"While others meanly take whole months to slay, Despatch the grateful patient in a day!"

"Among other amiable enactments against the Catholics at this period, the price of five pounds was set on the head of a Romish priest, being exactly the same sum offered by the same legislators for the head of a wolf. The Athenians, we are told, encouraged the destruction of wolves by a similar reward (five drachms); but it does not appear that these heathens bought up the heads of priests at the same rate, such zeal in the cause of religion being reserved for times of Christianity and Protestantism."—(pp. 97-99.)

Nothing can show more strongly the light in which the Irish were held by Cromwell than the correspondence with Henry Cromwell respecting the peopling of Jamaica from Ireland. Secretary Thurloe sends to Henry, the Lord Deputy in Ireland, to inform him that "a stock of Irish girls and Irish young men are wanting for the peopling of Jamaica." The answer of Henry Cromwell is as follows:- "Concerning the supply of young men, although we must use force in taking them up, YET IT BEING SO MUCH FOR THEIR OWN GOOD, and likely to be of so great advantage to the public, it is not the least doubted but that you may have such a number of them as you may think fit to make use of on this account.

"I shall not need repeat anything respecting the girls, not doubting to answer your expectations to the full IN THAT; and I think it might be of like advantage to your affairs there and ours here if you should think fit to send 1,500 or 2,000 boys to the place above mentioned. WE CAN WELL SPARE THEM; and who knows but that it may be the means of making them Englishmen—I mean, rather, Christians? As for the girls, I suppose you will make provisions of clothes, and other accommodations for them." Upon this, Thurloe informs Henry Cromwell that the council have voted 4,000 GIRLS, AND AS MANY BOYS, to go to Jamaica.

Every Catholic priest found in Ireland was hanged, and five pounds paid to the informer.

"About the years 1652 and 1653," says Colonel Lawrence, in his Interests of Ireland, "the plague and famine had so swept away whole counties, that a man might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living creature, either man, or beast, or bird, they being all dead, or had quitted those desolate places. Our soldiers would tell stories of the places where they saw smoke—it was so rare to see either smoke by day or fire or candle by night." In this manner did the Irish live and die under Cromwell, suffering by the sword, famine, pestilence, and persecution, beholding the confiscation of a kingdom and the banishment of a race. "So that there perished," says Sir W. Petty, "in the year 1641, 650,000 human beings, whose bloods somebody must atone for to God and the King!"

In the reign of Charles II., by the Act of Settlement, four millions and a half of acres were for ever taken from the Irish. "This country," says the Earl of Essex, Lord Lieutenant in 1675, "has been perpetually rent and torn since his Majesty's restoration. I can compare it to nothing better than the flinging the reward on the death of a deer among the pack of hounds, where every one pulls and tears where he can for himself." All wool grown in Ireland was, by Act of Parliament, compelled to be sold to England; and Irish cattle were excluded from England. The English, however, were pleased to accept 30,000 head of cattle, sent as a gift from Ireland to the sufferers in the great fire! and the first day of the Sessions, after this act of munificence, the Parliament passed fresh acts of exclusion against the productions of that country.

"Among the many anomalous situations in which the Irish have been placed, by those 'marriage vows, false as dicers' oaths,' which bind their country to England, the dilemma in which they found themselves at the Revolution was not the less perplexing or cruel. If they were loyal to the King de jure, they were hanged by the King de facto; and if they escaped with life from the King de facto, it was but to be plundered and proscribed by the King de jure afterwards.

"'Hac gener atque socer coeant mercede suorum.'—VIRGIL.

"'In a manner so summary, prompt, and high mettled, Twixt father and son-in-law matters were settled.'

"In fact, most of the outlawries in Ireland were for treason committed the very day on which the Prince and Princess of Orange accepted the crown in the Banqueting-house; though the news of this event could not possibly have reached the other side of the Channel on the same day, and the Lord-Lieutenant of King James, with an army to enforce obedience, was at that time in actual possession of the government, so little was common sense consulted, or the mere decency of forms observed, by that rapacious spirit, which nothing less than the confiscation of the whole island could satisfy; and which having, in the reign of James I. and at the Restoration, despoiled the natives of no less than ten millions six hundred and thirty-six thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven acres, now added to its plunder one million sixty thousand seven hundred and ninety- two acres more, being the amount altogether (according to Lord Clare's calculation) of the whole superficial contents of the island!

"Thus, not only had ALL Ireland suffered confiscation in the course of this century, but no inconsiderable portion of it had been twice and even thrice confiscated. Well might Lord Clare say, 'that the situation of the Irish nation, at the Revolution, stands unparalleled in the history of the inhabited world.'" (pp. 111- 113.)

By the Articles of Limerick, the Irish were promised the free exercise of their religion; but from that period to the year 1788, every year produced some fresh penalty against that religion, some liberty was abridged, some right impaired, or some suffering increased. By acts in King William's reign, they were prevented from being solicitors. No Catholic was allowed to marry a Protestant; and any Catholic who sent a son to Catholic countries for education was to forfeit all his lands. In the reign of Queen Anne, any son of a Catholic who chose to turn Protestant got possession of the father's estate. No Papist was allowed to purchase freehold property, or to take a lease for more than thirty years. If a Protestant dies intestate, the estate is to go to the next PROTESTANT heir, though all to the tenth generation should be Catholic. In the same manner, if a Catholic dies intestate, his estate is to go to the next Protestant. No Papist is to dwell in Limerick or Galway. No Papist is to take an annuity for life. The widow of a Papist turning Protestant to have a portion of the chattels of deceased in spite of any will. Every Papist teaching schools to be presented as a regular Popish convict. Prices of catching Catholic priests, from 50s. to 10 pounds, according to rank. Papists are to answer all questions respecting other Papists, or to be committed to jail for twelve months. No trust to be undertaken for Papists. No Papist to be on Grand Juries. Some notion may be formed of the spirit of those times, from an order of the House of Commons, "that the Sergeant-at-Arms should take into custody all Papists that should presume to come into THE GALLERY!" (Commons' Journal, vol. iii., fol. 976.) During this reign the English Parliament legislated as absolutely for Ireland as they do now for Rutlandshire, an evil not to be complained of, if they had done it as justly. In the reign of George I., the horses of Papists were seized for the militia, and rode by Protestants; towards which the Catholics paid double, and were compelled to find Protestant substitutes. They were prohibited from voting at vestries, or being high or petty constables. An act of the English Parliament in this reign opens as follows: —"Whereas attempts have been lately made to shake off the subjection of Ireland to the Imperial Crown of these realms, be it enacted," etc. etc. In the reign of George II. four- sixths of the population were cut off from the right of voting at elections by the necessity under which they were placed of taking the oath of supremacy. Barristers and solicitors marrying Catholics are exposed to all the penalties of Catholics. Persons robbed by privateers during a war with a Catholic State are to be indemnified by a levy on the Catholic inhabitants of the neighbourhood. All marriages between Catholics and Protestants are annulled. All Popish priests celebrating them are to be hanged. "This system" (says Arthur Young) "has no other tendency than that of driving out of the kingdom all the personal wealth of the Catholics, and extinguishing their industry within it; and the face of the country, every object which presents itself to travellers, tells him how effectually this has been done."—Young's Tour in Ireland, vol. ii., p. 48.

Such is the history of Ireland—for we are now at our own times; and the only remaining question is, whether the system of improvement and conciliation begun in the reign of George III. shall be pursued, and the remaining incapacities of the Catholics removed, or all these concessions be made insignificant by an adherence to that spirit of proscription which they professed to abolish? Looking to the sense and reason of the thing, and to the ordinary working of humanity and justice, when assisted, as they are here, by self- interest and worldly policy, it might seem absurd to doubt of the result. But looking to the facts and the persons by which we are now surrounded, we are constrained to say that we greatly fear that these incapacities never will be removed till they are removed by fear. What else, indeed, can we expect when we see them opposed by such enlightened men as Mr. Peel—faintly assisted by men of such admirable genius as Mr. Canning—when Royal Dukes consider it as a compliment to the memory of their father to continue this miserable system of bigotry and exclusion, when men act ignominiously and contemptibly on this question, who do so on no other question, when almost the only persons zealously opposed to this general baseness and fatuity are a few Whigs and Reviewers, or here and there a virtuous poet like Mr. Moore? We repeat again, that the measure never will be effected but by fear. In the midst of one of our just and necessary wars, the Irish Catholics will compel this country to grant them a great deal more than they at present require or even contemplate. We regret most severely the protraction of the disease, and the danger of the remedy; but in this way it is that human affairs are carried on!

We are sorry we have nothing for which to praise Administration on the subject of the Catholic question, but it is but justice to say, that they have been very zealous and active in detecting fiscal abuses in Ireland, in improving mercantile regulations, and in detecting Irish jobs. The commission on which Mr. Wallace presided has been of the greatest possible utility, and does infinite credit to the Government. The name of Mr. Wallace in any commission has now become a pledge to the public that there is a real intention to investigate and correct abuse. He stands in the singular predicament of being equally trusted by the rulers and the ruled. It is a new era in Government when such men are called into action; and if there were not proclaimed and fatal limits to that ministerial liberality, which, so far as it goes, we welcome without a grudge and praise without a sneer, we might yet hope that, for the sake of mere consistency, they might be led to falsify our forebodings. But alas! there are motives more immediate, and therefore irresistible; and the time is not yet come when it will be believed easier to govern Ireland by the love of the many than by the power of the few, when the paltry and dangerous machinery of bigoted faction and prostituted patronage may be dispensed with, and the vessel of the State be propelled by the natural current of popular interests and the breath of popular applause. In the meantime, we cannot resist the temptation of gracing our conclusion with the following beautiful passage, in which the author alludes to the hopes that were raised at another great era of partial concession and liberality, that of the revolution of 1782, when, also, benefits were conferred which proved abortive because they were incomplete, and balm poured into the wound, where the envenomed shaft was yet left to rankle.

"And here," says the gallant Captain Rock, "as the free confession of weakness constitutes the chief charm and use of biography, I will candidly own that the dawn of prosperity and concord which I now saw breaking over the fortunes of my country, so dazzled and deceived my youthful eyes, and so unsettled every hereditary notion of what I owed to my name and family, that—shall I confess it—I even hailed with pleasure the prospects of peace and freedom that seemed opening around me; nay, was ready, in the boyish enthusiasm of the moment, to sacrifice all my own personal interest in all future riots and rebellions to the one bright, seducing object of my country's liberty and repose.

"When I contemplated such a man as the venerable Charlemont, whose nobility was to the people like a fort over a valley, elevated above them solely for their defence; who introduced the polish of the courtier into the camp of the freeman, and served his country with all that pure Platonic devotion which a true knight in the time of chivalry proffered to his mistress; when I listened to the eloquence of Grattan, the very music of freedom, her first fresh matin song, after a long night of slavery, degradation, and sorrow; when I saw the bright offerings which he brought to the shrine of his country— wisdom, genius, courage, and patience, invigorated and embellished by all those social and domestic virtues, without which the loftiest talents stand isolated in the moral waste around them, like the pillars of Palmyra towering in a wilderness!—when I reflected on all this, it not only disheartened me for the mission of discord which I had undertaken, but made me secretly hope that it might be rendered unnecessary; and that a country which could produce such men and achieve such a revolution, might yet—in spite of the joint efforts of the Government and my family—take her rank in the scale of nations, and be happy!

"My father, however, who saw the momentary dazzle by which I was affected, soon drew me out of this false light of hope in which I lay basking, and set the truth before me in a way but too convincing and ominous. 'Be not deceived, boy,' he would say, 'by the fallacious appearances before you. Eminently great and good as is the man to whom Ireland owes this short era of glory, OUR work, believe me, will last longer than his. We have a power on our side that "will not willingly let us die;" and, long after Grattan shall have disappeared from earth like that arrow shot into the clouds by Alcestes, effecting nothing, but leaving a long train of light behind him, the family of the ROCKS will continue to flourish in all their native glory, upheld by the ever-watchful care of the Legislature, and fostered by that "nursing-mother of Liberty," the Church.'"

THE END