or suspicion upon his oath.* The punish-grievous plague upon the country ever ments were to be fine and imprisonment, since. But the penal code was still far or, at the discretion of the court, the from complete. It was thought needful pillery and whipping. It is impossible to describe the minute and curious tyranny to which this statute gave rise in every parish of the island. Especially in districts where there was an armed yeomanry, exclusively Protestant, it fared ill with any Catholic who fell, for any reason under the displeasure of his formidable neighbours. Any pretext was sufficient for pointing him out to suspicion. Any neighbouring magistrate might visit him at any hour of the night, and search his bed for arms. No Papist was safe from suspicion who had any money to pay in fines; and woe to the Papist who had a handsome daughter! It would be difficult to imagine any method of degrading human nature more effectual than the prohibition of arms; but the parliament resolved to employ stil! another way. This was to prohibit education. Catholics were already debarred from being tutors or teachers; and many Catholic young men were sent for education to the schools and universities of the continent. It was therefore enacted "that if any subjects of Ireland should, after that session, go, or send any child or person, to be educated in any popish university, college, or school, or in any private family; or if such child should, by any popish person, be instructed in the popish religion; or if any subjects of Ireland should send money or things towards the maintenance of such child, or other person already sent, or to be sent, every such offender, being thereof convicted, should be forever disabled to sue or prosecute any action, bill, plaint, or information in law or equity ; to be guardian, administrator, or executor to any person, or to be capable of any legacy, or deed of gift; and, besides, should forfeit all their estates, both real and personal, during their lives." It was further enacted, that "No Papist, after the 20th January, 1695, shall be capable to have, or keep in his possession, or in the possession of any other, to his use, or at his disposition, any horse, gelding, or mare, of the value of £5 or more;" with the usual clauses to induce Protestants to inform, and cause search to be made for the contraband horses; the property of the horses to be vested in the discoverer. The two acts before mentioned at once bred in Ireland a great swarm of informers and detectives, who have been a • This enactment, under various new forms and names, is the law at this day. †4 Wm. and Mary, c. 4. to strike at the Catholics more directly through their religion itself, in which it was observed they took much comfort. Therefore, it was enacted by the same Parliament "That all popish archbishops, bishops, vicars-general, deans, jesuits, monks, friars, and all other regular popish clergy, and all papists exercising any ecclesiastical jurisdiction, shall depart this kingdom before the first day of May, 1698." If any of them remained after that day, or returned, the delinquents were to be transported, and if they returned again, to be guilty of high treason, and to suffer accordingly." To pretend a toleration of the Catholic religion, but to banish bishops, and thus prevent orders, can scarcely be considered a very liberal proceeding; but there were still more minute provisions made, after banishing the clergy, for the continual torture of the laity. For example, this same parliament, 1695, enacted a statute which imposed a fine of two shillings (and, in default of payment, whipping) upon "every common labourer being hired, or other servant retained, who shall refuse to work at the usual and accustomed wages, upon any day except the days appointed by the this statute to be kept holy; namely, all Sundays in the year, and certain other days named therein." Another act was passed by this parliament "to prevent Protestants intermarrying with Papists," in order to obviate the possible danger of the two nations becom ing gradually amalgamated by affinities and family interests; and as the Catholics, in some places, were associating together to place their interests in the hands of le gal advisers, an act was passed "to prevent Papists being solicitors." It must not be omitted to mention, that the parliament which violated, by so many ingenious laws, the conditions made at the capitulation of Limerick, did also gravely and solemnly pass an act "for the confirmation of Articles made at the surrender of the city of Limerick-or so much thereof," said the preamble, "as may consist with the safety and welfare of your Majesty's subjects in these kingdoms." The greater part, or almost the whole of the stipulations on behalf of the Catholics, contained in those articles, had been deliberately and avowedly violated by the very legislature which enacted this hypocritical act. It passed almost unanimously in the Commons; but unexpectedly met with vigorous resistance in the House of Lords; where, on its final passage, a for mal protest against it was entered by a number of the ancient nobility, and even by some Anglican bishops. The protest was signed by the lords Duncannon, Londonderry and Tyrone, the barons of Limerick, Howth, Ossory, Killaloe, Kerry, Strabane and Kingston, and also by the bishops of Derry, Elphin, Clonfert, Kildare and Kiliala. It gave these reasons for the protest: 1. Because the title did not agree with the borly of the bill; the title being an act for the confirmation of the Irish articles, whereas no one of said articles was therein fully confirmed. 2. Because the articles were to be confirmed to them to whom they were granted; but the confirmation of them by that bill was such, that it put them in a worse condition than they were in before. 3. Because the bill omitted the material words, and all such as are under their protection in the said counties,' which were by his Majesty's titles patent, declared to be part of the second article; and several persons had been adjudged within said articles who would, if the bill passed into law, be entirely barred and excluded, so that the words omitted being so very material, and confirmed by his Majesty after FL solemn debate in council, some express reason ought to be assigned in the bill, in order to satisfy the world of that omission. 4. Because several words were inserted in the bill which were not in the articles, and others omitted, which altered both the sense and the meaning thereof. Lastly, because they apprehended that many Protestants might and would suffer by the bill in their just rights and pretensions, by reason of their having purchased, and lent money, upon the faith of said article." Of the proceedings of this parliament, it is only necessary to add one further detail: A petition of Robert Cusack, gentleman, Captain Francis Segrave and Captain Maurice Eustace, in behalf of themselves and others, comprised under the Articles of Limerick, setting forth, that in the said bill [act to confirm, &c.] there were several clauses that would frustrate the petitioners of the benefit of the same, and if passed into a law would turn to the ruin of some, and the prejudice of all persons entitled to the benefit of the said articles. and praying to be heard by counsel to said matters, having been presented and read. it was unanimously resolved that said petition should be rejected." King William was all this while busily engaged in carrying on the war against Louis the Fourteenth, and his mind was profoundly occupied about the destinies of Europe. He seems to have definitely given up Ireland, to be dealt with by the Ascendency at its pleasure. Yet he had received the benefit of the capitulation of Limerick:-he had engaged his royal faith to its observance ;-he had further engaged that he would endeavour to procure said Roman Catholics such further security as might preserve them from any disturbance upon the account of their said religion. And he not only did not endeavour to procure any such further security, but he gave his royal assent, without the least objection, to every one of these acts of Parliament, carefully depriving them of such securities as they had, and imposing new and grievous oppressions "upon the account of their said religion." It is expressly on account of this shameful breach of faith on the part of the King that Orange squires and gentlemen, from that day to this, have been enthusiastically toasting "the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good King William." The war was still raging all over Europe; and multitudes of young Irishmen were quitting a land where they were henceforth strangers and outlaws on their own soil, to find under the banners of France an opportunity for such distinction as exiles may hope to win. Brilliant reports of the achievements of the old regiments of Limerick on many a field, came to Ireland by stray travellers from the continent, and inspired the bigh-spirited youth of the country with an ambition to enrol themselves in the ranks of the Irish brigade. They had heard, for example, of the great victories of Steinkirk and of Landen; and how at Marsiglia, on the Italian slope of the Alps, the French marshal, Catinat, obtained a splendid victory over the army of the Duke of Savoy -a victory, says Voltaire, "so much the more glorious as the Prince Eugene was one of the adverse generals ;" and how the conduct of the Irish troops, who served under Catinat on that occasion, gained the applause of Europe and the thanks of King Louis. It is no wonder, therefore, seeing the depressing and humiliating condition to which they were reduced a home, that there was a large and continual emigration of the best blood of Ireland, at this time, and for a great part of the following century. These exiles were not confined to the people of the Celtic Irish clans; for all the English settlers in Ireland, down to the time of Henry the Eighth, had of course been Catholic, and these families generally adhered to the old religion. Thus these old English found themselves included in all the severities of the penal laws, along with the primeval Scotic people, and they had now their full proportion in the ranks of the military adventurers who sought service on the continent. Accordingly, among the distinguished names of the Irish brigades, by the side of the Milesian Sarsfields, O'Briens, and O'Donnells, we find the Norman-descended Dillons, Roches, and Fitzgeralds. Of the amount of that great emigration it is difficult to procure any very exact idea; but on this subject there is no better authority than the learned Abbé MacGeoghegan, who was chaplain in the brigade, and who devoted himself to the task of recording the history of his country. He affirms that researches in the office of the French War Department show that from the arrival of the Irish troops in France, in 1691, to the year 1745 (the year of Fontenoy), more than four hundred and fifty thousand Irishmen died in the service of France. The statement may seem almost incredible; especially as Spain and Austria had also their share of our military exiles; but, certain it is, the expatriation of the very best and choicest of the Irish people was now on a very large scale; and the remaining population, deprived of their natural chiefs, became still more helpless in the hands of their enemies. | Baron Macaulay, whose language is never too courteous in speaking of the Irish, takes evident delight in dwelling on the abject condition of the great body of the nation at this time. He calls them "Pariahs;" compares their position, in the disputes between the English and the Irish parliament, with that of "the Red Indians in the dispute between Old England and New England about the Stamp Act;" mentions with complacency, that Dean Swift "no more considered himself as an Irishman than an Englishman born at Calcutta considers himself as a Hindoo;" and says very truly, though coarsely, that none of the "patriots" of the seventeenth century "ever thought of appealing to the native population-they would as soon have thought of appealing to the swine." The truth is, that most of the choicest intellect and energy of the Irish race were now to be looked for at the courts of Versailles, Madrid, and Vienna, or under the standards of France on every battle-field of Europe. The Catholics of Ireland may be said, at this date, to disappear from political history, and so remained till the era of the volunteering. Obscure and despised as they were, however, they were not too humble to escape the curious eye of the lawyers and legislators of the "Ascendency." In fact we have not yet advanced far beyond the threshold of the Penal Laws. CHAPTER IV. 1698-1702. Predominance of the English Parliament.-Molyneux. Decisive action of the English Parliament. -Court and country parties.-Suppression of woollen manufacture.-Commission of confiscated estates. Its revelations. Vexation of King William.-Peace of Ryswick.-Act for establishing the Protestant succession. - Death of William. WHILE the ancient Irish nation lay in this miserable condition of utter nullity, the Protestant colony continued its efforts to vindicate its independence of the Imperial Parliament, but without much success. Not only was its parliament compelled to send over to London the "heads” of its bills to be ratified there, but the British Parliament still persisted in exercising an original jurisdiction in Ireland, and to bind that kingdom by laws made in England, without any concurrence asked or obtained from the colonial legislature. It was always the firm resolve, both of the king and of the people of England, to deny and trample upon these assumed pretensions of their colony in Ireland to be an independent kingdom. The reader will suppose that the English government should not have been very jealous of any power with which the Protestant Ascendency might be armed, when they so faithfully turned those arms against the civil and religious liberties of their Catholic countrymen. The Irish Parliament, however, presumed rather too much on its past services to England. Though they were so obedient as to forge chains for the Catholics, they should not flatter themselves with the liberty of making their own laws or regulating their own slaves. They were, for the future, to consider themselves as the humbled agents of an English Government, prompt at every call which national jealousy would give to inflict or to suspend the torture. In short, the Irish Protestant Ascendency was soon to be taught that it was the mere agent of English empire, and must aspire to no other freedom than the freedom to oppress and trample upon the ancient Irish nation. "Your ancestors," said Mr. Curran to the Irish Parliament a dependence." The king promptly replied that he would take care that what was complained of might be prevented and redressed as the Commons desired." Such was the extreme political depression of Ireland, that this haughty procedure occasioned no visible resentment in her parliament, although the leaven of the doctrines of Molyneux was still working in men's minds; was afterwards improved by Swift and Lucas, and at length became irresistible, and ripened into an independent Irish Parliament in 1782. Meantime the proscribed Catholics took no interest in the controversy at all, and seemed insensible to its progress. As the excellent Charles O'Conor, of Belanagar, afterwards in the midst of the commotions excited by Lucas, wrote to a friend: "I am by no means interested, nor is any of our unfortunate population, in this affair of Lucas. A true patriot would not have betrayed such malice towards such unfortunate slaves as we." And he truly adds, "These boasters, the Whigs, wish to have liberty all to themselves." In short, the two parties then existing in Ireland, and termed the court and country parties, were divided mainly upon this question: Is the conquered nation to be governed and exploited for the sole benefit of the colonial interest? or, Are all interests in Ireland, both colonial and native, both Protestant and Catholic, to be subservient and tributary to England? Candour requires it to be stated that of these two parties, the court and the country, the former was rather more favourable to the down-trodden Catholics; a fact of which several examples will soon have to be related. At that moment the court party held the sway, and the English Parliament ruled all. hundred years after-"Your ancestors The English were not disposed to let their predominance remain without practical fruits, as appeared in the proceedings touching the woollen trade of Ireland. During the few first years of William's reign, there being then abundance of sheep in Ireland, and also much cheap labour, considerable progress was made in the manufacture of woollen cloths; these fabrics were exported in some quantity to foreign countries, and in many cases the Irish manufacturer was enabled to undersell the English. But England was then using great exertions to obtain the entire control of this gainful trade; and the competition of Ireland gave great umbrage. It is true that the woolien-trade in Ireland, and all the profits of its export and sale, were in the hands of the English colonists, and that the colonial parliament in Dublin would fain have extended It is noticeable that these navigation acts were not new; they had existed before the last Revolution, and had been repealed by the excellent parliament of 1689, under King James, consisting indifferently of Catholics and Protestants, and really representing an Irish nationthat same parliament which had also enacted perfect liberty for all religions, and had swept away a most foul mass of penal laws from the statute-book; but on the failure of the cause of the Stuarts, all the enactments of that parliament were ignored, and the penal laws and restrictions on trade re-appeared in full force. and protected it if they had been per- to Ireland until after it should have first mitted. But here, again, the English entered an English port, and been unpower stepped in, and controlled every loaded there. The object of these laws, thing according to its own interest. The of course, was to secure to English mertwo Houses of Lords and Commons ad- chants and shipowners a monopoly of all dressed King William, urging that some such trade, and they had the desired immediate remedy must be found against effect, so that a few years afterwards, the the obnoxious trade in Ireland. The Dean of St. Patrick's could truly write: Lords, after detailing the intolerable op-"The conveniency of ports and harbours, pression which was inflicted upon deserv- which nature had bestowed so liberally ing industrious people in England, ex- upon this kingdom, is of no more use to pressed themselves thus: "Wherefore, us than a beautiful prospect to a man we most humbly beseech your most sacred shut up in a dungeon." majesty, that your majesty would be pleased, in the most public and effectual way that may be, to declare to all your subjects of Ireland, that the growth and increase of the woollen manufacture that hath long been, and will be ever, looked upon with great jealousy by all your subjects of this kingdom, and if not timely remedied, may occasion very strict laws totally to prohibit and suppress the same." Probably no more shameless avowal of British greediness was ever made, even by the parliament of England. But the king replied at once that he would do all that in him lay to discourage the woollen manufacture of Ireland;" in other words, With such a deliberate system in full to ruin his subjects of that island. The operation, not only to put down the political Irish Parliament was now also assembled in pretensions, but to destroy the trade of Dublin. The Earl of Galway and two others Ireland, and all enforced directly by Engwere lords-justices; and they, pursuant to lish statutes, it will be seen that the their instructions, recommended to parlia- country party, which so proudly claimed ment to adopt means for putting a stop to national independence, had but very slenthe woollen manufacture, and to en- der chances at that time. Another event courage the linen. The Commons, in their still further illustrated this fact. The address, meekly replied, that "they shall English Parliament, which was continually heartily endeavour" to encourage the importuned by the king for grants of linen trade; and as to the woollen, they money to carry on his darling war against tamely express their hope to find such a Louis XIV., found that the immense temperament that the same may not be amount of confiscated lands, forfeited by injurious to England. The temperament the "rebellion" (as the national war was they found was in the acts which were called), had been squandered upon King passed in the following year, 1699, which William's favourites, or leased at inminutely regulated everything relating to sufficient rents, also a small portion of it wool. In the first place, all export of restored to its owners who had satisfied Irish woollen cloths was prohibited, except the government that they were innocent. to England and Wales. The exception That parliament therefore resolved, bewas delusive, because heavy duties, fore making any more grants of money, amounting to a prohibition, prevented Irish cloth from being imported into England or Wales. Irish wool, thereafter, had to be sent to England in a raw state, to be woven in Yorkshire; and even this export was cramped by appointing one single English port, Barnstable, as the only point where it could legally enter. All attempts at foreign commerce in Ireland were at this time impeded, also, by the Navigation Laws," which had long prohibited all direct trade between Ireland and the colonies; no colonial produce. under those laws, could be carried to inquire how the forfeitures had been made available for the public service. A commission was appointed by a vote of parliament for this purpose, and at the same time to provide for a grant of a million and a half sterling, for military and naval expenses. The form of this commission was itself an intimation that nothing less was contemplated than re sumption of all the lands granted by special favour of the king. This was very hard upon his majesty, and he regarded the proceeding with sour and silent displeasure; for, in fact, he had granted out |