It was t my intention to have written any Preface to this book, but to have allowed it simply to speak for itself. As it is very likely, however, that both it and the motives of its author may be misrepresented by bigoted or venal pens, I think it necessary to introduce it to the reader by a few brief observations. In the first place, then, I beg to say, that the work presents phases of Irish life and manners that have never been given to the public before by any other writer upon the same subject. So far, therefore, the book is a perfectly new book-t only to the Irish people, but also to the English and Scotch. I kw t whether the authenticity of the facts and descriptions contained in it may be called in question; but this I do kw, that there is t an honest man, on either side, who has lived in the rth of Ireland, and reached the term of fifty years, who will t recognize the conduct and language of the rthern Orangemen as just, truthful, and t one whit exaggerated. To our friends across the Channel it is only necessary to say, that I was born in one of the most Orange counties in Ireland (Tyrone)-that the violence and licentious abuses of these armed civilians were perpetrated before my eyes-and that the sounds of their outrages may be said still to ring in my ears.