murder of a process server and a captain of police, at the end of the preceding year, were brought to trial at the Kilkenny Assizes in March. But, after the assizes began, the Attorney-General found it necessary to delay the trials. He stated that there was such an extensive combination throughout the country to resist the payment of tithes, and to protect all who might be implicated, that the ends of justice could not be attained. A juror had objected to serve on the ground that, if he gave a verdict 'against the people,' his life and property would be in danger. The witnesses, too, were either under the same intimidation, or were, themselves, members of the illegal combinations....

"The Government at length seemed to think it time to try whether the law could not reach the tumultuary assemblies of the anti-tithe men and the ringleaders who collected them. The Vice-Lieutenant of the county of Kilkenny was dismissed from his office. A circular was addressed to the magistracy by the Irish Government, directing them to disperse all meetings collected in such numbers as to produce alarm and endanger the public peace, or distinguished by banners, inscriptions, or emblems which tended to disturbance, or throw contumely on the law. O'Connell denounced this circular as illegal, and expressed his hope that a reformed Parliament would not hesitate to receive an impeachment of the Irish Government founded upon it; but still he gave his advice that it should be obeyed. In consequence of these instructions, various large meetings were dispersed by the military, headed by a magistrate; but, where the meeting was strictly parochial, and quietly gone about, no opposition was offered to their petitioning against tithe and church cess.

"At the same time, a number of those persons of the better class, who had played the principal part at meetings where a combined scheme of disobedience was preached up, were arrested and held to bail, on a charge of misdemeanour. Among them were two of O'Connell's familiars, the president and vice-president of the Trades' Political Union. The Grand Jury found true bills against them, on the 4th of August, for having conspired, 'unlawfully,' to oppose and resist the payment of tithes, and to frustrate the remedies provided by law for the recovery of tithes, and for soliciting and conspiring to procure the King's subjects to hold no intercourse with any persons who should pay tithes.

"Following the example of O'Connell, when he was in a similar predicament, they set their wits to work to gain time. Costello took advantage of his legal privilege, to traverse to the next Commission; the others pleaded in abatement, that some of the Grand Jurors who had found the bills, were not seised of freeholds in the County of Dublin. A number of arrests took place, at the same time, in the county of Tipperary. Among the persons held to bail was Lord Galway, who had filled the chair at an anti-tithe meeting held in the neighbourhood of Clonmel....