cannons' mouths: or, in more recent times, when men, and even
women, have all but expired under the lash; no deeds of savage vengeance
have ever exceeded those which were perpetrated daily and hourly in
Ireland, before the rebellion of 1798. For the sake of our common
humanity I would that they could be passed over unrecorded; for the sake
of our common humanity I shall record them in detail, for it may be that
the terror of what men can become when they give way to unrestrained
passions, may deter some of my fellow-creatures from allowing themselves
to participate in or to enact such deeds of blood. Historical justice,
too, demands that they should be related. Englishmen have heard much of
the cruelties of Irish rebels at Wexford, which I shall neither palliate
nor excuse. Englishmen have heard but little of the inhuman atrocities
which excited that insurrection, and prompted these reprisals. And let
it be remembered, that there are men still living who saw these
cruelties enacted in their childhood, and men whose fathers and nearest
relations were themselves subjected to these tortures. To the Celt, so
warm of heart and so tenacious of memory, what food this is for the
tempter, who bids him recall, and bids him revenge, even now, these
wrongs! What wonder if passion should take the place of reason, and if
religion, which commands him to suffer patiently the memory of injuries
inflicted on others, often harder to bear than one's own pain, should
sometimes fail to assert its sway![577]

I shall give the account of these atrocities in the words of a
Protestant historian first. The Rev. Mr. Gordon writes thus, in his
narrative of these fearful times: "The fears of the people became so
great at length, that they forsook their houses in the night, and slept
(if, under such circumstances, they could sleep) in the ditches and the
women were even delivered in that exposed condition, _These facts were
notorious at the time_.... Some abandoned their house from fear of being
whipped; and this infliction many persons appeared to fear _more than
death itself_. Many unfortunate men were strung up as it were to be
hanged, but were let down now and then, to try if strangulation would
oblige them to become informers." He then goes on to relate at length
how the magistrates tortured smiths and carpenters at once, because it
was supposed from their trade they must have made pikes; and how they,
at last, professed to know a United Irishma