sort were incessant. That the measures which the Government and
their supporters took to crush the rising rebellion were illegal
and barbarous, cannot be denied; that they in fact by their violence
hurried on the rebellion is not improbable. But it is still more
probable that they were the means of preventing its success; just as,
had the Government of Louis XVI shown more vigour at the outset of the
Revolution, the Reign of Terror would probably never have taken place.
Through evidence obtained by torture, the Government got possession
of vast stores of arms which the rebels had prepared; by twice
seizing the directors of the movement they deprived it of its central
organization; and if they were the cause of the rebellion breaking out
sooner than had been intended, the result was that they were able
to quell it in one district before it had time to come to a head in
another.

War at best is very terrible; and there were two circumstances which
made the war in Ireland more terrible than others. It was a religious
war, and it was a civil war. It often happens that when religion is
turned to hatred it stirs up the worst and most diabolical passions
of the human breast; and the evil feelings brought on by a civil war
necessarily last longer than animosity against a foreign foe. The
horrors of 1798 make one shudder to think what must happen in Ireland
if civil war ever breaks out there again.

From Ulster the United Ireland movement spread during 1797 to
Leinster, as far south as Wexford, and began to assume a more
decidedly religious character. As a contemporary historian wrote:--

"So inveterately rooted are the prejudices of religious
antipathy in the minds of the lower classes of Irish