152 IRISH OPPOSITION. CH. XXXVIII. three was the highest number that divided on a question which concerned the consolidation, if not the integrity, of the Empire. Never had so much apparent indifference been exhibited on a question of capital importance. In truth, the absence of members was attributable rather to distaste than indifference. The Union was reluctantly assented to by many as an unavoidable necessity; and others who were not convinced by the arguments of the minister yielded from habit to his will. The county members and the fine gentlemen of the House were somewhat dismayed at the prospect of an irruption of representatives from Connaught and Munster. The roof of St. Stephen's would be rent with unaccustomed eloquence; for the dialect of Kerry and Tipperary had hardly yet been heard within those walls. The genius of Burke himself had never overcome the remains of the Celtic brogue. Still it was better that a hundred Irish gentlemen should enter the House of Commons, than that a French Directory should sit at the Castle of Dublin, or a French fleet ride in the harbour of Cork. On the other side of the Channel every effort was made to avert the odious Union. After the adverse vote on the address, a Regency Bill was brought in by Mr. Fitzgerald, who had been dismissed from his office of Prime Serjeant for taking a prominent part in opposition to the Union. It was proposed by this measure to obviate one of the most practical objections which had been made to the legislative separation of the two countries. The Government could not in decency oppose a bill brought in for the express purpose of removing an anomaly which had been referred to as a justification of their great measure; but it was not the less certain that the bill would not be suffered to pass. The bill was indeed framed so imperfectly that it appeared to have been merely put together as a convenient groundwork for 1799. LORD CASTLEREAGH'S MOTION. 153 an attack upon the policy of the Government, and never intended as a remedy for a particular defect. Foster, the Speaker, availed himself of the committee on the bill to deliver a carefully prepared reply to the speech of Mr. Pitt. It was not a very successful argument, even in the opinion of its partial hearers. It was no answer to a speech such as that of the first minister to call it a paltry performance,' and to denounce Pitt' as the worst minister the Irish nation ever heard of.' The Speaker was answered by Lord Castlereagh. The debate, which was long and vehement, turned almost wholly on the all-absorbing question of the Union. The Regency Bill, it was found, could not by any ingenuity be so framed as to provide for harmony of action between the two Parliaments. And as the Imperial Parliament would certainly not consult a provincial Parliament in making an arrangement for the exercise of the executive power, it followed that the inferior assembly must, if intolerable confusion was to be avoided, submit implicitly to the dictation of the greater. But no security could be given for such acquiescence without infringing on that absolute legislative independence for which Irish patriotism contended. When the report of the committee on the bill was brought up, Lord Castlereagh therefore moved that the consideration be postponed to a day when the House would not be in session; and his motion was agreed to without a dissenting voice. The Irish Houses were shortly afterwards prorogued; but not before they had, at the Irish Houses instance of the Government, and without prorogued. opposition, passed a bill, which is in itself sufficient to load the memory of the last Irish Parliament with execration and contempt. In the previous year an act had been passed for the protection of magistrates and other persons in authority, who, in the vigorous discharge of their 154 BILL OF INDEMNITY. CH. XXXVII. duty in the suppression of the rebellion, might have overstepped the law. During a state of rebellion, it may be necessary to commit acts of power, such as arresting suspected persons, entering houses, impressing cattle; and it is not unreasonable that public servants, who have committed such irregularities, at a time when there is an insurrection against law and order, should be protected against vexatious litigation. The act of the Irish Parliament was framed upon the model of an act passed by the English Parliament, after the rising of the Jacobites in 1715. But an indemnity, which was sufficient for the protection of persons who had been compelled by the sudden exigencies of the public service to act, in some instances, without warrant of authority, proved wholly inadequate to protect the agents of a Government, which permitted a rebellion to be dealt with by means wholly unknown to the law. I have already related how the miserable peasantry were scourged, picketed, and half strangled to extort information as to concealed arms and United Irishmen. After the rebellion had been suppressed, some persons, in a higher walk of life, who had been subjected to this treatment, resolved to try the question whether it was intended, by the Act of Indemnity, to sanction the application of torture to a subject of the Crown of England. And that the experiment might be fairly tried, proceedings were taken, not against a yeomanry trooper, or a petty justice, who might have been disavowed, but against an executive officer of the highest rank and responsibility in his district. The county of Tipperary, which has since attained an ill reputation, was not much disturbed by the rebellion. Colonel Bagwell, one of the members for the county, and Mr. Hely Hutchinson, brother of the Earl of Donoughmore, one of the principal resident landlords, declared in their places in the House of Commons, that the county was almost free from 1799. FITZGERALD MADE HIGH SHERIFF. 155 disturbance. It is admitted by a strong partisan,* that a respectable minority of the magistrates and gentlemen of the county were of the same opinion; but the majority of the landowners, either stricken by the terror of which meanness and cruelty are susceptible, or anticipating the rising of the people to revenge the cruelty and contumely to which their race and creed had long been subjected, thought fit to take such measures of prevention as their nature dictated. For their purpose, they had recourse to a small proprietor near Thurles, Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, a man who was known to be capable of any degree of violence which could be expected from an ignorant ferocious partisan; and this man they procured to be appointed High Sheriff. Fitzgerald, eager to justify the confidence of his employers, and willing, no doubt, to earn the pay with which successful vigour would be rewarded by the frightened and distracted Government,† soon signalised his zeal. His plan was to seize persons whom he chose to suspect, often without the slightest ground, if not from sheer malice, and by dint of the lash, and threats of instant death, to extort confessions of guilt, and accusations of other persons. So abject was the terror of the peasantry, abandoned as they were to the inhuman tyranny of this miscreant, that at his 156 FITZGERALD'S ATROCITIES. CH. XXXVIII. approach, they fell on their knees before him. But this cruel persecution was not confined to the lower orders. Confident in impunity, Fitzgerald assailed persons in a higher rank of life. Indeed, it is owing to this circumstance that the name of Judkin Fitzgerald has acquired a particular infamy. Had he merely tortured peasants, this man would have been hardly distinguished from the herd of petty Irish gentry, who had, for generations, abused the poor, and whose habitual outrages on decency and humanity were the primary, and, to a great extent, the proximate cause, if not the justification, of the rebellion. But, in reviewing the acts of the last Irish Parliament, we find its special protection extended to proceedings such as are now to be described. At the Tipperary Spring Assizes of 1799, one Wright brought an action of trespass against Fitzgerald, the late Sheriff. The plaintiff was a teacher of languages at Clonmel, but connected by kindred with more than one Irish family of rank. Wright, hearing that he was suspected, and knowing the fearful consequences of suspicion, hastened to deliver himself up, in the hope that he might thus save his character and life. But Fitzgerald was not to be disappointed of his victim. He received Mr. Wright with a torrent of abuse, and ordered him to fall on his knees to receive his sentence. 'You are a rebel,' said he, and a principal in this rebellion. You are to receive five hundred lashes, and then to be shot.' The poor man begged for time, and was so rash as to ask for a trial. This aroused Fitzgerald to fury; he railed at his prisoner for daring to open his mouth after he was condemned. Wright was hurried to the flogging ladders, which were erected in the main street; and expecting immediate death, had placed his hat before his face while he muttered a prayer. Fitzgerald, with his own hand, tore away the hat, trampled on it, dragged his fainting victim by the |