platform, addressed them in a short speech, the conclusion and point of which was inculcating general good-will to their neighbours, and especially peace and forbearance on their return homewards that evening:

'Acting under the teaching of God's Word, which enjoins forbearance and love to all, I trust you will even show to those who disapprove of your organization that you are not a faction, driven by party violence to commit unlawful acts; that you do not desire to infringe on the liberties and happiness of others; but that you wish to see all denominations of your fellow-subjects enjoying the blessings which you seek for yourselves. . . . I trust you will rather take evil than provoke it; that nothing will induce you, in returning to your homes to-day, to resent even any insult you may receive.'—Evid., pp. 72, 73.

It is one of the charges against Lord Roden that he did not use his influence with the Orangemen to return by the new road. This his Lordship was disposed to have done, but Mr. William Beers, the county grand-master, over-ruled his inclination, alleging for it that the Orangemen would not consent to take a different road, and that the new road would be in fact the most dangerous. Both these reasons seem to have been just, and there was also another which influenced the leaders. Many of the lodges were from the north side of the old road, and these must necessarily have passed over Dolly's Brae; and if the general body had once been 'split' into sections, moving different ways, and without the combined protection of the Military and Police, danger to all would have been imminent-indeed certain. But there was another reason, which was more powerful still with the higher authorities. They knew what the old road was-they had passed it safely— Dolly's Brae was occupied by the troops-the position of the Ribbonmen in the old road was less formidable than the position they might have taken up in the new road: and, finally, every military eye saw that the new road, if an attack were really intended, was much the more dangerous of the two. Here we meet another of Mr. Berwick's serious misrepresentations; he says:

'The magistrates, who were there assembled at the hill Dolly's Brae, all agree that it would be most dangerous to allow the Orange party to come back the same road.'-Report.

No doubt some of the magistrates at first thought so, but there is no proof that any of them continued to be of that opinion, and Mr. Berwick altogether suppresses the following impartial and experienced judgments :

'Mr. Tabuteau.-If the Orangemen had gone by the new road there would have been a chance of a collision, for the Ribbonmen could then

have come down on them from the other side of the hill (Magheramayo).'-Evid., p. 15.

'Mr. Shaw. The new road is circuitous-like an arch-round the other; the new road is commanded by hills on both sides.'-p. 20.

'Mr. Hill.-The Orangemen having passed Dolly's Brae-the bone of contention in the morning-my opinion is, that as the new road is more surrounded by hills than the old one, the Orangemen would have been more exposed if they had come that way in the evening, if the others had been determined to attack them.'.'-p. 40.

Captain Sydney Darling, of the 9th Regiment, who made a military survey of the locality, says :—

'In a military point of view, the new road is much better commanded from the other side of Maghermayo hill, and it is, therefore, much the more dangerous road; the old road is the shorter and more direct way; considering it probable there would be an attack, I should say the old road is decidedly the safer of the two.'—p. 33.

Mr. Berwick not only suppresses these conclusive opinions, but he endeavours to attenuate and explain away the equally decided advice of Mr. Morgan, the priest, that the procession should return the same way, he 'offering to ride at the head of it.' We should now have little reliance on Mr. Morgan's advice, but it had a great weight with all the magistrates on that day; and this advice and offer, connected with all the rest of Mr. Morgan's conduct, is so remarkable that Mr. Berwick's travesty of the Priest's opinion is as unpardonable as his suppression of the other evidence we have quoted.

On this accumulated testimony there can be no doubt whatever that, putting out of question the disgrace to the Queen's authority of abandoning a highway because an illegal body had chosen to array themselves upon it, the old road was in every view the safer; that Lord Roden was very right in not persisting in the advice he was at first inclined to give; and that nothing can be so utterly groundless as Lord Clarendon's assertion that the determination of returning by the old road was the cause of the disaster.' His Lordship could not have read the evidence of his own deputed officers; he relied, we suppose, on Mr. Berwick's Report, which, in what it tells and what it suppresses, is equally unfaithful.

After two hours of rest and refreshment at Tollymore, the Orange procession renewed its march homewards; they proceeded over Dolly's Brae much in the same order in which they had before passed, except only that the dragoons, who had, during the day, put up at Castlewellan, were rather taken by surprise, and were not ready to precede the march, as before, and therefore followed it. The Castlewellan Orangemen thought it

VOL. LXXXVI. NO. CLXXI.

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their

their duty to accompany the visiters over the Brae; but that having been quietly passed, the Castlewellan lodges and some others of the same neighbourhood returned back to their own homes, a sure proof that the Orangemen neither meant nor expected mischief, or those trusty friends and allies would not have thus separated from each other.

The remaining body had, however, still to endure the provocations and abuse of the Ribbon women who crowded the roadsides:

'Nothing,' says Mr. Berwick, occurred to excite them but the taunts of a number of women collected on the roadside, who told them "they were prisoners, and would catch it before they came to Magheramayo hill."-Report.

To these taunting expressions Mr. Berwick does not condescend to affix any precise meaning, but they are very important; these women were clearly aware of what was coming; they must have well known why their friends had taken the new position on the hill; they looked upon the Orangemen, pressed forward by the police and troops behind, and commanded by the Ribbonmen on the hill in front, as prisoners; and told them—not in a spirit of prophecy, but with an evident foreknowledge of what was about to happen-that they would catch it'-that is, be attacked when they should reach Magheramayo. This alone, if there were no other evidence, would explain the Ribbon manœuvres, and the menace that the Orangemen would catch it from the hill' shows for what special purpose that remarkable position was taken. The position, indeed, was so judiciously chosen, in a military point of view, that Mr. Hill, as soon as he came in sight of it, 'Immediately said, "Some old pensioner or somebody must have been at work here; that position is a very formidable one.'

-p. 35. It appeared afterwards that the evolutions of the Ribbonmen on the morning in which the experienced eyes of Major Wilkinson and Lieut. Terry had detected command and discipline, and this disposition at Magheramayo, were made under the orders of one Lennon, who had been dismissed from the Police service, and was now a known leader of the Ribbonmen under the title of Captain Lennon; whether the idea of the position at the hill was his own, or prompted by Mr. Morgan's advice to them to clear away out of the valley, but not to go home,' it was certainly a very able one. But Captain Lennon's personal valour was not equal to his strategy (if his it was): for he ran away, to the great indignation of some of his party, very early in the conflict.

The following diagram (contracted from a hasty sketch of Captain Darling's, prefixed to the Evidence) will give our readers a

less

less imperfect idea of the position of the parties at the moment of the conflict than mere words could do :

6

HHHH Houses whence the Troops and Orange.
men were fired on.

F Forth and grove occupied by the Ribbonmen.
TTT Troops.

x Squib fired hereabouts.
*Two first shots fired hereabouts.

6

The Ribbonmen, or, as Mr. Berwick, with a remarkable courtesy, calls them, the opposing party,' or, as Mr. Terry, Mr. Hill, and Mr. Corry more truly call them, the rebels,' were 'strongly entrenched' in two lines (R, R) on the side of the high hill of Magheramayo, one as it were on a terrace above the other, a little obliquely to the road and commanding it from a considerable height; the immediate front of each line was protected by a strong stone wall, and these were flanked by two or three small houses and their inclosures occupied by detachments of their body, from some of which (H, H, H) both the troops and Orangemen were fired at. A smaller body occu

We use Mr. Berwick's term; but it seems from the evidence that they could not have been what is usually called entrenched, though they were strongly posted and protected behind stone walls and houses.

pied the summit of the hill, where there was a flag. On the other, or north side of the road, was a 'forth' (old fort) or earthwork, now planted with fir-trees (F), which was also occupied by another party of Ribbonmen (R), whose fire commanded both the old road and the cross-roads which occur thereabouts. Here was

also a flag. In short, the whole position was chosen and all its points were arranged and combined with a degree of skill that surprised the military authorities, and, defended by resolute men in a good cause, could not have been turned or taken without great loss even by a very superior force.

We suppose that in any other country in the world the magistrates would have endeavoured to disperse such an assemblage by legal means, but here they might entertain some not unreasonable doubt as to how far their doing so would be approved at the Castle ; and the Irish magistrates are forced, from the circumstances of the country, to pay a more implicit deference to the wishes of the existing government than can be well understood in England. They, and especially the Stipendiaries, could hardly, as prudent men, have failed to ask themselves, What a Government with so many Roman Catholic advisers might have said, if the dutiful flock which Messrs. Morgan and Mooney had fed and blessed had been ignominiously dispersed as rebels, or at least rioters? The sharpness with which Lord Clarendon has since turned round on both the local and stipendiary magistrates seems to justify a reasonable suspicion that their conductif questioned was not likely to receive a very indulgent construction. But these respectable gentlemen had another and better motive than any apprehension of the displeasure of the Castle. They could not have believed, à priori, that in the face of such a force of police and troops, to say nothing of the Orangemen, the Ribbon party could be mad enough to commence an attack, and they well knew the Orangemen would not do so. They therefore thought, that as the day was well-nigh spent, and as twenty minutes would put the hills between the parties, it was better to allow the law, which had been suffered to sleep all the morning, to slumber a little longer. In short, they acted, as we confess we should, under the circumstances of that moment, have been inclined to do, on honest Dogberry's recipe for keeping the peace to take no notice of the malefactors, and thank God that they were well rid of such disorderly knaves. This feeling was strongly confirmed by the two Priests coming towards them from the hostile party at the moment they came in sight of this position, and assuring them that there was no danger-that all was peace.'

Major Wilkinson, as he descended at the head of the troops form Dolly's Brae, and was about to ascend Magheramayo,

' met