a county. Such a winter's campaign, and by so inconsiderable a party against so considerable a kingdom, was never read or heard of, and is abundant evidence of the complete inutility of numbers and of spirit, when divisions are suffered to exist amongst those who should be united, and the leader who should possess the confidence of the people, chances to be an object of general suspicion." There was a barbarous decision in the character of Cromwell, which would not stop at universal extermination, if such a determination was necessary to the carrying any object of his ambition. Dalrymple, in his "Memoirs of Great Britain," says, that Cromwell, in order to get free of his enemies, did not scruple to transport forty thousand Irish from their own country, to fill all the armies in Europe with complaints of his cruelty, and admiration of their own valour.

One hundred and seventy years have nearly e lapsed since Ireland experienced this scene of barbarous devastation. The policy was cruel, but there was one feature of humanity still to be discovered in such desperate tyranny ;-it, put an end to the victim; it did not preserve his existence to perpetuate his sufferings; it did not inflict the agonizing torture of that feverish being which our ancestors were doomed to suffer under the slow fire of the penal code. This was the progeny of an ingenuity which emulated the despotism of Cromwell, and consumed the heart, while it preserved the body of the wretched and unpitied sufferer. Yet our readers will now see with what philosophic insensibi

lity and speculating barbarity an English writer delivers his opinions on the present sufferings of the devoted Irish. "It cannot be imagined," writes Lord Clarendon, " in how easy a method, and with what peaceable formality, the whole kingdom of Ireland was taken from the just owners and proprietors, and divided among those who had no other right to it but that they had power to keep it. In less than two years after Lord Clanrickard left Ireland, the new government seemed perfectly established; insomuch that there were many buildings for ornament as well as use, orderly and regular plantations of trees, fences, and inclosures, raised throughout the kingdom; purchases made by one from the other at very valuable rates; and jointures settled on marriages, and all the conveyances and settlements executed as in a kingdom at peace within itself, and where no doubt could be made of the validity of titles." This peaceful and gratifying picture, in the view of an English writer, more than compensates for all the varied and infinite calamity which the expatriated Irish must have endured. The cries and tears of the persecuted millions of our countrymen are no longer heard, amidst the sweet harmony of English contractors. The Irish were a barbarous people, and should be sacrificed to the fanatical soldiers of Cromwell. With such facts before the reflection of Ireland, will an Englishman wonder that his country is viewed with suspicion and jealousy? or will an English government hesitate to adopt that course of conduct by Ireland, which will induce her to bury in

eternal oblivion those dreadful records which make so powerful an appeal to their vengeance?

A very singular measure of cruelty and violence was now adopted by the English rebels, Cromwell and his council, to complete, as they were pleased to say, the tranquillity of Ireland. Notwithstanding the thousands that were destroyed by the sword, and the thousands that were driven with their beggared families to roam through the unpitying world, there still remained a large portion of the native Irish, whom Cromwell and his council thought it necessary to dispose of. There was a large track of land, even to the half of the province of Connaught, that was separated from the rest by a long and large river, and which, by the plague and many massacres, remained almost desolate. Into this space and circuit of land Cromwell required all the native Irish to retire by a certain day, under the penalty of death; and all who, after that time, should be found in any other part of the kingdom, man, woman, or child, might be killed by any body who saw or met them. They were not only driven into this barren country to linger out a miserable existence, but they were forced, at the point of the bayonet, to sign releases of their former rights and titles to the land that was taken from them, in consideration of what was now assigned them; that so they should for ever bar themselves and their heirs from laying claim to their old inheritance. It would be supposed by the reader of these pages, who has seen the inflexible fidelity of the Irish people to the fortunes and cause of Charles, that this monarch

would not have forgotten the loyalty of those who stood by him in the extremity of his greatest distress; that he would not send forth their children to the wilderness, who had shed their blood in his defence; yet what is the fact?-That this infamous and ungrateful monarch agreed that one of the conditions of his restoration to the crown of his father should be, that the plundered people of Ireland should never be restored to their properties. Here was the royal reward for the fidelity and allegiance of Ireland; and here was the plan of civilization on which Englishmen acted, and by which they were to introduce the laws and privileges of a free constitution.

Courts of justice were appointed, whose sangui nary decrees suggested the name of "Cromwell's slaughter-houses." These infamous tribunals were erected under the pretext of bringing to justice the promoters of, and actors in, the rebellion of 1641; but the real object was the confiscation of property, and the destruction of the Irish. The feelings of humanity, and the principles, were boastingly trampled on. To be cruel to the Irish was to be humane and religious; to plunder their properties, and beggar their children, was to enrich the godly and disseminate the gospel. Thus would the rapacious destroyer insult the justice of Omnipotence by the hypocritical adoption of his word; and the religion which was intended to give peace and security to mankind, was made the instrument of desolation and barbarity. The Marquis of Ormond, in his place in parliament, drew a faithful picture of those tribunals to which English fanati

cism gave birth in the time of the commonwealth. "What less misery could be expected at a time when all distinctions of right and wrong were con founded and lost in those of power and importance; when the noblest acts of loyalty received the judg ment due to the foulest treason;-due to the un righteous judges who pronounced it without au thority in the persons, or justice in the sentence; when the benches were crowded and oppressed with the throng and wicked weight of those that ought rather to have stood manacled at the bar; when such was the bold contempt, not only of the essentials, but also the very formalities of justice, that they gave no reason for taking away men's estates, but that they were Irish papists; when all men were liable to the entanglement of two edged oaths, from the conflicts raised by them in men's breasts between conscience and conveniency-between the prostitution of their conscience and the ruin of their fortunes; than which, a harder and more tyrannical choice could not be obtruded on Christians. For here the election was not, swear thus against your conscience, or you shall have no part in the civil government, no office in the army, or benefice in the church-but, swear thus, or you shall have no house to put your head in, no bread to sustain yourselves, your wives and children." A writer cotemporary with those tragical events, (Morrison) strains his memory for examples of such relentless barbarity as was now exhibited in Ireland. "Neither the Israelites," he says, "were more cruelly persecuted by Pharaoh, nor the innocent