Ireland and her Agitators

Front matter

IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. E \ WILLIAM J. O'NEILL DAUNT, ESQ. AUTHOR OF "SAINTS AND SINNERS." "We knoAv our duty to our Sovereign, and are loyal. We know also our duly to ourselves, and are resolved to be free." Declaration of Dungannon Volunteers, 1779. "Sir, I believe that the Irish confederacy cannot be put down bt force." Speech of Sir Robert Peelt ISth April, 184?. DUBLIN: JOHN BROWNE, 21, NASSAU-STREET. 1845. DEDICATION. TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND. Fellow-Countrymen, I dedicate to you the following pages, which may help, it is hoped, to exem plify the causes of Irish dissatisfaction with the Union ; to show how impossible it is that the Irish people should regard the extinction of their Parliament otherwise than as a national curse and a national degradation.

I have not sought to make my book an elaborated treatise on Eepeal. I have done little more than to collect — not very methodically — a few of the more salient characteristics of Eng lish influence in Ireland for the last sixty years, and to chronicle a few of the events connected with our efforts to resist that influence. DEDICATION. VI The temporalities of the Established Church are the only mainstay of the Union. They furnish to the large and intelligent body who directly enjoy them, a powerful pecuniary in ducement to sustain the Union ; and also to enlist their flocks in its support, by stimulating their fears of a Catholic ascendancy in the event of Eepeal. If it were not for the temporal possessions of the Established Church, there would not be a dozen Unionists in Ireland. The instinct of every Irishman — unless he is influenced by sectarian animosities and fears — will impel him not only to abhor the des truction of his country's legislature, but to hate the destroyer also.

There never was a greater blunder than to call the Union a bond of inter national affection. When I was a boy of ten years old, I was told by my seniors that we once had a Parliament in Ireland, and that English influence extinguished it. Thenceforth I regarded England with an abhorrence, which reflection may possibly have mitigated, but which Eepeal DEDICATION. VII alone can fully eradicate. Eeligious prejudices had nothing to do with the matter, for I was born of a Protestant family. I do not state this from the absurd notion that any importance attaches to myself or my sentiments. I make the avowal because it re cords my individual participation in a sentiment which equally actuates millions ; and which, by its general diffusion, assumes an aspect that is anything but contemptible. Ireland can only be conciliated by the Eepeal.

Chapter I. Castlereagh And Me

CAEEW.— POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DIVISION OF PROTESTANTS AND CATHOLICS. — PEOTESTANT PATEIOTS OF 17S2— MANNERS OF THE PERIOD.— A BACCHANALIAN DUELLIST. When Lord Castlereagh visited Mr. Shapland Carew, the member for the county of Wexford, in order to offer him a peerage and some other more substantial advantages, as inducements to vote for the Legislative Union, Mr. Carew indignantly exclaimed, " I will expose your insolent offer in the House of Commons to-night ! I will get up in my place and charge you with the barefaced attempt to corrupt a legislator !" Castlereagh coolly replied, " Do so, if you will. But if you do, / will im mediately get up and contradict you in presence of the house ; I will declare, upon my honour, that you have uttered a falsehood ; and I shall follow up that declaration by demanding satisfac tion as soon as we are beyond the reach of the Serjeant-at-arms."

B THE PROTESTANT ARISTOCRACY. Mr. Carew desired the noble Secretary of State to get out of his house with all possible expedi tion, on pain of being kicked down the hall-door steps by his footman. Castlereagh accordingly withdrew, but Carew did not execute his threat of exposing the transaction to the House. It were idle to speculate on the motives which induced him to practise that forbearance. The incident vividly illustrates the desperate and unprincipled determination with which the government and its tool pursued their object. The Irish aristocracy and gentry of that period were a race of men who lived high,' drank hard, gamed deeply, fought duels, and often pursued a career of reckless extravagance. These habits were generated by their situation, which rendered them, to a very considerable extent, the irrespon sible monopolists of local power.

They largely partook of the national taste for splendor and magnificence; a taste which, duly regulated, tends to adorn the land, and to refine and civi lize the people ; but which, in the circumstances then affecting the upper classes in Ireland, en snared its votaries into that wasteful and ruinous expenditure which threw so many of their num ber upon the worst expedients of political corruption to retrieve their shattered fortunes. The penal laws had worked a most disastrous EFFECTS OF THE PENAL LAWS. separation of the people from the gentry. The dominant Protestant party — the jovial, fox-hunt ing, claret-drinking squirearchy — all looked down on the great mass of their Catholic countrymen as a totally inferior race of beings, intended by God Almighty for the inheritance of serfdom, and with whom it would be a degradation to suppose they could have the least community of interest.

They were trained from the cradle to look thus scornfully on the Catholics. Contempt was a doctrine of their political bible. On the part of the Catholics, the moral consequences of the penal gulph that divided them from their more favored countrymen, were various, according to the varying dispositions of men. There was, amongst some, the re-action of deep and deadly hate. Others were awed into a social idolatry of Protestants. I know one most respectable and very wealthy Catholic merchant, Avho declares, that when a boy at school, about the year 1780, he felt overwhelmed and bewildered at the honor of being permitted to play marbles with a Protestant school-fellow ! Every Protestant cobbler and tinker conceived himself superior to the Catholic of ancient lineage and ample inheritance. No wonder that there should have been offensive assumption on the one side, and rankling animosity as well as degrading servility B POLITICAL NON-ENTITY OF CATHOLICS. on the other, when the law placed all the good things of the state in the hands of the few, and excluded the many from all participation in place, power, and emolument.

The Protestant aristocracy of Ireland wanted that wholesome check, that strong guarantee of political honesty, which would have arisen from contact with, and representative dependence on, the people. A whole people never can be bribed. But the people — the Catholic masses of Ireland — were a political nonentity for nearly the entire century. They formed no element of power ; no ingredient in the speculating politician's calcula tions ; the statute law had absolutely assumed their non-existence ! And even after some of the restrictions on Catholics had been removed, the sentiment of Protestant contempt for Papists sur vived in full force ; preventing that cordial coali tion, that thorough mutual understanding between the two classes, which alone could have availed to defeat the ministerial assault on Irish legislative independence.

The Protestant nobility and squirearchy, half fearing, and entirely despising, their disfranchised countrymen, had for a long time looked upon themselves rather in the light of an English gar rison occupying Ireland, than as the legitimate aristocracy of the country. Yet, despite the colossal power of corruption, and the pernicious PROTESTANT PATRIOTISM. influence of religious bigotry, the very circumstance of their residing in, and making laws for Ireland, began to produce its natural results on the minds of her domestic rulers about the time of the American war ; the spark of patriotism had ignited the Protestant heart, and blazed up with dazzling brilliancy in the memorable and successful struggle of the Irish Volunteers for free trade and constitutional independence in 1782. But — fatal error ! — the Catholics were not in corporated into the constitution.

Glorious and imposing was the superstructure, but it was fated to perish, because its foundations were too narrow to sustain its weight. It did not rest on the broad basis of the people. The Protestant patriotism of 1782 was a gallant and goodly display ; yet it presented some anomalous features. There was in it a great deal real, and something illusory. It was a curious sight, that of men in arms to enfranchise their country, yet resolved to perpetuate the affranchisement ofthe great body of its inhabitants ! — men in arms to assert the dignity and honour of Ireland, yet entertaining a cordial contempt for five out of every six of its people ! In truth, the Protes tants had been so long accustomed to omit the Catholics from all their political arithmetic, that they had learned to look upon themselves — being then about one-sixth — as forming the sum-total ANTI-CATHOLIC PATRIOTISM. of the Irish nation.

The thunder of Grattan had not yet shaken the strongholds of their bigotry. They thought it a mighty fine thing to establish a free constitution of whose benefits they were to be the monopolists. Another anomaly was to be found in the fact, that the bitterest enemies of Catholic emancipation were sometimes the most strenuous cham pions of theoretic Irish independence. At a meeting of some of the friends of the Volunteer movement, held in the house in Grafton-street now used as the Eoyal Hibernian Academy, at which Flood, Grattan, and Bartholomew Hoare attended, Flood, whose hostility to the Catholic claims was inflexible, actually proposed to his confreres a plan of total separation from England ! Grattan said, " If you persevere in your proposi tion, I certainly shall not oppose it here ; but I shall quit this room, and proceed at once to the castle — to my Sovereign's castle — and there dis close the treason — and denounce the traitor."

Yet Flood — the separatist — could not tolerate the notion of emancipating the Catholics ; while Grattan, the zealous friend of the Catholics, and the champion of a free Irish Parliament in con nexion with the British crown, denounced the ultra-patriotism of the " Protestant ascendancy" statesman as treason ! Flood, I need not add, withdrew his proposition. CORRUPTING INFLUENCES. 7 Emancipation, ' under an Irish Parliament, would have speedily blended all classes of religionists into one political mass. But the Catholics continued unemancipated ; the Protestants remained a separate and exclusive band, distinct from, and rarely sympathising with, their fellow-countrymen. Thus placed far aloof from the people, there was little to countervail the corrupting influence of a profligate court with which they were brought into close contact, and which derived immense facilities of corruption from the number of pocket-boroughs in the Irish House of Commons.

With an unreformed parliament, and an unemancipated people, the distributors of place and pension enjoyed an easy sway. The pension list was swollen to an enormous magnitude ; the number of sinecures incessantly augmented ; and parliamentary jirofligacy came at last to be so general, that men lost all sense of its shame through the force of its prevalence. Whilst the Government thus practised corruption on the largest scale, there were social vices peculiar to the period, which extensively prevailed amongst the upper ranks. Of these practices the principal were duelling and drink ing, which were carried to an excess, happily now almost incredible. There was something exceedingly bizarre in the notions and habits of BAGENAL OF DUNLECKNY. a first-rate bacchanalian duellist. Take, for a specimen, Mr. Bagenal, of Dunleckny, in the county Carlow — King Bagenal, as he was called throughout his extensive territories ; and within their bounds no monarch was ever more abso lute !

Of high Norman lineage — of manners elegant, fascinating, polished by extensive inter course with the great world— of princely income, and of boundless hospitality, Mr. Bagenal possessed all the qualities and attributes calculated to procure for him popularity with every class. A terrestrial paradise was Dunleckny for all lovers of good wine, good horses, good dogs, and good society. His stud was magnificent, and he had a large number of capital hunters at the service of visitors who were not provided with steeds of their own. He derived great delight from encouraging the young men who frequented his house, to hunt, and drink, and solve points of honour at twelve paces. His politics were popular ; he was the mover of the grant of £50,000 to Grattan in 1782 ; he was at that time member for the county of Carlow.

Enthroned at Dunleckny, he gathered around him a host of spirits congenial to his own. He had a tender affection for pistols ; a brace of "saw-handles," loaded, were often laid before him on the dinner-table. After dinner, the claret PUGNACIOUS PRACTICES. 9 was produced in an uubroached cask ; Bagenal's practice was to tap the cask with a bullet from one of his pistols, whilst he kept the other in terror em for any of the convives who should fail in doing ample justice to the wine. Nothing could be more inimitable than the bland, fatherly, affectionate air, with which the old gentleman used to impart to his junior guests the results of his own experience, and the moral lessons which should regulate their conduct through life. " In truth, my young friends, it behoves a youth entering the world to make a character for himself.

Eespect will only be accorded to character. A young man must show his proofs. I am not a quarrelsome person — I never was — I hate your mere duellist — but experience of the world tells me that there are knotty points in life of which the only solution is the saw-handle. Eest upon your pistols, my boys ! Occasions will arise in which the use of them is absolutely indispensable to character. A man, I repeat, must show his proofs — in this world courage never will be taken upon trust ! I protest to Heaven, my dear young friends, that I advise you exactly as I should advise my own son !" And having thus discharged his conscience, he would look blandly round upon his guests with the most patriarchal air imaginable. KING BAGENAL'S DUEL. His practice accorded with his precept. Some pigs, the property of a gentleman who had re cently settled near Dunleckny, strayed into an enclosure of King Bagenal's, and rooted up a flower-knot.

The incensed monarch ordered that the porcine trespassers should be shorn of their ears and tails ; and he transmitted the severed appendages to the owner of the swine, with an in timation, that he, too, deserved to have his ears docked ; and that only he had not got a tail, he (King Bagenal) would sever the caudal member from his dorsal extremity. " Now," quoth Bagenal, " if he's a gentleman, he must burn powder after such a message as that." Nor was he disappointed. A challenge was given by the owner of the pigs; Bagenal accepted it with ready alacrity ; only stipulating, that as he was old and feeble, being then in his seventy-ninth year, he should fight sitting in his arm-chair ; and that, as his infirmities prevented early rising, the " meeting" should take place in the afternoon. " Time was," said the old man, with a sigh, " that I would have risen before daybreak to fight at sunrise — but we can't do these things at seventy eight.

Well, Heaven's will be done !" They fought at twelve paces — Bagenal wound ed his antagonist severely ; the arm of the chair in which he sat was shattered, but he escaped A TRADITION OF DUNLECKNY. unhurt ; and he ended the day with a glorious carouse, tapping the claret as usual, by firing a pistol at the cask. The traditions of Dunleckny allege, that when Bagenal, in the course of his tour through Eu rope, visited the petty court of Mecklenburgh- Strelitz, the Grand Duke, charmed with his magnificence and the reputation of his wealth, made him an offer of the hand of the fair Char lotte — who, being politely rejected by King Ba genal, was afterwards accepted by King George the Third. Such was the lord of Dunleckny ; and such was many an Irish squire of the day. Eeckless ness characterised the time.

And yet there was a polished courtesy, a high-bred grace in the manners of men who imagined that to shoot, or to be shot at on " the sod," was a perfectly indispensable ingredient in the character of a gentleman. Look at Bagenal, nearly four-score, seated at the head of his table. You observe the refined urbanity of his manner, and the dignified air which is enhanced, not impaired, by the weight of years. You perceive that the patriarchal Mentor, whose milk-white tresses evidence his venerable age, is mildly and cour teously pouring forth his lore for the edification of his audience. You draw near, to participate " FIGHTING COUNSEL." 12 in the instructions of the ancient moralist. — What a shock — half ludicrous, half horrible — to find that he inculcates the necessity of practice with the " saw-handles," as the grand, primary virtue which forms the gentleman !

At a somewhat later period, the same extravagant ideas were still prevalent. At a contested election for the county of Cork, the notorious " Bully Egan" fought fourteen duels. Pugna cious barristers, whose knowledge of law was not very profound, often made large sums of money at elections where "fighting counsel" were re quired. Elections in those days often lasted a fortnight or three weeks, and sometimes averaged from one to two duels a day. It accordingly was the policy of the candidates to select good shots for their counsel. Within the present century, Mr. Thomas O'M* * * * was counsel at a Clare election, where he conducted the business of his client in a style so pacific as to excite the astonishment of a friend, who was well aware of his fire-eating propensities. " Why, Tom," said his friend, " you are marvellously quiet !

How does it happen that you haven't got into any rumpus ?" " Because my client does not pay me fighting price," replied Tom, with the most business-like air in the world. ELECTION TARIFF. 13 The tariff included two scales of payment for election counsel — the talking price, and the fighting price.* These delirious notions were, undoubtedly, the indirect results of the anomalous position of the " Protestant garrison" of Ireland ; of their immense and irresponsible social power ; and of the lax, devil-may-care morality systematically acted on in the government of the country, by successive Viceroys. * At an election for the county of Wexford in 1810, when Mes sieurs Alcock and Colclough were rival candidates, some tenants of a friend of Alcock declared their intention of voting for Colclough.

" Receive their votes at your peril!" exclaimed Alcock. Colclough replied that he had not asked their votes, and that he certainly would not be bullied into rejecting them. Alcock thereupon challenged Colclough to fight ; they met on the next day ; the crowd who as sembled on the ground included many magistrates ; Colclough was shot through the heart, and Alcock having thus got rid of his opponent, was duly returned for the county. He was tried at the next assizes for the murder of Colclough. Baron Smith publicly protested against finding him guilty, and the jury unanimously acquitted him. HOW THE WAY FOR THE UNION

Chapter II. Persecution Of The

PEOPLE— WORDS OF EDMUND BURKE— EVI- DENCE OF LOED GOSFOED AND LORD MOIKA.— EXPLOIT OF THE FEAZEE FENCIBLES.— LOED Nf/EBURY. It is sometimes weakly urged that the venality of the last Irish parliament is a perpetual dis qualifier of the Irish people from the right of self-legislation. It might as well be said, that the owner of an estate was disqualified from the rights of possession by the rascality of his agent. The Irish people had nothing to do with the venality of their legislators. The sin was not theirs, nor should its punishment be visited on them. And in the last grand struggle, the men who really ivere their representatives — the men who were returned for open, popular constitu encies — nearly all voted against the ministerial project, and for the preservation of the Irish Parliament.

In glancing, however rapidly, at the present agitation in Ireland, we should not lose sight of that which ever is iq>permost in the mind of every Irish Repealer — namely, that the Union is the offspring of conjoined fraud and force ; that the means by which it was achieved were such WAS PREPARED. 15 as would inevitably vitiate any private transaction between two individuls. That Lord Castle reagh found many nominees for pocket boroughs who were not quite so impracticable as Mr. Shapland Carew, was by no means the worst feature in the case. The machinery which was to effectuate the Union, had been long in prepa ration. So far back as 1792, Edmund Burke had used these remarkable words : " By what I learn, the Castle considers the outlawry (or at least what I look on as such) of the great mass of the people of Ireland, as an unalterable maxim in the government of Ireland."

With respect to the turbulent condition of Ireland some years prior to the Union ; with respect to the share the " authorities" had in producing that turbulence, I do not mean to enter into lengthened details : the following brief statements must suffice. In 1795 the hopes of the Catholics for imme diate and full emancipation, were encouraged by the English Government, who sent over Earl Fitzwilliam in that year as viceroy ; authorised to acquiesce in the liberal measures of the friends of the Catholics. In the previous year, Henry Grattan had an interview with Pitt, in which he was requested by the premier to draw up a list of his demands on behalf of Ireland. Grattan LORD GOSFORD'S EVIDENCE. complied, and included Catholic Emancipation in his catalogue. Pitt in reply, observed, that Emancipation should not be brought forward as a cabinet measure ; but that the Government, if pressed, would yield it.

The hopes of the Catholics thus excited to the utmost pitch, were damped by the sudden removal of Lord Fitzwilliam from Ireland, and the appointment of a successor of adverse po litics. This, in itself, was necessarily productive of great popular dissatisfaction ; but discontent was frightfully increased by the system of torture put in practice against the people in various districts. The following evidence, given by Lord Gosford, is descriptive of that system as it existed in 1795 and 1796:— "A persecution," says his lordship* "accom panied with all the circumstances of ferocious cruelty, is now raging in this country. Neither age nor sex, nor even acknowledged innocence, can excite mercy. The only crime which the wretched objects are charged with is, the pro fession of the Roman Catholic faith.

A lawless banditti have constituted themselves judges of * Address of Lord Gosford to the magistracy of Armagh, printed iu the Dublin Journal, 5th .Ian. 1796. LORD MOIRA'S EVIDENCE. 17 this new delinquency, and the sentence they de nounce is equally concise and terrible. It is nothing less than confiscation of property and immediate banishment. It would be painful to detail the horrors of this proscription — a pro scription that exceeds, in the number of its vic tims, every example of ancient and modern history. For, when have we heard or read of more than half the inhabitants of a populous country being deprived of the fruits of their industry, and driven to seek shelter for them selves and their families where chance may guide them ? These horrors are now acting with impunity. The spirit of justice, without which law is tyranny, has disappeared in this country."

Forcible words, yet not more forcible than true. The persecution Lord Gosford describes took place in 1795. As to particular cruelties committed on the people by the armed agents of power, the following quotation from Lord Moira, will furnish illustrative specimens : — "I have," says Lord Moira, "known a man, in order to extort confession of a supposed crime, or of that of some neighbour, picketted till he actually fainted — picketted a second time, till he fainted again ; and when he came to himself, picketted a third time, till he once more fainted; and all this upon mere suspicion. Men had been o TORTURE SYSTEMATIZED. taken and hung up till they were half dead, and afterwards threatened with a repetition of this treatment, unless they made a confession of their imputed guilt."* Lord Moira added this very remarkable state ment : — " These," said he, " were not particular acts of cruelty, but formed part ofthe new system."

The object of that system was to carry the Union. As to the administration of the law, it was not very easy for the people to repose their unlimited confidence in its justice, when such an incident as the following could occur : In the spring of 1797, Solicitor-General Toler, afterwards Lord Norbury, presided, during the illness of one of the judges, in the criminal court at the assizes for the county Kildare. Captain Frazer, a Scotchman, was prosecuted for the murder of an aged peasant named Christopher Dixon, under the following circumstances : — Part of the county of Kildare near Carbery was at that time proclaimed. Other parts were exempt from proclamation. There was a flying camp in the proclaimed part, consisting of the * Speech of Lord Moira in the British House of Lords, 2*2nd November, 1797.

MURDER OF DIXON. 19 Frazer fencibles, under the command of Captain Frazer. One night on his return, through Cloncurry, to the camp, from a very jovial dinner party at Maynooth, Frazer saw an old man (Dixon), then past eighty, repairing a cart by the road side. — Thinking that he was in his own proclaimed dis trict, he seized Dixon for being out after sunset, and made him mount behind the orderly dragoon in attendance, with the purpose of taking him to the camp to flog. Passing a turnpike gate, the old man asserted that the proclamation did not extend to the district in which he had been found ; at the same time appealing to the gate keeper to confirm his assertion. The gate-keeper said that the district in question had not been proclaimed ; upon which the old man descended from the crupper of the orderly's horse and went towards home.

Frazer and the dragoon furiously pursued him, and gave him sixteen wounds, of which seven or eight were mortal. A coroner's jury returned a verdict of "wilful murder" against the homicides. A neighbouring magistrate, Mr. Thomas Ryan, endeavoured to take Frazer, but his soldiers resisted. Mr. Ryan reported the facts to Lord Cloncurry, who was then in Dublin, and who directed his son, the Hon. Mr. c FRAZER'S OVATION. Lawless,* to visit the Commander of the Forces, Lord Carhampton, in order to demand the body of Frazer in pursuance of the provisions of the mutiny act. Mr. Lawless made the demand in presence of Mr. Ryan, and of Colonel (now General Sir George) Cockburn. Lord Carhampton refused to give up Frazer. Mr. Lawless thereupon told his lordship that Frazer was ipso facto cashiered. At the assizes Frazer went voluntarily to be tried.

His approach to the court-house was a sort of ovation ; for he was attended by a military band playing " Croppies lie down !" Mr. Toler presided. On the bench beside him sat the late Duke of Leinster, the unfortunate Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Mr. Lawless. The facts of the case were distinctly proved by unexceptionable witnesses. There were many persons examined, who deposed to the good and peaceable character of the deceased ; his exemp tion from all " treasonable" machinations ; and his general habits of morality and industry. There were also witnesses upon the other side who gave a character for all the virtues under heaven, especially the military virtues, to Cap tain Frazer and the orderly dragoon. Mr. Toler charged home for an acquittal. * The present Lord Cloncurry. TOLER's CHARGE TO THE JURY. 21 He regretted the homicide — it was very unfor tunate — good, respectable old man — worthy cha racter, and so forth — witnesses of unimpeachable credit had said so.

There had, however, also been witnesses who gave a most admirable character to the gallant captain in the dock, which the jury would by no means overlook — he was a brave and faithful soldier to his king — loyal — devoted — in a word, the sort of person needed in this unhappy country at the present time. The occurrence for which he was tried was most deeply to be deplored ; he would not disparage the deceased — he would only say that if he had been as good as the witnesses for the prosecution had represented him, he was well out of a wicked world ! If on the contrary, he were a fireband — [here Toler looked significantly at Mr. Lawless] — the world was well rid of him ! A judicial dilemma well worthy of record! The jury acquitted Captain Frazer. Those who brand with every epithet of igno miny the names and principles of the insurgents of 1798, should ask themselves whether such elaborate pains had ever been taken in any other country to drive a reluctant people into insur rection ?

With the cup of political hope held brimful to the lips, to be rudely dashed aside next moment; with a regularly organized system of condition of the country. torture ; with a social condition of frightful in security ; without any protection from the estab lished tribunals of law — whither were the people to turn for succour ? — To the so-called tribunals of justice ? — A sanguinary buffoon upon the bench might openly recommend the impunity of their murderers, in a harangue of solemn banter. Should they turn to the government for help ? — The government had a direct interest in their sufferings and turbulence. Whither, then, were the people to look for the removal of their grievances ? They were absolutely driven to their own rude, undisciplined, and inefficient warfare. The bla zing cottage — the tortured peasant* — the viola ted wife or daughter — the familiar outrages on property and life — the demoniac license of which they were the victims, literally left them no alternative but the pike.