Indemni With this evidence before their eyes, the InsurgenHouse of Commons passed the bills without the cy and amendment, which was proposed for the sole ty Bills purpose of meeting the case of the Orange in- passed. surgency in Armagh; and without any provision of remedy, or even reference to that evil; and with discretionary powers of transportation vested in those very Magistrates, whom the governor of the county had charged to their faces with having permitted unprecedented horrors to be committed with impunity, and made their own supineness the common topic of conversation in every corner of the kingdom. Thus the unparalelled outrages of the Orangemen within the first three months of their institution are historically verified: and the record of Parliament proves the sympathetic tenderness of Government in screening them from the operation of laws, which the Attorney General, on the 28th of January, 1796, in his place in the Commons avowed, was (however reluctant to his feelings) a bloody penal code. The Session of that Parliament, in which the Partialibills for putting down insurgency and indemnity for Orangefying the Magistrates, who had exceeded the men and their tri law in their endeavours to keep the peace were umph. passed, closed on the 15th of April, 1796, when his Excellency warınly commended the vigorous measures they had adopted for the suppression of insurrection and outrage, and the wise provisions they had made for preventing the extension of similar offences. The popular feeling out of Parliament was not regulated by that of the majority within it. Amaze and indignation were general, that the crimes of the Defenders, then on the wane, should be visited, with that new and unheard of severity, whilst the atrocities of the Orangemen, then raging with encreasing fury, were so tenderly protected from its rigor. This impression upon the public mind was faithfully represented by Mr. Grattan in the House of Commons, when that new bloody code, as the Attorney General called it, was debated.* " It had been said by the mover of the resolu tions, that of the Defenders multitudes had "been hanged, multitudes had been put to " death on the field, and though suppressed, they were not extinguished. But with regard "to the outrages of the Orange Boys, he would " make no such boast. On the contrary, they " had met with impunity, and success and tri “ umph. They had triumphed over the law, " they had triumphed over the Magistrates, and they had triumphed over the people. There persecution, rebellion, inquisition, murder, robbery, devastation and extermination had १८ " been entirely victorious." Parliamentary Debates, ubi supra. So So much had been said in Parliament uncon- Address Grand tradicted about the outrageous persecution of of the Armagh, and so generally did the public believe, Jury of as the fact was, that about 7000 Catholics had Armagh been exterminated by the Orange faction, which latory. was certainly in most instances unchecked by the Magistrates, and claimed in all to be supported by Government, that their sympathizing protection found it prudent to attempt to soften the public indignation, and send forth some public document to counteract the effects of Lord Gosford's address to the magistracy of that county. At the Lent Assizes, the Sheriff, Governor, and Grand Jury of the county of Armagh, published an address to the Lord Lieutenant, and two resolutions of a peculiar nature. They thanked his Excellency for his readiness to afford military aid on occasion of the disturbances, that in some places had unfortunately prevailed. They. then regretted the late disturbances; and as the Grand Jury of the county had always discharged their duty with rigorous and impartial justice, so they would continue their exertions to punish offenders of every denomination, and would lament the necessity of adopting the rigor of the Acts of the late Session of Parliament. Their first resolution was to thank the Sheriff for his very proper conduct: the second to thank the Attorney General for his very able speech: for the candor and unwearied exertions, with which he : he conducted the prosecutions, and his readiness to communicate on every occasion with the grand jury. No thanks were voted to the governor, nor did the address specify or refer to any one of the appropriate outrages of the County of Armagh, religious dissensions, conflagrations, papering, racking, devastation, depopulation or extermination. Their assurances to his Excellency, that they would, in future, exercise impartial justice upon offenders of every denomination, was rather unseasonable, when they had actually then exterminated the whole Catholic population of the county. The flimsy delusion of this self adulatory address was seen through and contemned. A system * of sworn secrecy and state mystery is only to be developed by piecemeal, from accumulative cumulative circumstances, that lead to a conclusion of moral certainty The society of Orange Govern ment finds the Orange men use ful. * The mischief of a system may be illustrated by hypothesis, as strongly as by facts. Be it then supposed (against the fact) that a cabinet secret had transpired through cabinet oaths of secrecy. Credit might then be given to current reports, which now must be disbelieved, because they could not have been divulged, that Lord Camden had been advised in council to ensure the tranquillization of Ireland by one of three measures. Ist. By granting complete emancipation to the Catholics. 2dly. By re-enacting the old penal laws. 3dly. By exterminating them from the face of the country. That his Excellency was by his instructions compelled to reject the first: that he personally loathed the second: that he revolted at the third, as an impossibility. Not so: said the most active men tive member of that cabinet. I engage to furnish 30,000 men armed and eager to atchieve the work. Was it for such a purpose that Orangemen were found so eminently useful? If their conduct entitled them to so much merit at the end of the first six months, to what pretensions will not their subsequent merits of full fourteen years give claim ? Whoever looks at their conduct through all that intermediate space of time will trace an identity of spirit and action at the opening and closing of the period. Mr. Curran has appropriately said, (Speech in Hevey v. Sirr) " When you endeavour " to convey an idea of a great number of barbarians prac " tising a great variety of cruelties upon an incalculable " multitude of sufferers, nothing defined or specific finds its way to the heart, nor is any sentiment excited, save that " of a general erratic unappropriated commiseration." In 1795 there lived in the county of Armagh a Mr. James Verner, by profession an attorney, by trade a magistrate, and by commission a parliament-man, nominated by Lord Northland for the borough of Dungannon, He then was, as he still continues to be prominently conspicuous for depressing and persecuting the Catholics. His uncle, who was also an attorney, had by professional and other means realized a very considerable landed estate in those parts, which he had devised to a younger son of Mr. James Verner, then an infant. Amongst other exploits of this purple Orangeman, he eviscerated the estate of his own son, by ruining and exterminating ninety six Catholic families, who were tenants upon it. Mr. James Verner's corps of yeomanry displayed their zeal and prowess on their way to church on a Sunday, by firing amongst a congregation of Catholics, whilst attending the rites of their own religion, wounding several, and some mortally, i |