oratory in Parliament, stirring events were taking place elsewhere.
To trace in these pages even a bare outline of the main incidents of
those terrible years is impossible; and yet without doing so it is not
easy to obtain a correct view of the tangled skein of Irish politics
at the time. In studying any history of the period, we cannot but be
struck by observing on the one hand how completely in some respects
circumstances and ideas have changed since then; it is hard to realize
that Ulster was for a time the scene of wild disorder--assassination,
arson, burglary and every form of outrage--brought about mainly by a
society which claimed to be, and to a certain extent was, formed by a
union of the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic parties--whilst the south
and west remained fairly orderly and loyal. And yet on the other hand
we find many of the phenomena which have been characteristic of later
periods of Irish political agitation, already flourishing. Boycotting
existed in fact, though the name was not 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