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and planter stock who demanded popular reform based on national independence.
What had occasioned this change? Partly the American and French revolutions; partly English dominance in Irish politics, which gave rise to the first expression of the colonial nationalism of Swift and Molyneux, and which was to find eventually a happier, saner, and more literal interpretation from the Ulster Presbyterians stirred into life by the American and French revolutions. Acts of the Imperial Parliament crippling Irish trade in the interests of British commerce, the shameful denial of civil and religious rights to Catholics and Dissenters, together with the imposition of tithes on people of all religious persuasions for the upkeep of one, and general feudal oppression, rapidly prepared the ground for far reaching changes.
In 1762 an outbreak of cattle-disease on the Continent had produced a huge demand in Britain for Irish live stock, which in turn resulted in the wholesale conversion of arable lands to pasture, the enclosure of commons, and wholesale evictions. The dispossessed peasantry formed secret societies, such as the Whiteboys, and exercised primitive justice on their oppressors. In the North similarly, small holdings were converted into ranches, which, together with compulsory service on the roads, tithes, and so forth, produced organisations alike in purpose to the Whiteboys, but consisting only of Presbyterians, who called themselves Hearts of Steel, or Oakboys. They met in great numbers and frequently clashed with the military.
The Whiteboys in time gave place to the Defenders, and the Steelboys were swallowed up in the Volunteers (or in the American Army in the war of independence across the Atlantic), both to merge in a great degree into one in the Societies of United Irishmen.
The Defenders were an object of close attention to the United Irishmen from the very foundation of the latter organisation. As they were composed almost entirely, at first, of the poorest class of Catholics, the United Irish leaders thought their minds would be fertile soil for doctrines of social revolt.
Thomas Addis Emmet informs us:—
"From the first formation of the Union (the United Irishmen), its most active members were extremely anxious to learn the views and intentions of the Defenders.… Many Catholics had from the commencement belonged to
