subject, and when the facts were still more glaring, one of them being
that the reign of terror established by the Irish Government prevented
the press from reporting the maddening atrocities which the ruling
faction was daily perpetrating against the mass of the king's
subjects. The debate arose in the Lords, on a motion by Lord Moira
for an address to the king on the state of Ireland. He described the
horrors of which he had been recently a witness, but softened the
recital, lest he should shock his hearers too much. Orange loyalty
was then licensed and let loose upon the defenceless Roman Catholic
population in Ulster. Lord Gosford's description of the scenes of
desolation in his own county, Armagh, is well known. He did what
he could to prevent the burning of Roman Catholic houses, and the
personal injuries inflicted upon the unfortunate inhabitants, while
their Orange neighbours chased them out of the country, giving them
Cromwell's alternative. But his mercy injured his reputation, and he
felt obliged to protest solemnly that he was a loyal man, and that he
wished to uphold Protestant ascendancy in Ireland as much as any of
his accusers. He only asked that the poor Catholic should be allowed
to live in peace. In the debate referred to, Lord Moira declared that
ninety-one householders had been banished from one of his own estates;
and many of them wounded in their persons. The discontent, he said,
was not confined to one sect. He ascribed the state of things to the
recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, which crushed the hopes of the Catholics,
and gave unbounded licence to the yeomanry, who were empowered to act
with a vigour beyond the law; to turn out, banish, or kill the king's
subjects, on mere suspicion, often prompted by private malice, and
having no better warrant than anonymous information. But for all this
the Irish parliament and the new reactionary viceroy freely granted
acts of indemnity. According to Earl Fitzwilliam 'whole parishes,
baronies, and even counties, were declared to be out of the king's