bigotry in vain; and the impetuous imbecility of James served only to hasten that ruin, which public opinion had so deservedly prepared for him and his family. The mistaken adherence of the people to so bad a cause, was, in some measure redeemed by the disinterested fidelity with which they continued to serve that family in its adversity, which in prosperity had always repaid their services with ingratitude. It was the Irish (the ultra-royalists of all times) who, during the dark fortunes of the worthless protégé of the Bourbons, clung to him, when all else deserted him. They manned his navy, recruited his army, replenished his coffers, and took their stand around his person on their native soil; and when they saw him the first to fly,* they still erected his torn standard, and

* The Irish army under Tirconnel and Sarsfield made a most vigorous resistance against a superior and well-disciplined force; and Limerick, the last hold, was surrendered upon terms from which it

rallied in his cause,* paying the penalty of their

generous but misapplied devotion to a bigot and a tyrant, by utter ruin, and eternal exile. The outlawry and confiscations of 1688 drove near four thousand Irishmen of family into a dreary and perpetual absenteeism, and sent them

appears that none more esteemed their valour and fidelity than King William himself.

* When James, after his flight from the battle of the Boyne, arrived in Dublin, he had the ingratitude and ungraciousness to reflect upon the cowardice of the Irish. He reached the Castle late at night, and was met at its gates by the Lady Lieutenant, the beautiful Duchess of Tirconnel, "La belle Jennings" of Grammont's Memoirs. In return for the sympathizing respect which marked her reception, the King is said to have sarcastically complimented her upon the "alertness of her husband's countrymen." The high-spirited beauty replied, "In that, however, your Majesty has had the advantage of them all." The King, in fact, was among the first to arrive in the capital with the news of his own defeat.

to dole out for a pitiful hire, in the cause of oppression in other countries, the same valour, and the same spirit, which their fathers had displayed in support of the liberty of their own.

The sale of the estates of these unfortunate and involuntary absentees,* under the authority of the English parliament, changed a large portion of the Irish population, and introduced a new race of landed proprietors, whose interest it was to stay at home. The tide of absenteeship received a powerful check from the necessity of circumstances. Those Irish Catholics, who had escaped detection, or were exempt from suspicion, retired to their remote patrimonial domains, and sought safety in obscurity; hoping, by remaining peaceably at home, to escape the notice of a government which had sprung out of a revolution they had so lately

* They were estimated at the annual sum of two hundred and eleven thousand six hundred pounds.

opposed. The Protestants likewise found it their interest to remain the vigilant guardians of the new possessions they had recently acquired, and of the old, which they had so bravely protected. All parties were either impoverished or unsettled; and few had the means, if they had the desire, to remove from a scene of ferment and desolation, to one of security and enjoyment. For the Irish of any sect or race, there was then no resting-place.

While England gained every thing by a revolution, which she owed to the moral and political education acquired during a century of struggle for civil rights and religious freedom, Ireland lost nearly all she had left to lose through her deficiency in these endowments, resulting from many centuries of anarchy and misrule. The picture, sketched by a masterhand, of the condition of affairs at this singular epoch, is full of a fearful and melancholy interest. "By the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691," says Burke,

"the

ruin of the native Irish, and in a great measure of the first race of the English, was completely accomplished. The new interest was settled with as solid a stability as any thing in human affairs can look for. All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression which were made after the last event, were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon, and were not at all afraid to provoke. They were not the effects of their fears, but of their security. They who carried on this system looked to the irresistible force of Great Britain for their support in their acts of power. They were quite certain that no complaints of the natives would be heard on this side of the water, with any other sentiments than those of contempt and indignation. Their cries served only to augment their torture. Machines which could answer their purposes so well must be of an excellent contrivance. Indeed, at that time, in