yet invented; also nocturnal raids for arms, the sacking of lonely farmhouses, the intimidation of witnesses and the mutilation of cattle.  Again, we see all through the history of Irish secret societies that their organization has been so splendid that the ordinary law has been powerless against them; for witnesses will not give evidence and juries will not convict if they know that to do so will mean certain ruin and probable death; and yet those same societies have always possessed one element of weakness:  however terrible their oaths of secrecy have been, the Government have never had the slightest difficulty in finding out, through their confidential agents, everything that has taken place at their meetings, and what their projects are.

As early as 1785 there had been two societies carrying on something like civil war on a small scale in the north.  How they originated, is a matter of dispute; but at any rate before they had long been in existence, the religious element became supreme—­as it does sooner or later in every Irish movement; whatever temporary alliances may be formed for other reasons, religion always ultimately becomes the line of cleavage.  In this case, the “Peep of Day Boys” were Protestants, the “Defenders” Roman Catholic.  Some of the outrages committed by the Defenders were too horrible to put in print; many Roman Catholic families fled the country on account of the treatment which they received from the Peep of Day Boys, and took refuge among their co-religionists in the south.

But now a greater crisis was at hand.  The terrible upheaval of the French Revolution was shaking European society to its foundation.  The teaching of Paine and Voltaire had borne fruit; the wildest socialism was being preached in every land.  Ulster had shown sympathy with Republican ideas at the time of the American War of Independence; and now a large number of the Presbyterians of Belfast eagerly accepted the doctrines of Jacobinism.  Nothing can sound more charmingly innocent than the objects of the United Irish Society as put forward publicly in 1791; the members solemnly and religiously pledged themselves to use all their influence to obtain an impartial and adequate representation of the Irish nation in Parliament; and as a means to this end to endeavour to secure the co-operation of Irishmen of all religious persuasions.  Some writers have tried to make out that if the Relief Act of 1793 had been extended in 1795 by another Act enabling Roman Catholics to become Members of Parliament; and if a Reform Bill had been passed making the House of Commons really representative, the society would never have been anything but a perfectly legal and harmless association.  Of course it is always possible to suggest what might have been; but in this case it is far more probable that if Parliament had been so reformed as to be a fair reflex of the opinion of the country, it would immediately have passed a resolution declaring Ireland a Republic and forming