of the queen; his lands were restored to him, to be held by English tenure, and he himself created a lord of parliament by the title of the earl of Clancarthy. The exclamation of O'Nial on this occasion, does not indicate that savage and debased ferosity, for which he has been distinguished by the pen of Mr. Leland. A spirit of determined independence and honest patriotism mark the observations we are about to read. "A precious earl!" said O'Nial to some English commissioners, sent to treat with him. "I keep a lacquey at my table as noble as he; but let him enjoy his honor, it is not worthy of O'Nial! I have indeed made peace with the queen at her desire; but I have not forgotten the royal dignity of my ancestors. Ulster was theirs, and shall be mine; with the sword they won it-with the sword I will maintain it." From this moment we find O’Nial the furious and relentless enemy of England, carrying fire and sword through the entire of the north; burning down the reformed churches; pursuing the propagators of reformation, and calling up the dormant spirit of Irishmen in every corner of the island. O'Nial could only be opposed with effect by a division among the Irish themselves; and this was the policy which the prudent Sydney preferred to the precarious result of the sword. He conciliated the principal chieftains of the north, Calvagh of Tyrconnel, Macguire, the lord of Fermanagh, and some other chieftains of the north-west; who from motives of jealousy and envy, basely preferred the humiliation of their brave enemy, O'Nial, to the greater object of weakening the common enemy of their country.

O'Nial, unsupported by foreign or domestic aid, was obliged to yield before superior force. A temporary gleam of hope shone upon his fortunes; he was invited to join the Scots, now encamped in clanterboy; but here O'Nial had to contend with the base and contemptible practices of treachery and cowardice. O'Nial was invited by the Scots in all the confidence of the most generous friendship; he accepted the invitation, and at the moment the unthinking

Irish chieftain was enjoying the feast of hospitality, the soldiers of his infamous host rushed in and butchered the brave Irishman and all his followers. To this act of inde lible infamy the Scotch were excited by the artifices of Sydney; and by such practices have we already seen the power of the colony triumph over the honorable credulity of a brave and generous people.

Mr. Leland relates this transaction with his accustomed coldness; not a single sigh of resentment escapes his lips, and innocence falls unpitied and unrevenged, even by the historian, under the poisoned cup of the coward, or the dagger of the assassin. For this great and magnanimous achievement the murderers received a reward of one thousand drachms from the deputy, who immediately marched into the territories of the intrepid O'Nial,

The contests between Ormond and Desmond, continued to exhaust their respective territories. Their conflicts were sanguinary and destructive to each party, and their petty war ended in the defeat of Desmond, who was made a prisoner. The Ormondians carrying their wounded prisoner in triumph from the field of battle, were assailed by a rebuke from Desmond, which may be considered a singular instance of resolution as well as wit. "Where," said the victors, "is now the great lord of Desmond !" "Where," replied the heroic Desmond, "but in his proper place?-still upon the necks of the Butlers!"

A temporary submission on the part of Desmond to the English government took place, but the, old feuds broke out again between Ormond and him. The deputy, in conjunction with the former, reduced Desmond, took him prisoner, and sent him to England.-Here Elizabeth's ministers considered it prudent to confine him. Sir Henry Sydney accompanied his prisoner, in order to defend the acts of his government before his royal mistress, and in his absence we find the colony assailed and convulsed by the rival chieftains, Butler, the Geraldines, the O'Moores, and the O'Connors. Sydney, on his return, convened a

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parliament, to consult them on the most efficacious means of restoring peace to the country. The enemies of the reformation in Ireland were so numerous and so important a body, that it required all the artifices and influence of the queen's Irish government to assemble such a parliament as would forward the objects for which they were convened. Every effort that corruption could make was exerted to procure such a house of commons as would be obedient to the nod of the viceroy. Sir Christopher Barnewall charged the house of commons with being illegally constituted; that numbers were returned for towns not incorporated; that several sheriffs and magistrates had returned themselves that numbers of Englishmen had been returned as burgesses for towns which they had never seen nor known, far from being residents as the law directs. Great and warm debate ensued, and the speaker attended the deputy and council to explain the objections urged against the constitution of the house of commons. The judges were consulted, who declared, that those members returned for towns not incorporated, and magistrates who had returned themselves, were incapable of sitting in parliament; but, as to the members not resident within towns for which they were returned, that they were entitled to their seats. This decision of the judges insured the triumph of government; and here do we see a constitutional stand made in the house of parliament, against the measures of a party, opprobriously designated the English faction. Sir Christopher Barnewall headed this popular party. It is curious to observe the popular party in this parliament advocating the continuance of Poynings' law, and reprobating the struggles of the court to suspend its operation. The objection to its suspension is a singular one, and worthy of record. That it was an attempt by the court against the foundation of public security; that its effect would be to deliver up the kingdom to the mercy of a viceroy and his English ministers, who might then conspire to enact such laws as their ambition or avarice might dictate. So writes

Hooker, who was cotemporaneous with those events; and perhaps the argument, considering the constitution of the commons, was a fair and unanswerable one; for surely there is no tyranny so rapacious nor so cruel as the tyranny of an aristocracy, which multiplies the sufferings of the subject in proportion to its numbers, and visits on every village and hamlet a more malignant despotism than the most unlimited monarch would dare to exercise. An act of attainder was passed by this parliament against the late John O'Nial; it declares all Ulster exempt from the authority of O'Nial, and vests his lands for ever in the crown. By another act of this parliament, worthy of notice, the chancellor was empowered to appoint commissioners for viewing all territories not reduced to English counties, and the deputy authorized them, on their certificate, to divide them into shires. The act of presentation for ten years, and for the erection of free schools, was now passed, and the most. remorseless efforts made to propagate the reformed creed. Such were the occupations of the ten first years of Elizabeth's government; and surely no impartial mind who reads the inflexible tyranny with which she and her officers inflicted the penalties of the reforming acts, will be surprised at the scene of distraction and misery through which we are doomed to wade during the succeeding reigns.

The reader of Mr. Leland can with difficulty suppress his indignation, when he finds the historian lamenting the perverse continuance of the Irish in their ancient barbarous habits, as he is pleased to call them, and recording in the very same page, the miserable revolutions which this unhappy people were doomed to suffer. Mr. Leland laments that the same vigor which violated the feeling, was not sufficient to extirpate the man; and that the lenient impolicy of one governor frequently revived the spirit of resistance which his predecessor endeavoured to extinguish. Though the strong and decisive measures adopted by Elizabeth to tear up the old religion of Ireland, and sub

stitute her own, were apparently well calculated to promote her object, yet causes still existed to counteract her efforts; and the policy in preserving the conquests she had made over the Irish mind, was not so prudent or so provident as the principle was vigorous which enabled her to obtain them. "Those causes arose," says sir John Davis, " from an insatiable avarice to grasp at more territory than she was able to regulate. Elizabeth passed from county to county, without placing those securities, or making those regulations which were only calculated to preserve the system she had introduced. She divided the province of Connaught, in 1570, into six counties-Clare, Galway, Sligo, Leitrim, Mayo, and Roscommon; but she sent no justices of assize into those counties to administer justice according to the laws of England. She left them to the merciful direction of a governor, armed with civil and military powers: and the people were permitted to relapse into the same customs, for the extirpation of which so much blood had been shed." Mr. Leland has assigned a better reason for the small progress of that civility and good order which an impartial administration of justice must produce in every country. "Those," says Mr. Leland, " whom the revival of the English power in Ireland had tempted into the kingdom, came with the most unfavourable prejudices against the old natives, whom they were interested to represent (both of the native and the old English race) as dangerous and disaffected. The natives were provoked at the partiality shown to those insolent adventurers. They were treated like aliens and enemies, as the annalist of Elizabeth observes, and excluded with contemptuous insolence from every office of trust and power. It is therefore natural to find them not always zealously affected to the adninistration of the Irish government."

Such has been the true cause of Irish disaffection ;—the upstart- adventurer shouldering the ancient and revered settler,—the offspring of public misfortune rising on the ashes of the ancient proprietor, and perhaps an attorney,