This document was given to me in 1843, by the late Countess of Blessington. Her grandfather, Edmund Sheehy, was the unfortunate gentleman who perishedon the scaffold at the hands of a sanguinary faction, in 1766.“Hearts of Steel.”. The Oak Boys’ combination sprang up in opposition to the impositions that were practised on them by the gentry, under the sanction of an oppressive law, which had thrown on the unpaid labours of the poor, to a large extent, the charge ofrepairing the public roads, and not only those roads, but, according to Plowden, the law was perverted to the employment of their labour on private job roads.From combining for the purpose of redressing those grievances, they eventually proceeded to the attempt of regulating tithes and prescribing terms to the proctors and their employers. A military force was sent to the disturbed districts, some lives were lost, the obnoxious Road Bill was repealed, and quiet partially restored. The Hearts of Steel combination arose in the county Down about 1762, out of the proceedings of and absentee nobleman (Lord Downshire) possessing one of the largest estates in the kingdom, who had adopted a new mode of letting his land when out on lease, by requiring large fines, and reducing the rents in proportion to the latter. The poor occupiers of the land were unable to compete with the wealthy speculators, who had the means of making the required advance of rent in the way of fines, the lands were taken by middlemen, and rack-rents, beggary, and wholesale eviction were the results. The causes of the northern disturbances at this period will be found clearly and succinctly detailed in the following statement, which will bring this introductory notice, already too far extended, to a close.* “My first recollection of public affairs commenced about 1770, when the country was agitated by the arrest of a farmer in Belfast, on the charge of being a captain of the Hearts of Steel, and, from the neighbours whom I heard in conversation with my father, I remember the following facts, which time and mature age have confirmed in my mind, especially from conversing with many who were then at age. * It would have been an easy matter to have referred to historians of literary eminence for an account of the Northern disturbances, but it seemed to me desirable to learn the views and objects of the people engaged in those disturbances from a man of their own rank, and brought up amongst the actors in those combinations. The statement above referred to respecting the Hearts of Steel, etc., was communicated to me by James Hope, of Belfast, a man whose recollection carries him back to the events in question, and on whose vigorous mind their causes and results had left a deep impression. This extraordinary man, at the time the statement was made to me, I believe, was verging on his eightieth year, yet in the full possession of all his mental faculties, owing no advantage to birth, fortune, or education, and yet endowed with a more singular combination of excellent qualities and of natural endowments than is often to be met with in one similarly circumstanced. This self-educated man has lived for more than half a century by the labour of his own hands, and chiefly at the loom. “The linen trade had flourished in Ulster, and enabled the families who worked at it to live comfortably by renting a house and garden, with grass for a cow, and sometimes for two, from the farmers; and many such families who were industrious became enabled to rent a small farm when a lease fell, or to purchase from others, who were emigrating to America, or who, owing to their indolence or profligacy, or both, had fallen into poverty. “The high rents which the farmers charged to those weavers, and which they considered fair profits, taught the landlords the rising value of their land, and in some degree justified the cottager in yielding to the temptation of offering a higher rent to the landlord than what a farmer could pay, but which he was enabled to do by the profits arising from his trade. He then divided his farm amongst his children as they grew up, and few men of that period seemed to consider any provision necessary for their descendents, except placing them on a. level with, or, if practicable, above their neighbours, in point of property. “Education was, of course, in a great measure, neglected, and the richer a man grew, the less he cared about any other knowledge than that which enabled him to extend his worldly possessions. “Blindly pursuing gain, and overlooking the main point, social security, men bred in the country settled in Belfast, and became wealthy by means of commerce, chiefly in the provision and linen trades. having intercourse with people from all parts of the country, and being ever on the look-out where a pound, or even a penny might be made by a bargain, they began to purchase whole townlands from the head landlords, and to turn large farms into stock-farms, to answer the export provision trade, while the people confined to the surface paid more attention to cultivation. “The unthinking country squire, deceived by his sycophantic agent, who was paid by the pound for collecting his rents, imagined that high rents enhanced the intrinsic value of his land; and finding from the face of his books that his nominal rental was increased, and forgetting that the law of nature will be obeyed, and that the ocean itself has its bounds, yet, feeling that the entail of his estates gave them only to one heir, he lent to the crown his surplus income, and thus created, on usury, estates for the younger branches of his family.

“Things went on in this way; but some persons had different views from this, which were deeply impressed on their minds. Finding their necessities increase beyond the power of productive labour, they discussed in the field and at the loom questions respecting their social condition, the privileges of some, and the privations of others.  “A man will think what he will not always venture to express, and will say to some what he would not say to all; and thus an under-current of opinion began to run through society, which no act of parliament could reach. “That class from whose ill paid labour these means of enjoying the luxuries of life were drawn, brooding over their want and wretchedness, became reckless or vindictive; many, for the sake of better food and clothing, and comparative idleness, engaged in. the trade of war. But the mass preferred a short life, as they expressed it, and a merry one at home, and thus originated the Hearts of Steel.

“In 1775 the linen trade had received its death-blow, by the consequences of the American war, and the introduction of the cotton manufacture.* The independent spirit of Ulster was now on the decline, and in the towns sordid, selfish speculators began to replace the respectable linen merchants. in the meantime, gaudy calicoes and paper money supplanted the precious metals and fine linen. Factories came into vogue. The people had to leave their own firesides; and children of a tender age, girls in the bloom of youth and innocence, were transplanted fiom the cheerful spinning-wheel, under the roof of their parents, to loathsome workhouses or manufactorics, in which they breathed an air that was mixed with the fumes of heated oil and cotton dust, and were consigned to the tuition of an overbearing, and often vicious manager. At that time a cotton weaver could earn from a pound to thirty shillings a-week, working only four days, with less labour than a linen weaver could now earn five shillings, working six days, late and early. The various circumstances in operation produced a change of mind and manners before unknown in the country. But the variety of man’s inventions produces effects in every age, which, being unforeseen, leave the mass unprepared to accommodate itself to new circumstances, and turn them to advantage, which to some extent accounts far the show progress of social improvement.

“Observing these evils early in life, I set my mind to contemplate the causes of social derangement, and by thinking rather than reading, to get at some knowledge of the matter. I am still an imperfect reader, and have learned more by the ear than the eye, and by thinking than talking on any subject. That all human invention has bounds which it cannot pass, is as evident as that empires have limits to their duration. Their fate is inherent in the principles upon which they rise, and their durability depends on the energy or inactivity displayed in their operation, or the carrying of them into practical effect. I could never view a system admitting one class to political privileges, and excluding another from them on account of class or creed, in any other hght than an organization at war with the community, and those exclusive privileges but as so many altars on which human sacrifice was daily offered up, perhaps to a greater extent and variety than in any former age on record.

“To return to the Hearts of Steel. A farmer who resided near Belfast, and who was a ruling elder in the Presbyterian congregation of Carnmoney, persuaded the majority of his neighbours to allow him to take a lease of the townland in which he lived from the head landlord, with a promise that they should have every one his farm at the rate it should be obtained by wholesale. They all consented but two or three, who, nevertheless, shared the fate of the rest; for as soon as the elder got the lease, he raised all their rents, so as to have a considerable profit, besides requiring duty-work, a custom then claimed by the head landlords on their demesnes. One of those who had not consented, having refused duty-work, a custom then claimed by the head landlord, the elder’s son set fire to a hedge of furze, on which some linen clothes of the non-conforming farmer had been put to dry, and this was the first incitement to retaliation. The elder’s corn- kiln was set on fire by his own nephew, and a shot fired into his house (but not by the nephew), from which the aforesaid son narrowly r escaped. This gave rise to the collection of bands in the districts where the raising of the rents had taken place, and each of these bands conferred the name of ‘captain’ on a resolute leader. If they went to burn a house, their captain’s name was ‘firebrand’; if to cut the corn on a farm that had been taken over another’s head, as was their expression, before it was ripe, his name was ‘long-scythe’. He also used to toss out hay to the rain, when the weather was likely to insure its destruction, his name was ‘pitchfork’: and this was the work of the broodin class mentioned above, few of whom were settled inhabitants, an none at all of either principle or character. This was manifest from their taxing the country by threatening letters for money to support their nightly revels. From their deliberate destruction of food, and their cruelty to animals, they were evidently such a class as were afterwards collected into Orange lodges by the landlords, whom they will eventually undermine, as those landlords, in former parliaments, have undermined the true interests of the crown, by involving the country in a debt so overwhelming, that the productive industry of the country is overloaded, and the united interest of king and people sacrificed to sustain their own.

“About this period, several merchants of Belfast had purchased large farms, and turned them into pasture, and these were the men, chiefly, who lost cattle, although the rage ran against every man who held land which he did not labour.

“A Belfast merchant, named Gregg, having, taken some townlands in the neighbourhood of Ballyclare, employed an old woollen weaver, called Gordon, from the county Down, as bailiff and caretaker, who laboured some farms which the occupiers or tenants had left on account of the high rents demanded by Mr. Gregg. When the crops were ripe, no person would help to reap them, and Mr. Gregg prevailed on the officers of a detachment of a Highland regiment, then quartered in Belfast, to send the soldiers out to reap the oats, and cut the hay, which they did; but the country people, during the night, scattered all to the weather. On a further application, the soldiers were sent to gather it again, but the populace appeared in such numbers that the officer did not think it prudent to commence the work; and one David Douglas being seen among them, was identified by Gordon and others of Gregg’s people. David Douglas being a man respectable in his rank, was accused of being one of the captains of the Hearts of Steel. He then lived in the Templepatrick (Lord Templeton’s) estate, and his lease having expired, and the Douglas’s being stout, active men, had made some spirited remonstrance’s with Mr. Hercules Hyland, his lordship’s agent, with respect to the extremely heavy rents he was demanding for the land. His harshness was the more felt, when placed in contrast with the late agent, Mr. John Birnie, then lately deceased, and who had been a feeling, conscientious man between landlord and tenant. The Douglas’s were accordingly pointed out to Waddell, Cunningham, William Wallace, the Gregg’s, and Stewart Banks, then sovereign of Belfast, as meriting punishment.

“These were some of the merchants before alluded to. David Douglas was arrested in Belfast on a Friday, and on the following Sunday the country people assembled and marched in a body into Belfast, where they attacked the military barracks where Douglas was confined. The attempt proving unavailing, with the loss of three men killed, viz., William Russell, Andrew Christy, and Robert Walker, and a number of others wounded, they set fire to Waddell Cunningham’s house, and threatened the same fate to every house in Belfast belonging to any of the merchant-middlemen. Doctor Haliday, an amiable man, who was respected by all classes of society, interposed, and Douglas was released. He gave bail to abide his trial at the assizes, and was acquitted; but others who were tried were not so fortunate, several having been convicted, and one man, named James M’Neill, whose innocence was afterwards fully established, was executed.*

“Men of loose, dissolute character were the chief perpetrators of the depredations of houghing, stabbing, and burning, and, as before mentioned, extorted money by threatening letters, and the people were obliged to submit, until military, both horse and foot, were stationed throughout the country. About this time Hyland was dismissed from the agency, and was succeeded by a Mr. Henry Langford Burleigh, who, by his prudence, firmness, and conciliating manner, joined with his equitable conduct, soon discontinued the dragooning system, and established confidence and good neighbourhood, and the country became perfectly quiet. When I say quiet, I do not mean contented, for the rise in the price of land, from the necessity of supporting immense armies, both by sea and land, for the aggrandizement of the few and the oppression of the many, has totally reversed the Christian rule on which all good government should be founded. Manners and customs underwent a revolution.

“People no longer thought of living by the proper exercise of their industry and the prudent direction of their means, and of labouring by their example and their efforts to enlighten and to better the condition of the mass of the people and enlarge the circle of social comfort. The evils, on. the contrary, under which the people laboured were heightened by the rapacity of the landlords, the habits of settled opposition to improvements of all kinds on the part of the farmers, and the general dissipation of every class who could procure money by any means, stopping at none, however ruinous, or even criminal, to obtain it. The depredations of the Hearts of Oak, 1-learts of Steel, and White- boys, and their punishment, and the provocation given them by the rapacity of landlords and tithe-mongers, formed the topics of conversation for winter nights, until the American troubles began to be noticed in the Belfast Newsletter. That paper was not opposed to the ministry, yet it did not suppress the opinions delivered on that subject by the Earl of Chatham in Parliament. I did not comprehend the subjects then under discussion, but I saw there was a difference of opinion, and began to ponder on the arguments of the old men on the topics which have agitated Europe ever since that period. I fell into the habit of observing the difference between what people said and what they did; for some of the greatest declaimers against the oppression of the landlords and the clergy, and who considered them as the advocates and abettors of the system which caused so much bloodshed in America, were the least willing themselves to abate one penny in the price of a stone of meal or a bushel of potatoes, or anything else, in a time of scarcity, that a poor man wanted to buy, at the same time the most careful to pay the least possible rate of wages to their servants. Yet these men would keep up the laudable practice of worship in their families, and read the very texts of Scripture condemning the acts which they would do as soon as they rose from their knees, scarcely allowing their servants any time for rest after their meals, and keeping them to work late and early. The religious and moral instruction to which I had recourse was so much at variance with what I saw in daily practice, that I began to doubt the sincerity of the religious professions in some cases, and at length to question it in very many. Finding my own thoughts vary often on those subjects, I had no human guide on whom I could depend; and my thoughts then, as now, surpassing my powers of expression, I kept them to myself, and I am only surprised how I have been directed through the labyrinth of a long life, like a weakling on a journey, who keeps his feet only by the staggering of his fellow-travellers.

“When peace was made with America, our intercourse with that country began to prepare the Irish mind for a struggle for its own independence, and in my thoughts the subject had its portion of attention. I observed the pride of property, which is inherent in the aristocratic spirit of our country, was pretty much the same, whether in the man of a million or in the forty shilling freeholder. Looking out for its origin, I found it in those arrangements into which men enter for procuring money which they do not earn, or did not inherit, by means of credit. Government set individuals the example of incurring expenses it could not meet without accommodation.

“Force, fraud, and stratagem are essential to the existence of

a state of society which is founded on fictitious credit.

“We have seen that the disturbed state of the country gave the land-agents opportunities of widening the breach between landlords and tenantry, and at the same time ut good bargains into the hands of the merchants, by the facility given to the landlords of drawing on them in foreign countries, where they might travel or reside. This increased the system of middlemen and rack-rents, and thus laid the foundation of future suffering for the people. To this system there appeared no bounds, and no prospect of setting limits to them, until the American revolution gave the public mind a fresh spring for exertion.

“The naval and military force of England being reduced by that unnatural war, and rendered unable to protect the trade or even the soil of Ireland, from the then powerful fleets awl armies of France, the Irish people were under the necessity of arming for their own defence. They committed the direction of their force to such gentlemen as were resident in the country and considered men of public spirit. Many of these gentlemen went farther in professions than in subsequent times they would have wished, when political rights became more largely discussed and better defined.

“In other words, they overstepped the limited compass of their early prejudices and views of interest, as appeared afterwards in their conduct; for, although they attended public meetings where some of the soundest principles of political economy were developed and disseminated among the people, who heartily approved of the sentiments, yet those leaders secretly wished tbr an opportunity of abandoning the connexion, and this pretext they soon found in the crimes committed in the name of liberty, which succeeded the outburst of the revolution in France in 1789, which shook every throne in Europe. Such was the condition of the people, the nature of the disturbances in the north of Ireland, the origin of the Volunteers, the views of a large portion of its leaders, the seeds of disunion that were sown in its organization, and the results that were in embryo about the close of the year 1791.

“Thus far my notes were copied by Robert Montgomery,

attorney-at-law, who founded the market that now bears his name.

“JAMES HOPE.

“Belfast, March 8th, 1843”.