during the sanguinary reign of Mary; and triumphantly seizes the opportunity of boasting their superior qualificatiɔns in head and heart, compared with those of Englishmen, who were to be seen sacrificing each other to the gloomy demon of fanaticism; but the progress of the reformation in Ireland was comparatively slow, and the converts from popery were too few to provoke the severity of persecution; nor can we believe, with Mr. Leland, that we are to attribute this great blessing of religious freedom, which every writer of those times, however prejudiced, allows to have existed in Ireland, to the "stupid composure of ignorance and superstition." We rather attribute the existence of such a blessing to the fortunate circumstance, that the rage of fanaticism had made no very successful encroachments on the ancient faith of the country, and that the few who opposed were too insignificant to excite the fears or the jealousy of the ascendant religion. It remained for future days to experience the effects of breaking down the venerated principles of antiquity, and disturbing the conscience and belief of those who lived with their neighbours in harmony and peace. "What a pity,” writes an honest and animated historian "that the Irish are not roused from their stupid composuse, by running after crazy mountebanks,-vending their quackeries of new invented doctrines, with as great an assortment of sample patterns, as there are delirious fancies in the heated brains of bible-mad fanatics! So, the calm enjoyed by the Protestants in Ireland, when they were few, and the catholics all powerful, (the effect of an enlightened philosophy, or great native generosity,) is, according to Leland, the effect of a stupid composure in ignorance and superstition," No; we should rather conclude, with the writer of these observations, that the native kindness of the Irish heart did not feel any gratification in the bloody triumphs of bigotry, and that the indulgence granted to the propagators of reformation in Ireland, flowed from the influence of that generosity, which has so long and so remarkably cha

racterised the Irish nation. Ware informs us, that several English families fled into Ireland, and there enjoyed their opinions and worship, in privacy, without notice or molestation.

During the remainder of this reign, there is little worthy of record, little calculated to instruct the understanding or improve the heart. The battles fought between the houses of Tyrowen and Tyrconnel, display all that fruitless bravery which always distinguished the contending Irish septs; and the reader of the sanguinary scene must lament the waste of so much precious blood in the odious struggles of civil war. We have passed through so many occurrences of this kind, that we deem it an unprofitable labour to re-echo either the courage or the follies of our countrymen.

THE

HISTORY OF IRELAND.

Elizabeth.

A. D.

TH HE history of Ireland may be considered the 1558. only history in which the mind and heart of the reader are unable to find a resting place from the miseries and sorrows of his fellow-creatures, in which even a short interval of peace cannot be discovered, or a momentary cessation from human calamity cannot be enjoyed -in which a perpetual succession of afflictions, unrelieved by one gleam of comfort, or by one ray of hope, passes before the eye-wearying and exhausting its sensibility by the reiteration of sorrow. Despair takes possession of the Irish patriot; and all future efforts to rescue his country from the miserable distractions to which Providence seems to have doomed it, strike him to be the dreams of the visionary, rather than the result of reflection, or the sober dictate of cool and dispassionate reason. The Irishman who is not

insensible to the long course of misery experienced by his country, who has sympathized with her sufferings, and has followed her varied fortunes-who has reflected upon the hundred struggles made by the mutual exertions of the prudent, and the violent precipitancy of the enthusiastic, is inclined to close the record of such repeated disappointment, with the humane and benevolent exclamation of regret, that the sword had not in the infancy of Ireland's connection with England, extirpated the seed of that spirit which has struggled with despotism in vain for a period

of seven hundred years, and which only contributed to excite by resistance that persecution which has so long desolated the richest and most beautiful island on the globe. The Irishman, who, from time to time, flattered his country with hope, has done little more than prepare her for the scaffold, and the struggle which promised the fairest prospects, and the most triumphant issue, have hitherto terminated in general disaster-unprofitable to the conqueror, and ruinous to the conquered. That a people, possessing the great and enviable qualities of Irishmenbrave, generous and humane;-that a nation illustrious for its hospitality and kindness, should for centuries be the victims of the most unequalled misfortunes, excite the pity and indignation of every reader. For four hundred years previous to Elizabeth, we have witnessed one unbroken chain of calamity; we have seen the wealth and resources of our country sacrificed to the rapacity of monopoly, and a small and contemptible band of settlers gnawing the vitals of a nation who could have extinguished them by the union of its people. During this dreary period, the catholic English colony are to be found plundering the people of Ireland professing the same religion, and worshipping the same God with their persecutors. We see the spirit of robbery generating the same torments against their victims as we shall shortly see adopted by the furious spirit of bigotry; and when the Irish native was nearly stripped of his property, and had almost ceased to be worthy the notice of persecution, we shall find him uncovered, and unsheltered-exposed to the fury of the fanatical reformer, and the sacred liberty of serving the Supreme Being as his conscience dictated, rudely torn from him by the ministers of that British queen, who gave an asylum to the victims of popish fanaticism, and rescued from the daggers of the assassin the Hugonots of France. It seems that the principle which gave protection to the persecuted of a foreign country dictated the persecution of Irishmen, and that the examples of the sanguinary and ferocious

D d

Charles, and the stupid and bigotted Philip, were worthy of imitation, against the devoted people of Ireland. "If the scene," says Mr. Taaffe, "has been hitherto turbulent and sanguinary, it is speedily to be darkened by a louring tempest, pregnant with ruin to the inhabitants. The ancient glory and happiness of the island of sanctity, learning, hospitality and heroism, are to be trampled under foot. In addition to their former misfortunes, a fresh scourge is prepared for Ireland. If popish England assails their persons and fortunes, protestant England assaults even the sanctuary of conscience. The loss of life and its comforts, God knows, were grievous enough; but the attempt of wresting from them, by tyrannic violence, their belief and hopes of an immortal inheritance, was still reserved to fill the cup of misery brim full, and drive a religious people to utter despair." That the ministers of England could see no safer mode of governing Ireland than by persecution, was not the cause of the cruel war which they waged against the feelings of the Irish nation; the torture in Ireland had the effect of propagating by its terror the principles of reformation in England; the pretext of conformity gave an opportunity to the artful Cecil to provide the factious and turbulent and disaffected of his own country, with the forfeited property of conscientious Ireland, not so indifferent to the creed of their ancestors as Englishmen The Irish offered up their lives and their fortunes on the altar of their religion, and preferred the miseries of poverty to the crime of apostacy. Not so England: no matter from what quarter the wind of their religious doctrine blew; whether from the brutal Henry VIII. the fanatic ministers of Edward VI. or the wretched bigotry of Mary, they were equally ready to embrace the creed of each, and equally ready to plunder the altar of the catholic, and burn the bible of the protestant. The Irish were not so fortunate in the mutability of their belief, and it has pleased Providence that for adhering to the religion of their fathers, they should be visited with temporal suf