fronted its powerful rival, entrenched and "established" on the opposite hill side. It was not without grief and indignation that the citizens and apprentices of Derry beheld these alarming encroachments of the Papal power, and many a bitter local controversy marked the progress of the revolution. To the Catholics in those contests a ready pensman and a prudent chief were necessary, and these Providence supplied them in the person of our subject. Mr. Maginn's first organ of communication with the public was the Derry Chronicle, edited by Sheehan, a native of Celbridge, County Kildare, afterwards better known as editor of the Comet, a satirical and national Dublin newspaper. After the Chronicle's decease the Journal was always open to him, as was subsequently, when he became more influential, all the local press. In these papers he appeared anonymously under a great variety of titles, and when the matter was too personal or too tempting for satire, a friendly local printer was always ready to issue his pasquinades in broadsheet form.* The multitude of local questions on which he wrote either to the press or officials it would be impossible to enumerate; the principals were against the appointment of an exclusively Protestant magistracy in Innishowen; in favor of calling to the bench the Doherty's of Glen, and others of the old Catholic families; against the violence

* Some of those, such as "The Troubles of the Kirk" are in verse, but they would not add to the reputation of Dr. Maginn's abilities.

exhibited in '33 and '34 in the collection of Tithes; against the removal of an impartial stipendiary magistrate in 1837; and against the removal of a lieutenant of police who had won the confidence of the people; against frequent proceedings of the magistrates at quarter sessions, which he represented to the Lord Lieutenant as likely to bring the administration of justice into contempt. In all these communications, whether to the press or the castle, he takes without apology the tone and position of a protector of his poor people-a character which admirably harmonizes with that of a Priest, in such a state of society as then existed in the North of Ireland.

To root out and totally destroy secret agrarian societies, was a favorite task of the Pastor of Fahan. In his neighborhood it was one of no ordinary difficulty, because there such societies were bound up with an extensive popular interest-illicit distillation and smuggling. "Innishowen," as every one knows, is the name par excellance for genuine whiskey. In the wild recesses of the peninsula, where the goats alone could find their way, the daring defier of London law guarded his busy worm and his well-stocked crypt. A special "revenue" police, trained to all sorts of wiles and adventures, was at length established to hunt down the stills; but some intrepid followers of the forbidden calling, if fame may be believed, still hold out in their fastnesses, despite all the forces and all the ingenuity of her Majesty's excise.

Against all oath-bound associations, Mr. Maginn, whether in the pulpit or on his visits to the homes of the people, waged incessant war. One of his controversies relating to this subject accidently became public. In '37, O'Donnel, an approver or crown witness, residing at Buncrana, deposed that Mr. Maginn's servant named James Doherty, had asked him if he would take ten pounds to shoot a landlord who had ejected his (Doherty's) mother from her holding. After lodging this information the approver sent word to the accused to quit the country, "for he had done his Job," an advice which the latter, having slim faith in landlord justice, forthwith did. The local enemies of Mr. Maginn, that Orange magistracy which he had never spared, did not hesitate to hint in conversation, that he had been a harborer of ribbon-men, and privy to the escape of his servant These allusions being given to the public in 1840, by a Mr. McClintock Spence, occasioned an animated correspondence in the Derry Journal, of two years' duration. In his letters, Mr. Maginn proved that he had been the most effective enemy of all illegal associations in his barony; that he had handed over to the police in his own chapel-yard, one Walch, a suspected agent of such societies; that there was not then in his entire mission a single Catholic engaged in any way in such lawless combinations. He challenged the most rigid inquiry into this latter statement, a challenge which was not accepted by the other

side. He does not directly deny being privy to the escape of his servant Doherty, though he does wholly disclaim all knowledge of his complicity with the ribbonmen, if he were really guilty. As a curious illustration of the "administration of justice" in Ireland, we have given below, his summary statement of the provocations systematically offered to the Innishowen-men, with which the Spence correspondence opened.

To the Editor of the Londonderry Journal:

BUNCRANA, April 7, 1840.

SIR,-On Saturday, the 5th inst., an article appeared in the Sentinel, headed "Incendiarism," which more or less affects the character of this neighborhood. It will not, I would fain hope, be considered ob-' trusive in me to set the public right on this subject of the Sentinel's communication. Newspapers, like individuals, are subject to be misled; and never did any correspondent impose further on any paper or any person, than the Sentinel's correspondent did on that occasion.

"On the night of Friday, the 27th ult. (states the Sentinel) about the hour of 11 o'clock, an attempt was made to burn the house of a man named O'Donnell, who lives in the Pound-lane, Buncrana, by setting the thatch in the rear of it on fire. O'Donnell was in bed, but fortunately made the discovery in time to preserve his dwelling, and hastened, almost in a state of nudity, to apprise the police."

That an attempt was made to set O'Donnell's house on fire we cheerfully admit; but the question is yet undecided by whom the coal was put into O'Donnell's house. The general impression is, and was at the time, that the coal was put into it by O'Donnell himself. The strongest circumstantial evidence is at present in the hands of Capt. Roberts against O'Donnell. It was sworn by an aged and respectable woman, his door neighbor, that she saw him cross the wall from the rear of his house not ten minutes before he called on the police; secondly, that when she saw him cross the wall, he had his clothes on, and that, a few minutes afterwards, she saw him return with the police in a state of nudity. She furthermore declared on oath, that from the time she

saw him coming from the rear of his house, it appeared to her almost impossible for him to have had sufficient time to take off his clothes. Bradley the whitesmith, in the Pound-lane, O'Donnell's intimate friend, when questioned on oath with respect to the circumstances, corroborated her testimony.

When the police arrived, there was scarcely a handful of the thatch burned. Connecting, sir, the circumstances of this case of O'Donnell's burning with the circumstances of another equally infamous case, I am induced to believe that those paid informers of the government are setting every engine which human ingenuity or the malice of hell can invent, to enhance their own value by disturbing the peace of the country, and blackening the character of the peasantry of these parishes.

Five or six threatening notices were, as these gentlemen approvers say, served on them; these notices were handed to the police, sent forward to head-quarters; the county represented in a state of rebellion; strange magistrates brought to adjudicate on the rebels of this district; the constabulary privileged, without reading the riot act or anything else, to beat the peasantry on their way home; and lately, when a foolish boy threw a stone, who had been maltreated, orders were given by a subaltern to charge and fire on the people. Many of the peasantry were severely injured, and one of them was stabbed and left weltering in his blood. When summonses were issued for the aggrieved by the aggressors, it comes out, after their trial and acquittal, that these threatening notices were fabricated by their paid approvers -those very persons privileged to insult and annoy the people-the patronized of the police and the government.

*

It is worth pausing to consider how such an inevitable opposition between a popular clergy and an unpopular aristocracy, must have affected all Irish ideas of subordination, of duty, and of justice. In a society where the privileged class are worthy of their rank, the clergy would naturally be their associates and allies; the people would as naturally yield them a willing and reverential obedience. In Ireland-in Ulster more especially