party in parliament had sunk so low in public estimation. He therefore determined to recal Ormond from his Irish administration, and substitute a lord lieutenant who would be more inclined to act with sincerity on the new principles and with the new men whom Charles had determined to encourage.

The death of Charles taking place about this time (1685) opened a new scene in Ireland, and perhaps one of the most fruitful of instruction which has as yet come under the observation of the reader. He will see Ireland pass from the extremes of an intolerant and suspicious government to the opposite extreme of unlimited confidence. He will see the great majority of the Irish nation, who have so long been the drawers of water and the hewers of wood in their native land, suddenly raised into the station of governors and legislators; their religion not only tolerated, but peculiarly patronized; and the very persons who were but lately threatened with the scaffold, the victims of the suborned perjurer, promoted to the highest places of confidence and honor. If he looks back upon the reign through which he has passed, he will have to contemplate the most despicable object in the whole circle of our nature, namely, the sovereign of a great nation, not only forgetful of the services and the fidelity of the men who restored him to his throne, but actually courting his old enemies, the murderers of his father, by the abandoned neglect and persecution of those who sacrificed every thing that was most dear, to his exaltation. If ever Charles has been seen to listen to the cries or the remonstrances of his Irish people, the reader may trace the royal motive to a principle of despotism. The English sovereign would strike off the chains of Ireland if she would join him in rivetting them on Englishmen. He would unbar their prison doors if they would volunteer to take up arms against the free constitution of England. Never was a monarch (may Ireland say) less deserving of the throne which he recovered, or better entitled to the infamy which now covers his memory,

THE

HISTORY OF IRELAND.

James II.

A.D.

1684.

THE reign to which we have now arrived, affords the best commentary on that vicious policy which distinguished the administration of Ireland during the last hundred and fifty years. The reader has already waded through a long period of Irish suffering, inflicted by the exasperating hand of intolerance. He has seen the sword which was drawn by Elizabeth against the religion and the liberties of the Irish nation, give way for some time, under the government of James I. to the more slow, though not less torturing devastation of a perfidious and unprincipled litigation. He has then passed to the heartless and sanguinary fanaticism of the English republicans, who would have sacrificed every inhabitant of Ireland on the altar of their demoniac liberty. From this scene of hypocrisy and cruelty, where the bible was made the instrument of human misery, he has come to a period not less calculated to excite the sympathy or the indignation of the reader; namely, that which exhibits a whole nation sacrificed to the vengeance of their most relentless enemies, by that very sovereign for whose restoration they had exposed their lives, their families, and their properties. The black ingratitude of Charles II. to his faithful Irish subjects, is perhaps the most distressing picture which can be presented to the reflection of an Irish

man. The infatuation of fanaticism, or the impulse of avarice or ambition, may account for the furious spirit of persecution with which the English reformers or colonists have ever pursued the poor people of our country; but it is not so easy to account for the existence of that base and contemptible feeling which could humiliate a king, possessed of an almost incontroulable power, so low as to minister to the passions of those very persons who were the leading persecutors of his best friends.

The people of Ireland must have witnessed with satisfaction the various and successful struggles which their favored persecutors had with the ungrateful monarch. They must have triumphed in those vexations which that party caused in the royal bosom, when they reflected on the unprincipled policy of conciliating the common enemy at the expense of the sincere and faithful friend. It was left for the successor of Charles II. to do justice to a people who had so long suffered by their attachment to his family, and to extend that protection to their civil and religious freedom, which their fidelity so truly merited. Unfortunately for Ireland, the hand which promised her protection was found unfit to govern. Devotedly attached to the catholic religion, James weakly exposed himself to the suspicions of his English protestant subjects. Too proud and too despotic by nature, he would not bend to the prayers or the threats of his people; he would listen to no dictation, nor be controuled by any power. The murmurs of parliament were not noticed, or if noticed, were despised. His great ambition seemed to be to frown them into silence, to insult the religious feelings of his people, and to establish an unlimited monarchy. There never was a period in the history of England, when an artful and judicious monarch could have so easily succeeded in raising an unlimited despotic power on the ruins of that free constitution which Englishmen then enjoyed. The recollection of that anarchy from which England so providentially emerged; the universal sentiment of abhorrence which

ran through the nation against the hypocritical declaimers in favor of liberty and religion; the indignation lately excited by the attempt to destroy the king, and once more plunge the country into convulsion-all these considerations contributed to strengthen the arms of the sovereign, to lull the suspicions and diminish the caution of the people. Had James II. sought his way to despotism through the prejudices of the nation-had he dissembled and concealed his zealous attachment to that religion so much dreaded and abhorred by Englishmen, he might have succeeded in extinguishing their civil and religious liberties. Ireland might have enjoyed, during this disastrous struggle, the advantages of a temporary toleration, but little time would have elapsed until she too would be swallowed up in the royal vortex, and even all hope of future liberty be completely destroyed. It is true, that during the short reign of James II. the Irish catholic was restored to the constitution of his country. In common with the protestant, he enjoyed the confidence of his sovereign. He was eligible to all situations of honor and profit under the crown; he was admitted into parliament and corporations; he was the dispenser of the laws and the distributor of justice. But it should be recollected that the monarch who extended this indulgence to the Irish catholic, would have made that catholic the instrument by which he could conquer the liberties of England; and the same power which could not bear the controul of an English parliament, would soon turn on the hand that established his unlimited authority, and reduce it to the common level of English slavery. The Irish nation would in its turn be trampled upon by the despotic spirit of James, and the catholics of the present day perhaps would have been deploring the unfortunate circumstances which induced their ancestors to co-operate with their sovereign in the destruction of a constitution which promised so many blessings to mankind.

No Irishman is so devoted to his religion or to his coun

try as not to acknowledge the principles of despotism which influenced the conduct of James II.; but the candid reader, whether he be protestant or catholic, must admit, that at the particular period when James thought proper to extend his royal protection to the long oppressed people of this country, no nation ever exhibited so many inducements to abuse the power with which accident had suddenly invested them. It remains for us to show from the impartial records of history whether the catholics of Ireland demeaned themselves in this season of their prosperity in such a manner as was not only consistent with those feelings which regulate our nature, but with those social sympathies which make us anxious to promote the happiness of our fellow creatures.

The historians of the colony, (for no man should honor them with the titles of Irish historians,) have struggled, by every mean and despicable artifice, to blacken the character of the Irish catholic during the reign of James II. The impudent falsehoods of archbishop King in his state of the protestants of Ireland during this reign, are audaciously echoed by Mr. Leland. The two clergymen, in the fury of their invective, discover all the vicious malignity of polemics, and, in the true spirit of churchmen, represent the professors of catholic doctrine either as insatiable tyrants or degraded slaves. So extravagant are the accusations of King and Leland against the Irish during the reign of James II. that the most superficial observer of human nature requires no evidence to demonstrate their absurdity or their atrocity. In proportion as we approach the days in which we live, the necessity of pressing the advantages which must flow from the practice of mutual charity, must occur to the reader. If the facts which the historian has before him, and which it is his duty to record, be calculated to inflame, to exasperate, and to multiply prejudices, we should suppose that he would not be anxious to niake such mention of them as would contribute to increase their effect upon the reader. He would not adopt the little artifice of the daily adventurer in con