Twenty.seven :Magistrates of the county of Carlow held a meeting
at Carlow Court-house on the 14th, and passed resolutions con- Twenty.seven :Magistrates of the county of Carlow held a meeting at Carlow Court-house on the 14th, and passed resolutions con- demning the conduct of the Irish Government in refusing inquiry into certain charge:: of improper conduct preferred by them against a police- officer named Gleeson. Gleeson accused his superior officer, Vig- nolles, of neglect of duty ; and Vignolles charged Gleeson with in- subordination. The Lord- Lieutenant reprimanded both, and removed them from their stations in Carlow ; whereat the Carlow Tories, who take part with (Beeson, are indignant. Colonel Verner received notice from Lord Plunket, in a letter dated the ith instant, that he is not to be included in the new commission of the peace for Armagh-
" Sir—In cousequeuce of a communicafon made to me by the desire of his Excellency the Lord-Lieutenant, ettelosing copies of a correspondence between the Lxerutiv© Government aid youiself, "dative to the occurrences at a public dinner, given on the occasion if your leturn as a Representative in Parliament for the county of Armagh, I thitmk it my duty to inform you, that I cannot include your name in the warrant for time new commission of Magistrates for that cuuutv. I think it right to state, that I entirely concur in the opinion which has-been formed by his Excellence. " I 113% e the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant,
" Colonel Verner, M.1'. Ste." " PLUNKF.T C. To this letter Colonel Verner replied- . " London, 14th September I.37.
My Lorti—I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 7th instant, which bears the post-mark of liallinaalee,' and being redirected from lay residence in Armagh, has in consequence but this moment reached me, an. '200nring to me that it is nut your intention to include my name in the warrant for the new commission of Magistrates for the county of Armagh. I should not have felt myself called on to notice that communication, but thot. Lordship's baste, haste, I presume, to mat k your sense of the enur.mity of my Magis- terial delinquency—in having ventured to give a toast which. proposed under the circumotances and in the spirit in which it was by me, could not be consi- dered objectionable by any of her Majesty's loyal tothjects—or in haying pre. 'turned, as an independent country gentleman, holding the comansslon of the peace, to questiou the right of the Lord Lieutenaut, first, to put his own offen- sive and mistaken conttruction on that toast, and then to impute to me that had proposed the toast in that sense,) your Lordship has fallen into a nstauhe in supposing that lam a Magistrate of the county of Armagh: I hare jr some time ceased to he one: but I am happy to inform your Lordship, that am a Magistrate of the county of Tyrone ; so that will afford your Lordshipain opportunity of doing me the honour of removing me from the bitt19110D. cerely assuring your Lordship, that, although I have now for upwards of thirty years held the commission of the peace without an imputation on my chalac.tes and conduct, I cannot regret the DO longer holding any office under the Irrela Government, constituted and conducted as that Government is at present. I have the honour to be, my Lord, your Lordship's obedient humble servant,
" To the Right lion. Lord Plunket, " W. Vrastra. Lord Chancellor for Ireland."
Colonel Verner thought that he had caught Lord Plunket when be informed him that he had ceased to be in the commission for Armagh; but the Colonel might have seen that it was not a question of turning him out, but of putting him in. A new commission is about to be issued ; and, as a resident gentleman of property in Armagh, and Member for the county, Colonel Verner might have expected his name to be included in the commission ; but Lord Plunket has %tory pointedly told him that he will be excluded, and why.
The objectionable toast at Colonel Verner's dinner was "The Battle of the Diamond." As few of our readers probably recollect the circumstances of that affray, we copy the account given by then?- right Thomas Addis Emmett, and published in Dr. Mae Neven's Picasso of Irish History. Emmett was undoubtedly a strong partisan, but his statement of facts could always be relied upon.
"An affray near Loughbrickland, on the borders of the counties of Down and Armagh, and another at the fair ofloughgall, preceded and led to a moreg--,sral engagement at a place called the Diamond, near Portaduwo, in the enu y of Armagh. For SOIDe dais previous to this, both parties had been premaing tad collecting their forcea they seized the different passes and roads, had their otl- vanced posts, and were in some measure encamped and butted. No steps, how- ever, were taken by the Magistrates of the comity, nor, as far as can be re- ferred from any visible circumstances, even by the Government itself, to pre- vent this religious war, publicly levied and carried on in one of the waist populous, cultivated, and highly.improved parts if the kingdom ; nay name, the party which provoked the hostilities, and which the event has proved to be tIse strongest, boasted of being connived at for its well-known loyalty and at- tachment to the constitution.
" Whatever inay have been the motives for this inaction, certaiir it is east both patties aseetuldrti at the Diamond, to the amount of severd thousands. Tile Defenders were the most numerous; but the Orangemen hail an lamer= advantage in point of preoaration and skill, many of them having been nwolers of the old Volunteer corps, whose arms and discipline they still retained, staZ perverted to very diff.serit purposes from those that have immettaVzed t`aai body. The contest. therefore, was not long or doubtful; the Dot: wsne speedily- defeated, with the loss of some few killed or ii•ft on flyt field of bete, besides the wettieltal, n loon they carried away. Altai this, in IL UVISCJICZ
the intel ftrt I .0 of a Catholie orieat anti of a comoory gentlem sti, a truce he- tweet' both parties %vas .:greed upon; which v•ls, 11111..11.L.::■1,!y, V; t11.1t .1 in icse than twenty-f or leans. 'clic two b,dies that 11.,i1 tutu tI i it for the zoos.: pat t disperool. The Ili-trier, however, in whiell the bottle was fought, heing entirely tilled with Orangemen. -erne of them still run .1u, ; but eee Catholics returned home. In the course of ii at day, alatut seven hundred Pe-- fenders from Keatly, it, a remote part of the couttry, cite to the succour of their iends, anti. igoorant of the armistice, attacked the Orangennen who were still assembled. The associates of the latter being nu the siott, quickly coHeeted again, and the Defenders were once more routed. Porliaps this mistake tnigh have been cleared op, and the treaty renewed, if the resentment of the Orange- men had not hem fomented and cherished by persons to Whom reconciliaz:.oe of any kind was hateful. The Catholics, after this transaction, never attemptad to make a stand ; but the Orangemen commeoced a persecntion of the idaeltoot die. They would no longer permit a Catholic to exist in the county. Tbsy posted up on the cabins of those unfortunate victims this pithy notice—' la hell or Connaught ;' and appointed a limited tine in which the net:tenuity removal of persons and property was to be made. If, after the expiration of that period, the notice had not been entirely complied with, the Orangearera assembled, destroyed their furniture, burnt the habitations, anti forted the ruined family to Ay elsewhere for shelter. Su punctual were they in ertecuting their threats, that, after some experiments, none were found rash etunit abide the event of non•compliance. In this nay, upwards of seven hundred Catholic families in one county were forced to abandon their farms, a..±. dwellings, and their properties, without any process a law, and even witboat any alleged clime, except their religious Wad be one. 6, While these outrages were going on, the resident Magistrates were no.; found to resent them, oral in some instances were even more them D insetive spec- tators. The aria of Government, too, seemed palsied, or its strength exhumed by its efforts in Comottight to restrain the subdued insurgents, and the c- lout activity of the commander in that province to transport the suspee) with- out trial. The county of Armagh, however, nod its neighbourhood, were rot daatitute of military force, able anti willing tu lepress those outrages. The Quen's County Militia, cored:ding mostly of Catholics, was there, and exceed- i .;;ly incensed at the unresisted, unrestrained, anti even unnoticed peraecutiosa against that religiou which it was forced to witness."
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