do not imagine that a recapitulation of such atrocities can be at all
agreeable to the generality of our readers, and for this reason we
content ourselves with barely alluding to them, as a corroboration of
the disorganized condition of society which then existed, and which we
are now attempting to describe.

But perhaps nothing, after all, can test the inextinguishable hatred
of tithes which prevailed at that period, more than the startling and
almost incredible fact that the government, aided by as sound a lawyer,
and as able an attorney-general as ever lived, and a powerful bar
besides, were not able, during the following spring and summer assizes,
to convict a single individual concerned in this massacre, which is now
a portion of our country's history, and still well remembered as that of
Carrickshock, in the county of Kilkenny.

This double triumph of the people over the tithe and police, created a
strong sensation throughout the kingdom, and even shook the two houses
of parliament with dismay.

Indeed, there probably never existed in Ireland, any combination or
confederacy of the people so bitter, or with such a deeply-rooted
hold upon the popular mind as that against tithes, as it slumbered
and revived from time to time. And what is rather singular, too, the
frequent agitations arising from it, which in its periodical returns
convulsed the country, were almost uniformly, or at least very
frequently, productive of a collateral one against priests' dues. Up
until the year '31, however, or '32, the agitators against tithes were
more for their reduction than their extinction. The reduction of tithes
and priests' dues went, as we have said, very frequently together, or
rather the one generally produced the other. The Threshers, in their
early existence, were as active in their attempts to diminish the income
of the priests by intimidation, as they were that of the parson. Their
plan was, with white shirts over their clothes, and white handkerchiefs
round their hats so as to conceal the features, to pay a nightly visit
to some quiet and timid man, whom they swore, on pain of death, to visit
the neighboring chapel in order to inform the priest, in the face of
his own congregation, that unless he reduced the fees for marriage
to half-a-guinea, those of baptism to nineteen-pence half-penny, and
celebrate Mass for thirteen pence, he might prepare his coffin. If he
got hay and oats for his horse at a station, he was at