the Irish church from clear and correct sources, and not have subjected the country to the pernicious and degrading consequences of a turbulent agitation.  What is just in itself ought to be conceded to reason and utility, and not withheld until violence and outrage seem to extort it; for this only holds out a bounty to future agitation.  Be this as it may, the whole country, at the period of which we write, was in a state of general commotion and tumult altogether unparalleled.  Law was completely paralyzed, set at defiance, and laughed at.  Large bodies, consisting of many thousands, traversed different parts of the country in open day, swearing every one they met to resist the payment of tithes in every way and in every sense.  Many gentlemen, who had either paid it or been suspected to do so, or who had been otherwise obnoxious as landlords, or for strong party feeling, were visited by these licentious multitudes with an intention of being put to death, whilst the houses of several wealthy farmers, who had unfortunately paid the hated impost, were wrecked in the face of day.  Nor was this all:  men were openly and publicly marked for destruction, and negotiations for their murder entered into in fairs, and markets, and houses of entertainment, without either fear or disguise.  In such a state of things, it is unnecessary to say that many lives were taken, and that great outrages were from time to time committed.  Two or three clergymen were murdered, several tithe-proctors or collectors of tithe were beaten nearly to death; and to such a pitch did the opposition rise, that at length it became impossible to find any one hardy and intrepid, or, in other words, mad enough, to collect tithe, unless under the protection either of the military or police.  Our friends, Proctor Purcel and his sons, were now obliged, not merely to travel armed, but frequently under the escort of police.  Their principal dread, however, was from an attack upon their premises at night; and, as fearful threats were held out that such an attack would be made, Purcel, who, as the reader knows, was a man of great wealth, engaged men to build a strong and high wall about his house and out-offices, which could now be got at only through a gate of immense strength, covered with thick sheet-iron, and bound together by bars of the same metal, in such a way that even the influence of fire could not destroy it, or enable an enemy to enter.

With such a condition of society before us, it is scarcely necessary to inform our readers that the privations of the Protestant clergy were not only great, but dreadful and without precedent.  It was not merely that their style of living was lowered or changed for the worse, but that they suffered distress of the severest description—­want, destitution, and hunger, in their worst forms.  First came inconvenience from a delay in the receipt of their incomes; then the necessity of asking for a longer term of credit; after this the melancholy certainty that tithes would