. In each of these cases
expatriated Irishmen turned the scale against the country from which
they had been so rashly and cruelly ejected. In France, the battle of
Fontenoy was won mainly by the Irish Brigade, who were commanded by
Colonel Dillon; and the defeat of England by the Irish drew from George
II. the well-known exclamation: "Cursed be the laws that deprive me of
such subjects!" In Spain, where the Irish officers and soldiers had
emigrated by thousands, there was scarcely an engagement in which they
did not take a prominent and decisive part. In Canada, the agitation
against British exactions was commenced by Charles Thompson, an Irish
emigrant, and subsequently the Secretary of Congress; Montgomery,
another Irishman, captured Montreal and Quebec; O'Brien and Barry, whose
names sufficiently indicate their nationality, were the first to command
in the naval engagements; and startled England began to recover slowly
and sadly from her long infatuation, to discover what had, indeed, been
discovered by the sharp-sighted Schomberg[553] and his master long
before, that Irishmen, from their habits of endurance and undaunted
courage, were the best soldiers she could find, and that, Celts and
Papists as they were, her very existence as a nation might depend upon
their co-operation.

The agrarian outrages, the perpetrators of which were known at first by
the name of Levellers, and eventually by the appellation of Whiteboys,
commenced immediately after the accession of George III. An English
traveller, who carefully studied the subject and who certainly could
have been in no way interested in misrepresentation, has thus described
the cause and the motive of the atrocities they practised. The first
cause was the rapacity of the landlords, who, having let their lands far
above their value, on condition of allowing the tenants the use of
certain commons, now enclosed the commons, but did not lessen the rent.
The bricks were to be made, but the straw was not provided; and the
people were told that they were idle. The second cause was the exactions
of the tithemongers, who were described by this English writer as
"harpies who squeezed out the very vitals of the people, and by process,
citation, and sequestration, dragged from them the little which the
landlord had left them." It was hard for those who had been once owners
of the soil, to be obliged to support the intruders into their property
in affluence; while they, with even