they incur, by joining in unlawful confedera- | cies. As to your particular duty, as grand jurors, it is not necessary to take up any portion of your time in describing a duty, with which you are already well acquainted. I shall only add my strong recommendation, that in all cases which come before you, you should examine personally the witnesses for the prosecution, and not depend upon the written informations: and that you will consider, that after your duty here shall be discharged, in your character of magistrates and country gentlemen, your utmost zeal and activity will be necessary to restore tranquillity; and I am confident, that your exertions will receive all possible aid from government. 1 trust your efforts will be effectual, and I will detain you no longer. The Court then adjourned for some time, to give the Grand Jury an opportunity of examining the witnesses, after which a true bill was returned against John M'Donough, William Kearney and others. They were immediately arraigned, and pleaded Not Guilty, but saying they would not be ready for trial till next day, the Court adjourned. Friday, December 5th, 1806. The prisoners were brought to the bar, but refusing to join in their challenges, John M'Donough and William Kearney were put to their challenges, and the following jury was sworn: James Soden James Powell Andrew Hume James Stewart William Gibson Thomas Moystyn To whom the prisoners were given in charge upon four several indictments; first, charging that they, with many others, on the 2nd of September last, after sun-set, and before sun-rise, did maliciously and feloniously break and enter the dwelling house of Peter O'Neil, at Cartron Watts, in the county of Sligo, that they maliciously assaulted and injured the habitation of ()'Neil, and forcibly took away his money; second, charged a burglary; third, a robbery of O'Neil in his dwelling house; and fourth, that prisoners provided an instrument for inflicting bodily pain and punishment upon O'Neil, in order to compel him to enter into an unlawful confederacy, called Threshers; that they inflicted punishment with that intent, and by menaces and intimidation, exacted money and goods from him, and by threats and violence caused him to send money to the house of James Corkeran. Mr. Ridgeway opened the indictments. Mr. Attorney General [The right honourable W. Č. Plunkett];-My Lords and Gentlemen of the Jury;---As counsel for the [6 Crown, it is my duty to lay before you the grounds of the present prosecution. The indictments upon which the prisoners are ar. raigned, have been read, and you are thereby apprised of the nature of the charges preferred against them. The charges relate to a variety and if the prisoners are guilty of all or any of of acts, all, by the law of the land, capital, them, the consequence is death; the charges in their nature are such as draw down the highest punishment of the law. The prisothe dwelling-house of a fellow subject in the ners are charged with breaking and entering night time; with robbing that fellow-subject of his money, and with inflicting torture upon his person for the purpose of compelling him to become a member of their own lawless and gentlemen, which no civilised society can to dangerous associations. These are crimes, lerate. They bid defiance to all law, and asthose who avow themselves the bearers of sert a claim of unconditional submission to that defiance. These are conditions under which no government can exist. But if the crimes with which the unfortunate men are charged, however atrocious, did not involve consequences of a peculiar nature; they would have been left to the ordinary visitation of the of a class of atrocities, which disturb the tranlaw, and would be tried at the regular assizes of the county. It is because they form part safety of the country, that you have been asquillity, and in their progress endanger the sembled at this season of the year for the im mediate and solemn dispensation of justice. Gentlemen, it is with great satisfaction T see, upon a subject of this emergency, so full and respectable an attendance, calculated to impress every mind with a sense of obedience to the law. Every gentleman of character, rank, consideration and property, appears at his personal sanction to the law. Judges of his post on this important occasion, to give the land are sent, armed with his majesty's commission, and with a character resulting from their learning and virtues, which reflects lustre and dignity on that commission. Gentlemen, every thing has been done on the part of the government, to let the wretched people of this country see, that there are laws for the punishment of guilt, and that no nerve gour to them. I therefore rejoice to see such will be left unstrained, to give effect and vian array of rank and property upon the grand jury, which has found the bills, and such a respectable description of gentlemen composing the petty jury which I now address, because it must remove from the minds of the wretchlusions which have been industriously spread ed people engaged in these outrages, the demagistracy, from whom information has been to excite the hope of impunity. In aid of the procured, they see the whole body of the and property,-rallying round the constitucounty-every man who has talent, character tion. It is not, therefore, merely for the pur pose of inquiring into the guilt of the persons now on trial, but to bring home punishment to the great body of the guilty-protection to the great body of the innocent-to undeceive the abused, and give confidence to the disheartened-and to restore peace and tranquil lity to the country, that this special commission has been issued; and you, gentlemen, to perform your sacred part, have been sworn upon the Jury. Gentlemen, it is far from my purpose or my wish, that through having your minds strongly moved with a sense of the mischiefs prevail ing in the country, any of the prisoners should be visited with peculiar hardships. On the contrary, upon an occasion of this kind, it is my duty to caution you against the suggestions of rumour or prejudice: it is our duty to vindicate, not to strain the law. If the prisoners are guilty, the guilt should be brought home by clear legal evidence. God forbid that your abhorrence of the crime should work injustice to the accused. But, gentlemen, you will feel, that it is not irrelevant to the subject, to call your attention to what is, and what has been the state of the county; be cause it grows out of the association imputed to the prisoners, and it is therefore, that punishment, the consequence of guilt, attaches upon them. And, in calling your attention to the state of the county, and the nature of the outrages, I feel that I do not transgress my duty in the case now before you. nance to the payments in support of the legal establishment of the church of the country, and also of the fees which have been usually paid, without any law to enforce them, to the clergymen of the Catholic persuasion. The mode taken to accomplish this object, has been by assembling themselves at night, in disguise, sometimes with arms, going to the houses of such persons as refuse to associate themselves in their body, breaking open the houses of those persons, and robbing them of their property, inflicting torture upon those who become objects of their enmity, and if necessary for the final completion of their designs, if any person be honest or bold enough to give information against them, the business, which began in lawless combination, is consummated by murder. Gentlemen of the jury, such is the natural progress of associations of this kind. When men enrol themselves for the purpose of resisting the law, whatever the pretext may be upon which they originally associate, the foulest crimes are generated in its progress; that which begins in anarchy ends in murder; and even murder itself, in the progress of outrage, may be only a preparation for the blacker horrors which are to ensue. Gentlemen, there remains one circumstance of peculiar atrocity with which this matter is connected. In the various forms and associations under which their designs have been conducted, it has been the policy of those peoGentlemen, it is unfortunately too notori- ple to administer oaths to the persons called ous to need any minute statement, that for upon by them, binding them to association some time past the peace of the county has and to secrecy. This offence is by law pu been infested by a set of persons assuming nished with death. The person who comthe name of" Threshers." Their outrageous mits it must pay the forfeit of his life: the associations have been in direct defiance of person taking such an oath is banished for the law, and have originated with men, pos- ever from his country: the mere circumstance sessing no situation-whom nobody knows of going to a magistrate and telling him of the a set of men, who dare not avow themselves oath being taken will not absolve the party; -a description of persons not possessed of any the oath must be taken against his will; for rank-of any property-of any talent-of any if it be taken voluntarily, he is, notwithstandeducation-men, who are not placed in any ing such information, liable to be transported situation, either by the institutions of society, for life. This is no new-devised punishor their own fitness entitling them to dictatement; it is the established law of the land: it to their fellew-subjects, or to take upon them. selves the task of reformation and of legislation. These persons have discovered that the existing laws are not to their mind-they have found out, that there are errors in the state and in the church-and they have conceived that they are the proper persons to undertake the task of reforming them. But not satisfied with infringing the law in their own persons individually, they became associated for the purpose of saying, that no other person in the community shall dare to obey the law. So that the first act of those, who profess to interfere upon principles of liberty, is to exercise compulsion over the consciences of others, and to say, that no man shall presume to form an opinion for himself, nor act upon it, unless it meet the approbation of these self-created reformers. The pretext upon which these illegal confederacies are formed, is a repug has been so for many years; it has been provided, and wisely, by the legislature to meet the outrages, which from time to time have infested this country: there is no disproportion between this punishment and the crime which strikes at the roots of morality and religion, and tends directly to destroy those principles, which are essential to civilized society. Gentlemen, an oath is the sanction, by which, under the law of the country, we call upon the Creator to attest the truth and purity of our words: and this solemn sanction which our civil institution has borrowed from our religious code, is prostituted to bind together an association of traitors, robbers and murderers. The name of the living God is appealed to, for the purpose of witnessing and ratifying the infernal compact, by which these wretches league themselves against law and religion. Gentlemen, it produces a revulsion of every moral feeling to hear of such con- his creatures. the rites of that religion. It is not that they [10 say we will not pay, for there is no law to compel them to pay: but they proclaim this, that no man, who chooses to do so, shall dare to pay his priests their fees! For what purGentlemen, it is not necessary now to dwell to obtain the rites of their religion: they flow pose are these fees given? They are given upon the illegality of those associations; but from a sense of religion; they flow from vowhile they profess to attack the property of luntary bounty; they are enforced by no the church, I cannot pass them by without a compulsion, the unfortunate men who refew observations. The tithes of the clergy of ceive them are armed with no law for their this country are their property; they are se- support; and yet these associations are formed cured to them by the same laws which secure to every man amongst you his estate, or ward of his benedictions and his prayers! Do -To do what? To rob the priest of the rehis property, whatever the description of it these men, besmeared with blood and covered may be; the same laws and the same right, with crimes, imagine, that the ceremonies by which any gentleman who hears me, holds of religion, which are plundered from their his estate, transmitted to him from his ances- clergy, can give them a passport to a better tors-the laws which secure the fruits of each world? 1 cannot help feeling and deploring, man's individual industry-are the title by that this view of the subject suggests an apwhich the property of the clergy is secured to prehension, that the devisors of this plan them; and I do trust, that there is no man so could have had nothing less in their contemselfish as to look to any system, by which the plation, than eradicating from the minds of property of one part of the community shall those upon whom they could operate, all be protected, and that of another despoiled. sense of religion. Nothing but their hellish If there be any man so selfish as to wish it, machinations could have devised such a let no man think it can be done. Let a mul- scheme. If they expect that the people will titude be assembled under the empire of be ripe to perpetrate crimes worse than these; Threshers and Shakers, armed and arrayed in if they wish them to be the ready instruments order to make head against the rank and pro- of every design which is diabolical, there is perty of the country, and what shall stop their no plan so effectual as the extinction of every career? I wish my voice to extend to every sentiment of religion in the minds of the man within these walls-to every man of common people. What may be the form of sense and reflection; I would tell him, that the religion of the several classes of the peothere is no protection for rank, for property, ple, I care not to inquire. If the principles for the state, but by resisting those disturbers, of Christianity prevail-if the sense of obediand making them feel the irresistible weight ence to a supreme ruler of the world-if the of the law. They say, they rise to redress conviction of the existence of a future state, grievances! But, gentlemen, there is a mode in which rewards and punishments are disknown to the constitution of redressing griev-tributed, be kept alive in the minds of the ances, and there is no law to prevent men from stating them: there is a legal mode of claiming relief. This I will say, that the constitution of the church is intimately connected with the constitution of the state; it is a part of the same fabric, which has been handed down to us from our ancestors, and if there be any thing imperfect in it, no reflecting man will approach it, for the purpose of alteration, without extreme caution; he will be careful, in the attempt to remedy its imperfections, not to affect the substance, or even the proportion . or beauty of the ornaments. But by whom is this task of reformation undertaken? By the dregs of the community-anonymous ruffians, who fear the face of day, whose title is founded in anarchy, and whose pretensions are enforced by robbery and murder! I cannot pass by another feature of these associations: I mean their attack upon the priests. I meddle not with religious rights; I mean the attack which is made upon the support derived from the voluntary bounty, which the members of the Roman Catholic persuasion have been in the habit of giving to the ministers of their religion, for celebrating people, they will never become the instruments for the commission of abominable guished; if the people shall be taught to crimes. But if these sentiments be extincast off all regard for a future world, the ties which bind them to earth, as well as to Heaven, are rent asunder. ample in our own time. You may recollect, Gentlemen, we have had a miserable exthat not many years since, in a neighbouring country, the most dreadful atrocities were committed: you recollect the overthrow of an ancient monarchy; that overthrow, deplorable as it was, was not the most dismal scene of the tragedy. The horrors of that unfortunate revolution, in which the hands of the father were imbrued in the blood of the son; in which all moral and social relations perpetrated, until the sentiments of religion were raised in mutual warfare, could not be were previously extinguished in the minds of the people. Human nature was not outraged by gross and unexampled crimes, until a solemn decree was framed, declaring, that there was no God in Heaven! What the consequences were, every man knows. But this I state, that as soon as a settled form of go vernment was established, it was found, that atheism and infidelity, which were the ready instruments to throw down an ancient throne, were an insecure foundation for a new one; and one of the first acts of the founder of the new dynasty was to restore the consolations of religion to his anxious and supplicating subjects. Gentlemen, it is no wonder, that those who searched after democratical equality should be the foes of religion; religion is the genuine equality of mankind: it is the poor man's friend; during the troubles of this life, it renders him content with the lot of inferiority, which is the condition of his nature, and in the last awful hour of existence, it puts him upon a level with the highest and most exalted. Gentlemen, it is melancholy and disheartening, that our wretched peasantry can be deluded by such arts, and that after such miserable examples, they should be thus imposed upon. For half a century attempts have been made upon the infatuated people of this country. What has been the consequence? Disgrace to the perpetrators; failure of their plans; ruin and death to themselves. Yet what is the condition of the poor unhappy people of this country; as soon as any disaffected mountebank appears, proclairing his laws and imaginary benefits, they become the willing instruments of his schemes, and their own destruction. Is it possible, they can for a moment imagine, that a great empire like this, armed with the law, protected by an army, with a regular administration of justice,-are they so infatuated, as to imagine that all these will yield to a few miscreants like those, under whom they have enlisted themselves? It is therefore principally to undeceive these miserable wretches; to rescue them from the grasp of fiends, who are working their destruction, that the law is here, at this unusual season, to speak its emphatic language. What the law is I will tell you. What the consequence of infringing it is, you, gentlemen, will tell; and I cannot help feeling, that in the consequence of this commission, we may look to an end of the confusion and anarchy, which has prevailed, and that the vicious may again be brought within the ordinary channel of subordination. Gentlemen, in speaking as I do, with indig. nation for those crimes, I feel from the very bottom of my heart compassion for the victims of them. Seeing the mischiefs which have been spreading in the country by the artifices of miscreants, it does not surprise me at all, that many persons should be of opinion, that measures more summary should have been adopted, for the purpose of at once extinguishing these mischiefs. I am satisfied that the opinion of such men was dictated by a feeling of the truest regard for the interests of their country-of genuine compassion and mercy towards the unfortunate delinquents themselves. But yet, my lords and gentlemen of the jury, I trust that the government of the country will ultimately acquire credit from those who entertained the opinion I have mentioned, for the course which has been adopted in the present instance. The feeling of the government has been, that the insult which has been given to the laws of the country is best vindicated by those laws themselves. The persons, with whom we are now called upon to cope, do not compose multitudes too strong for the arm of the law. It is not an assembly daring to stand before the exertions of the magistracy, but it is a lawless association of men, who find their safety in their obscurity, and I cannot help feeling a confidence, that when the victims of delusion shall have been undeceived; when they find that the law was adequate to their punishment; that the laity make common cause with the clergy, when they see atonement made to the laws by the speedy and energetic administration of justice, now in progress amongst you;-I say, I feel a confidence, that after they have seen the array of this country drawn up for the investigation of their crimes; after they have seen the assemblage, this day, of every man of rank, character, and property, feeling their interests united with those, who have been the subject of lawless attack; that the most salutary consequences will be experienced, and that these people will at length be convinced, that when they dare to raise their hands against the laws of their country, those laws will be found to have weight enough to fall upon and crush them. What! gentlemen, would it not be a miserable state of our country, to suppose, that armed as we are by the law-supported as we are by the aid of every gentleman in the country, and with an armed force, if such be necessary-associations of men, whose names are not known; of no rank, property or station, could not be put down, without doing away, for a time at least, the ordinary constitution of the land? If the time should unfortunately come, when, what is now tumultuous rising, shall assume an aspect of a dif ferent nature; if ever (which God forbid!) those scenes shall be renewed, which we formerly witnessed; if treason shall rear its head in the country, and supersede the law, these wretches will have to sink under the tide of ruin, which will be let in upon them. But I trust that no visitation of that kind will occur; but that with the ready assistance of the government, and the aid of every loyal nian, we shall be able to bring punishment upon the guilty, and that the law will be strong enough to wrestle with and put down these disturbers of the public tranquillity. Gentlemen, I shall say only a few words more. The laws in being, of which I shall make a short statement, will appear to every one particularly calculated to meet the outrages which at present exist. They are laws, The White-boy Act," any person who harbours, conceals, or gives assistance to any person concerned in such outrages, is as much guilty as the person so concealed; and any person who supplies horses, arms, or ammuni tion, for the purpose of these confederacies, is liable to forfeit his life. Gentlemen, armed with these laws, which have been found competent to put down insurrections, as alarming as the present, with the honourable zeal and activity of the magistrates, which you may confidently look to, and with the sincere de sire of government to protect the loyal, and reclaim the guilty, are we to despair of being able to cope with the mischiefs, and not to look for the restoration of tranquillity and peace? I cannot so persuade myself,and I am not uneasy as to the result. which have not been recently introduced; for half a century, the country has been visited with partial insurrections; during a portion of the reign of the late king, and during the entire of the present, laws have been enacted, calculated to meet these crimes. These laws are still in full force and operation. If these insurgents assemble with arms; if they assume any particular denomination, or wear any badge, to the terror of his majesty's subjects, by that mere act of assembling, though no farther act be done, they are punishable by law. The magistrates are authorized to disperse and apprehend them. If they resist, and any be killed, the magistrate is indemnified; and if he has just cause to suspect, that any person can give information respecting such outrages, he may summon the person, examine him, bind him in a recognizance to appear, and commit him in case he refuses. I wish this was generally known, that if any man meet such an assembly he is called upon to disperse it, and to apprehend the persons assembled; and if death unfortunately ensue, the magistrate is indemnified. The magistrate is also armed with extraordinary powers to preserve the public peace. He is entitled to call for the assistance of every man in the county. The power which the law has, in ordinary cases, entrusted to the sheriff, that of raising the posse comitatus, is, in this instance, given to every magistrate; and if any man refuse to give this assistance, he is guilty of a misdemeanor. Persons not entitled by law to carry arms, are liable to have their houses searched, and the law protects the person making the search. If any persons, tumultuously assembled, shall assault or injure the habitation or property of another, they are punishable with death; every person who administers an oath, whatever the nature or purport of it may be, binding the person taking it, to be of a particular party or association, is punishable with death; any person who voluntarily takes such oath, is liable to be banished for ever; and he is not to suppose that after voluntarily taking such an oath, the mere circumstance of going to a magistrate and telling him, will protect him; -two circumstances must concur to save him from punishment, first,, that he was compelled to take the oath, and secondly, that he gave immediate information of his being so compelled; so that here are abundant provisions for the punishment of these offences. But, gentlemen, it has been industriously circulated that these laws have expired; I tell you, and those who hear me, what was stated yesterday from the high authority of the Bench, that these laws are in full force and existence; and every man joining in unlawful confederacies is liable to the penalty inflicted by those laws. Gentlemen, I have also to inform you, that under the statute of the 15th and 16th of his present majesty's reign, commonly called Gentlemen, with regard to the particular case now before you, it will appear that the prisoners, on the night of the 2nd of Septem ber last, with many others, attacked the house of Peter O'Neil, at Cartron Watts in this county. He had been audacious enough to say, he would pay the dues which he had been accustomed to pay; he was not prepared at the instance of these legislators to renounce his obedience to the laws; he said, he would pay as he had formerly done. This was high treason by their laws; they repaired to his house: they broke it open; they dragged him naked from his bed; they asked him for money; that is part of their system for redress of grievances; he had only one tenpenny piece; he had no more; but he was desired to send more to the house of a person whom they named, but who is not now upon trial; they took him away naked, and one of the party had an instrument for carding wool, with which they inflicted punishment upon him, by severely excoriating his back; the prisoners will be identified by O'Neil, his wife, and son, who plainly saw them; so that there are three witnesses to the transaction. If these facts shall be proved, there can be no doubt of the melancholy necessity which will be imposed upon you. : O'Neil gave information to Mr. Soden, the magistrate, and exhibited his back, which was excoriated with the torture which had been inflicted upon him; so that with regard to this being a case within the statute no question can arise but if the evidence be not clear and satisfactory, no sense of danger or alarm should induce you to find a verdict against the prisoners. It will then be your duty to acquit them; but if you have no doubt of their guilt, I will not degrade you or my. self by supposing, that any of you would shrink from a firm and manly discharge of his duty. Peter O'Neil sworn.-Examined by the Solicitor General Where did you live in the month of September last? Within a couple of miles of this town, at a place called Cartron Watts. |