, Mr.
Brown, together with a great number of the patriotic party, had
already transmitted a petition to the Lord Lieutenant, under the former
Administration; but it was not attended to, the only answer they got
having been a simple acknowledgment of its receipt. This, on coming
to Sir Robert's ears, which it did from one of the underlings of the
Castle, only gave a spur to his insolence, and still more fiercely
stimulated his persecuting spirit. He felt conscious that Government
would protect him, or rather reward him, for any acts of violence which
he might commit against the Catholic party, and so far, under his own
pet Administration, he was right.

The petition we have alluded to having been treated with studied
contempt, the persons and party already mentioned came to the
determination of transmitting another, still more full and urgent, to
the new Viceroy, whose feeling it was, for the reasons we have stated,
to reverse the policy of his predecessor.

His liberal administration encouraged them, therefore, to send him
a clear statement of the barbarous outrages committed by such men as
Smellpriest and Sir Robert Whitecraft, not only against his Majesty's
Roman Catholic subjects, but against many loyal Protestant magistrates,
and other Protestants of distinction and property, merely because they
were supposed to entertain a natural sympathy for their persecuted
fellow-subjects and fellow-countrymen. They said that the conduct of
those men and of the Government that had countenanced and encouraged
them had destroyed the prosperity of the country by interrupting and
annulling all bonafide commercial transactions between, Protestants and
Catholics. That those men had not only transgressed the instructions
they received, from his predecessor, but all those laws that go to the
security of life and property. That they were guilty of several cruel
and atrocious murders, arsons, and false imprisonments, for which they
were never brought to account; and that, in fine, they were steeped
in crime and blood, because they knew that his predecessor, ignorant,
perhaps, of the extent of their guilt, threw his shield over them, and
held them irresponsible to the laws for those savage outrages.

They then stated that, in their humble judgment, a mere relaxation in
the operation of the severe and penal laws against Catholics would not
be an act of sufficient atonement to them for all they had greviously
suffered; that to overlook,