have rashly wished for those occasions." Our modern colonists, with their after-harvest "battues for clearing off the natives," conducted at once as work and a pastime, are less scrupulous than was this simple statistician. His remedy for the evils of Ireland was the union of the kingdom with England; the removal of a portion of the Irish, and substitution for them of an equal number of English; the encouragement of intermarriages of Irishmen with Englishwomen, so as to secure an intermixture of the races, with, ad interim, a fair religious establishment for the native Catholics. The priests, like the women, were to be English. "So as that when the priests, who govern the conscience, and the women, who influence other powerful appetites, shall be English, both of whom shall be in the bosom of the men, it must be that no massacring of the English, as heretofore, can happen again." Similar projects had been mooted nearly a hundred years before, a dread of coming evil from the ill-used Irish even then appearing in speculations as to their condition and future governWe may see this in the opening of Spenser's view of the state of Ireland in 1596. But if that countrey of Ireland," says Eudoxus, "be of so goodly and commodious a soyle, as you report, I wonder that no course is taken for the turning thereof to good uses, and reducing that nation to better government and civility." Marry, so there have bin divers good plots devised," responds Irenæus, "and wise councels cast already about reformation of that realme, but they say it is the fatall destiny of that land that no purposes whatsoever which are meant for her good will prosper or take good effect, which, whether it proceed from the very genius of the soyle, or influence of the starres, or that Almighty God hath not yet appointed the time for

ance.

66

66

her reformation, or that he reserveth her in this unquiet state still for some secret scourge which shall by her come unto England, it is hard to be knowne, but yet much to be feared." The same words might be prefixed to an account of the state of Ireland at this day. The country has been repeatedly settled since Spenser wrote, but never on a just principle.

The next, and it may be called the final struggle, in which Catholics and Protestants-the natives and the foreigners-appeared at once as religious enemies and rival claimants to the land, was that which took place under James II. and Tyrconnel. It was terminated in favour of the Protestant interest by that “milder Cromwell"-William of Orange. In this struggle, as in Elizabeth's war with Tyrone, the conclusion was not the discomfiture of the Irish, but a compromise and a treaty-the treaty of Limerick, remembered as the record of Irish valour and English perfidy. The treaty was made only to be broken. In disregard of its provisions, the peace inaugurated the reign of Protestant ascendancy and the persecuting code.

Six penal laws against recusants had been in force before the time of William of Orange; by twenty-four acts, passed between the seventh year of his reign and the twenty-ninth of George II., the penal code reached the fulness of its hideousness-the reproach of politicians and disgrace of Protestant Churchmen. It was bad as a punishment of recusancy; as a temptation to conformity it was utterly unprincipled and abominable—a temple of Mammon deliberately erected as ante-chapel to the Holy of Holies.

The Papist was withdrawn from the charge and education of his family; he could educate his children neither at home nor abroad; he could not be their guardian, nor

the guardian of any other person's children. Popish schools were prohibited, and special disabilities attached to Papists bred abroad. A premium was set on the breach of filial duty and the family affections. If a son declared himself Protestant, which he might do in boyhood, a third of his father's fortune was at once applied to his use; the father's estate was secured to him as heir, a life-rent merely being left to the father. A father's settlement to the prejudice of the heir-at-law might be instantly defeated by the heir becoming Protestant. If the heir continued a Papist, the estate gavelled-went in equal shares to the sons-a modification of old Irish law introduced to break up the estates of the Papists, so that none should be on the land above the condition of a beggar. If there were no sons, it gavelled on the daughters; if no children, then on the collaterals. Papists who had lost their lands and had grown rich in commerce, could neither buy land nor lend their money on heritable security. The Papist could get no hold, direct or indirect, upon the soil. Even a lease to a Papist, to be legal, must have been short. Any Papist, above sixteen years of age, might be called on to take the oath of abjuration, and, on thrice declining, he suffered a præmunire. If he entertained a priest or a bishop, he was fined; for a third offence he forfeited his whole fortune. The exercise of his religion was forbidden; its chapels were shut up; its priests banished, and hanged if they returned home. An act passed the Irish Parliament, providing that every Roman Catholic priest caught in Ireland should be castrated! A Papist could not enter the profession of the law. He could not marry a Protestant (the fatal Kilkenny provision against mixing, over again). He could neither vote at vestries, nor serve on grand juries, nor act as a constable, as a sheriff,

an under sheriff, or a magistrate. He could neither vote at elections nor sit in Parliament. In short, he was excluded from every office of public trust or emolument. "The Catholics," says Sir H. Parnell, "in place of being the free subjects of a prince from whom they were taught to expect only justice and mercy, were made the slaves of every one, even of the meanest of their Protestant countrymen. Had they become mere slaves, they might have expected some degree of humane treatment; but as the policy which made them slaves held them at the same time as the natural and interested enemies of their masters, they were doomed to experience all the oppression of tyranny without any of the chances, which other slaves enjoy, of the tyrants being merciful and feeling their tyranny secure."

66

To see how complete was the prostration of the Irish we must look at their relations to the land. The settlements in Ireland had all been rather settlements of 'the bill of costs" than of the country. The conquest begun by adventurers was throughout carried on by them, at least in this sense, that either the soldiers were to be paid out of the land, or money was to be thus repaid that had been borrowed for the army as for a commercial adventure. After every victory came a squaring of accounts. They were squared against the land-by just confiscations, if there were grounds for them; if not, then by unjust. Where there were no political excuses for forfeitures, technical excuses were easily invented; the business of discovering these was at one time the lucrative profession of a gang of infamous persons known as discoverers. The means by which the confiscations were managed are, perhaps, immaterial, except so far as they have been sources to the Irish of the bitter sense of wrong. The

66

results are more important. According to the estimate of Sir William Petty, there were in all in Ireland 10,500,000 acres of land, of which 3,000,000 were either unprofitable or covered by rivers, loughs, &c., leaving 7,500,000 of good meadow, arable, and pasture. Of the whole 7,500,000 acres of good land," says he, "the English and Protestants and the Church have this Christmas (1672), 5,140,000 acres, and the Irish have nearly half as much, viz., 2,280,000." After the Revolution in 1688, 1,060,792 acres, mostly belonging to the Irish, were forfeited and sold to defray the expense of reducing the rebels-in short, to settle the bill. The Irish were thus left in possession of little more than oneseventh of the land. This is a favourable way of looking at the figures. How unfavourably they might be, and were regarded by the Irish, may be seen in Lord Clare's celebrated statement in the Irish Parliament in the debate on the Union. "The superficial contents of the island," he said, "are calculated at 11,042,682 The state of the forfeitures was as follows:

acres.

"In the reign of James I., the whole province of Ulster, 2,836,837 Set out by the Court of Claims at the Restoration, 7,800,000 Forfeitures of 1688, .

1,060,792

11,697,629

So that the whole of your island has been confiscated, with the exception of the estates of five or six families of English blood, some of whom had been attainted in the reign of Henry VIII., but who recovered their possessions before Tyrone's rebellion, and escaped the pillage of the republic inflicted by Cromwell; and no inconsiderable portion of the island has been confiscated twice, or perhaps thrice, in the course of a century. If the wars of England carried on here from the reign of