lay and ecclesiastical, who pleased to fatten on her spoils, or plunder her of her property.

The native Irish came to a determination on this occasion, that no foreigner should be admitted or received into any of the Irish churches; and it should not be forgotten, that within the English pale alone, do we find the Italian, or foreign clergy, presume to obtrude themselves. It is a well ascertained fact, that the native Irish clergy preserved the most uninterrupted harmony with their countrymen, and that the exactions of which some historians speak, in those days, were practised solely by the English and Italian clergy, who had no other object but the enriching themselves, and the beggary of Ireland.

The native Irish exulted in the venerable antiquity of their church. They gloried in their catalogue of saints, and found consolation in the piety and sanctity of their clergy. They despised the English, as well as the Italian intruders on the peace and independence of their country; and though they bowed to the spiritual, they as firmly denied this temporal power, and repelled the exactions of papal authority, with as much boldness as they resisted the usurpations of the English adventurers. Such has been the religion of the Irish catholic for eighteen hundred years, during which period we see numberless instances of the compatibility of that spiritual power of the pope, which the Irish acknowledge, with the political freedom of their country, and the most ardent allegiance to a protestant government.

THE

HISTORY OF IRELAND.

Edward I.

A.D.

1272.

HE who has read the history of England, and who has observed the wisdom and policy of those regulations which Edward here introduced and enforced, will perhaps expect that the distractions of Ireland would have attracted the attention of so wise a monarch; and that some effort would have been made to heal those wounds, from which the life blood of the most valued member of the British dominions was so abundantly flowing. The conquest of Wales, and of Scotland, however, were, in the eyes of Edward, a more important concern; and little alteration is to be found in those melancholy scenes which we are about to record, during the reign of one of the wisest and most powerful monarchs that ever ascended the English throne. The same miseries, and the same petty warfare; the same recital of usurpations on the one hand, and resistance on the other; the same partial and puny effort to preserve the interests of the colony; the same narrow and contracted policy, which was satisfied with the temporary suppression of an insurrection, and the ephemeral triumph of a particular family. All this wearying round of miserable civil war is again to be witnessed during the reign of a prince, by

whom Ireland could have been made the most productive, as she was the most beautiful portion of the British empire. On the accession of Edward to the English throne, Maurice Fitzmaurice was appointed his representative in Ireland.

The royal letter was received by the viceroy, promising protection to his Irish subjects; and the nobility, knights, and free tenants, were called on to take the oaths of allegiance to Edward.

Maurice Fitzmaurice was not long in the scat of government, when a formidable insurrection broke out in the most flourishing parts of Leinster, and after a feeble struggle with the Irish, he was taken prisoner in Ophaly, (King's county) and committed to prison. The conquerors retaliated on the colonists, the depredations committed on their own territories; and Glenville, the successor of Fitzmaurice, also experienced a singular defeat. In the mean time, the north of Ireland, supported by the marauders from the Scottish isles, was involved in the most afflicting dissentions, and Maurice Fitzmaurice, when released from prison, united with the lord Theobald Butler, and invaded the territories of the O'Briens. The family of Fitzmaurice had gained a great accession of force, by their connection with Thomas de Clare, to whom Edward made extensive grants in the country of Thomond. This young nobleman was followed by a powerful train of attendants, The O'Briens expostulated, and the contest was at length to be terminated by the sword. Thus the perpetual encroachments of some English adventurer was wasting and usurping the property of the natives.

O'Brien fell a victim to treachery; but his sons, who succeeded, took most ample vengeance, and this furious war ended in the total overthrow of the family of the Geraldines: the O'Briens were declared sovereigns of Thomond, and the castles and forts surrendered to their generals.

De Clare appealed to Edward for protection; but new

distractions and commotions in the west of Ireland, seemed to obliterate the remembrance of De Lacy's misfortunes from the royal bosom. Edward issued his royal mandate to the prelates of the pale, to interpose their spiritual authority, and to endeavour to compose the public disorders; but the impotence of such mandates can well be conceived, when thrown into the scale against the insatiable ambition and avarice, which perpetually stimulated the plunderers of the Irish.

The miseries experienced by that people, the uninterrupted persecutions with which their families and proper ties were desolated, the unsuccessful efforts which they made to expel the invaders of their country, broke down their spirits, and reconciled them to the alternative of peace, though on the condition of surrendering the ancient laws and customs of their country. The historians of the English write, that the Irish embraced the laws, from the conviction that only under such laws, and such an administration, could the peace and tranquillity of their country be restored, the blessings of freedom communicated, and the rights and privileges of man asserted. The fact is not so; and if this calumny on the Irish nation were not refuted by the most respected authorities, it would be contradicted by the observation of every man who attends to the working of the human heart. As well may it be said that the Irish petitioned for the desolation of their properties, as the overthrow of their laws and constitution. "They petitioned, it is true, under the torture of the lash, but this," says Mr. Taaffe, "only proves their deplorable situation, and not a preference of English law to the old established and cherished laws of the country, under which their monarchy so long and so illustriously flourished." Mr. Leland, after endeavouring to convince his readers that the Irish solicited the protection of English law, is obliged to admit the general sentiment of opposition, which animated that people against any innovation whatever: "Nor did those

of the Irish who lived most detached from the English, perceive any advantage in exchanging their old institutions for another system. On the contrary, it was with the utmost labour and difficulty, and the most obstinate reluctance on their part, that the English law could be obtruded on them, even some centuries after the present period."

The answer of Edward to the petition of the persecuted people of Ireland, is so very remarkable for the hard and rigid terms on which he concedes to their wishes, that if we had no other reason to conclude against the degrading charge brought against them, that they volunteered in surrendering the laws and customs of their country, this instrument alone would prove that the king of England was determined to make his Irish subjects pay very dear indeed for what he and his generals called the blessings of the English constitution. Perhaps human pride can sustain no greater insult, nor the human heart be more bitterly afflicted, than by the promise of protection from that power, who at the moment he is making professions of kindness and affection, is plunder-1 ing our property, degrading our country, and trampling on the most honourable feelings of our nature. With the sword in one hand, and his free constitution in the other, it would be perhaps more than can be expected from the firmness of human nature to resist the kind and protecting offer. With the Irish, at this period, it would have been folly; because it was a choice of evils on which the mind could not balance for a moment, distracted and divided as they were by foreign tyranny, and domestic treachery. The answer of Edward is too remarkable in its policy and its language, to omit it even in this compendium of Irish history.*

Have we not seen a similar reply to the petition of those infamous and prostituted characters, who agreed to that humbling and degrading measure, called "an union between England and Ireland,"-have we not had great and flattering promises of a more substantial communication of English privileges, English capital, English manners, English improve