Their imbecile and uncautious officer fired his pistol and in a moment afterwards was knocked from his horse and instantly put to death.

The crowd now rushed on them from all sides, and so sharp, short, and decisive was the massacre, that in about the space of two minutes, twelve men lay butchered on the spot.
Other scenes of violence and bloodshed there were, but none so frightful as the above.

Most persons remember Rathcormac and Newtonbarry, but we do not imagine that a recapitulation of such atrocities can be at all agreeable to the generality of our readers, and for this reason we content ourselves with barely alluding to them, as a corroboration of the disorganized condition of society which then existed, and which we are now attempting to describe.
But perhaps nothing, after all, can test the inextinguishable hatred of tithes which prevailed at that period, more than the startling and almost incredible fact that the government, aided by as sound a lawyer, and as able an attorney-general as ever lived, and a powerful bar besides, were not able, during the following spring and summer assizes, to convict a single individual concerned in this massacre, which is now a portion of our country's history, and still well remembered as that of Carrickshock, in the county of Kilkenny.
This double triumph of the people over the tithe and police, created a strong sensation throughout the kingdom, and even shook the two houses of parliament with dismay.
Indeed, there probably never existed in Ireland, any combination or confederacy of the people so bitter, or with such a deeply-rooted hold upon the popular mind as that against tithes, as it slumbered and revived from time to time.

And what is rather singular, too, the frequent agitations arising from it, which in its periodical returns convulsed the country, were almost uniformly, or at least very frequently, productive of a collateral one against priests' dues.

Up until the year '31, however, or '32, the agitators against tithes were more for their reduction than their extinction.