Certain elements deride that loyalty which is the stereotyped code of the servants of the Crown, but there cannot be diverse political interpretations of the functions of a policeman or a soldier. The unshakable loyalty of the Royal Irish Constabulary throughout its career has been one of the finest and noblest things in the history of Ireland.

From the point of view of the adherent of social order, it is impossible to treat of sedition, political assassination and rebellion other than as criminal. One must view them purely from the police standpoint and treat political phenomena of this nature from a criminological point of view. In these days of political instability there is a wide-spread confusion of ideas; and the conception that crime attributable to or covered by a gloss of political grievance is not true criminality is spreading dangerously, and moral values are being usurped.

That I am not alone in this view is shown by a letter on the Irish Question by Lord Hugh Cecil, M.P., to The Times, in which he stated :

"Murder is not a legitimate political instrument; it is a cruel abomination, which deserves the gallows in this world and hell-fire in the next.

"Both the Government and their critics appear to believe that a remedy is to be found in some change of political machinery. But the true causa sine qua non of the murders in Ireland is not a political grievance, but a wide-spread moral depravity. The Sinn Fein movement and its abominable crimes are only the last of a long series, certainly going back to the days of the Whiteboys, 160 years ago.

"The evil is a moral one, and the remedies must be moral. The two great remedies are law and religion."

Religion has failed utterly as a deterrent from homicide in so far as the Irish are concerned, and, in point of fact, it matters little to a soldier whether he is shot by a seditious communicant or an equally murderous atheist. But it matters. a great deal to genuinely religious people. No one would be so foolish as to judge Roman Catholicism by the Irish rendering of it, for Irish Catholicism is something apart; yet it is, perhaps, the greatest failure of a Church celebrated for successful missionary endeavour.

Some explanation of the continued failure by the English to enforce law throughout Ireland will be found in the following pages.

CHAPTER I

THE EARLY ORGANISATIONS

THE earliest records of a secret society in Ireland are those connected with the insurrection of 1641. Under Charles I Roman Catholicism had been again proscribed and worship had to be performed in secret. There was then organised among the people an association known as The Defenders, whose ruling spirit was the celebrated insurgent leader, Roger Moore, celebrated in legend as Rory O'Moore.

Roger Moore had been educated abroad in exile and had spent much time in Spain, where he probably learnt the mechanism of secret revolution which he later applied to Ireland. Certain it is that the rising was generally anticipated, and that Irish Catholic exiles began to filter back to Ireland from all parts, preparatory to the rising which burst out on October 23rd, 1641, and was characterised by massacres of the Protestant settlers. The popular password of the period was "God Our Lady, and Rory O'Moore."

The reasons for the rising of 1641 were complicated in that, though nominally a religious war, all the other elements of the period, the contest between King and Parliament, the aggressive intrigues of Spain and the old resistance of the conquered and expropriated Irish landowners, provided motives for the alliance of different elements.

The nominal function of the Defenders was the protection of the fugitive priests during the period of proscription and the holding of the passes while Mass was celebrated in some mountain glen. The enemies of the faith being the Protestants, and the Protestants standing for the Constitutional authority of Britain, the Defenders soon became a criminal association of law-breakers and banditti. The Cromwellian campaign of 1649 crushed out the effects of the successful rising of 1641, and famine and banishment completed the subjugation of the turbulent land.

The priesthood was early recognised as largely responsible for the continuous insurgency of the country, and all Irish priests were deemed guilty of rebellion and sentenced to death. It was also a capital crime to know where a priest was hidden and not inform the authorities. The five pounds reward, given for a wolf's head, was also given for a priest's. The bigotry of the Cromwellians in Ireland was remarkable, but, in fairness, it must be admitted that loyal Roman Catholics in England were not persecuted. The policy of extermination in Ireland was mainly due to the unfortunate identity of Irish Roman Catholicism with sedition and rebellion, a tendency which recent events show persists* to the present day.

The nature of the Irish priesthood was recognised when, at the Restoration of Charles II, the Irish Catholics were excluded from the Act of Indemnity; and when the Popish Plots of Titus Oates

*The Administration of Ireland, 1920, by 'I.O.', pages 44,

49, 53, 54, 57.

came to a head, Irish Papists terrified the popular imagination as as much as did Jesuit emissaries. It is a peculiar circumstance, that Archbishop Oliver Plunkett, Roman Catholic Primate of Ireland, who had attempted to put down the criminal association of Defenders in the South of Ireland, was accused by the infamous Oates; and at his trial at Westminster certain of these Irish priests, who had been censured by him, gave false evidence against him. The Archbishop, though innocent, was, through the false evidence of these members of the secret society, sentenced and duly hanged at Tyburn.

The notorious modern society known as The Ancient Order of Hibernians (q.v.) is the direct successor of the original society of Defenders: in common with its ancestor it attempts to enable the clerics to exercise control in politics.

The Defenders as an organisation seem to have been modelled on the infamous Spanish secret society known as the Garduña (anglice "polecats"). This Garduña was originally a secret organisation of robbers, bandits and masterless men who were organised by the priestly party in Spain to take the offensive against the Moors and Jews under the Emperor Ferdinand. The war against the Moors promised pillage; the bandits of the period were devout if bloodthirsty Christians, and the curious organisation was successful. Two millions of Moors and Jews were driven from the realm, and their money and property passed via the partnership of Garduña and priests into the possession of the State and the Holy Office of the Inquisition.