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forget when sitting on the throne." No!-the English interest must be favoured, and justice and Ireland must sink into the tomb. Why should Irishmen, after such a scene, be partial to the house of Stuart, or to the, connection with England? or what compensation can be made to Irish feeling, before the memory of such transactions are totally obliterated?

Both parties, the English adventurers and the Irish proprietors, were heard before the king in council. Lord Clarendon, in his Life and Meinoirs, written by himself, gives a very interesting and pathetic description of the reasons advanced by the Irish in support of their claims. "This nobleman," says Dr Curry, "seems to exhibit some symptoms of remorse for that Machiavelian advice: which the Irish ever accused him of having given to the king, while the settlement of Ireland was under consideration." Dr Curry has given a very curious certificate of a declaration made by Clarendon, after his disgrace in England, to one of his must confidential friends. We shall literally copy it, as it bears all the internal marks of authenticity. "Memorandum.-The Reverend Mr Cock of Durham, being at his kinsman's, Sir Ralph Cole, at Banspith Castle, about the time that Lord Chancellor Clarendon was disgraced, Sir Henry Brabant of Newcastle came thither, in his way from London, and told Sir Ralph and him this passage : That he, Sir Henry Brabant, having been to wait on Lord Clarendon just after his disgrace, his lordship, after telling him how kindly he took that

piece of friendship, expressed himself to this effect, that there were grievous things laid to his charge, but that he could bear up against the rest, if his majesty would forgive him but one thing, which was, that he was the person who advised him to prefer his enemies, and neglect his friends, since the principles of the latter would secure them to him; adding, that he took that for the cause of his own ruin, and wished it might not occasion that of many others, and at last the king's." "This," says Dr Curry," is testified by H. Bedford, who had it from the above Mr Cock."

Lord Chancellor Clarendon, who thus expressed himself, when the folly of injustice was too glaring not to be acknowledged, has given us in his memoirs such a picture of the proceedings before the king and council on the subject of the settlement of Ireland, as must silence the most impudent defender of English usurpation. We shall give it entire and unmutilated. It is valuable from its authority, as well as its composition, and demonstrates the infamy of the monarch who could have, given his countenance to a policy so atrocious and unprincipled. "In vain did the Irish agents urge the great and long sufferings of their countrymen; the loss of their estates for five or six-and-twenty years; the wasting and spending of the whole nation in battles, and transportation of men into the parts beyond the seas, whereof many had the honour to testify their fidelity to the king by real services, (many of them returned into England with him, and were still in his service;) the great num.

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bers of men, women and children that had been massacred or executed in cold blood, after the king's government had been driven from them the multitudes that had been destroyed by famine and the plague, these two heavy judgments having raged over the kingdom for two or three years; and at last, as a persecution unheard-of, the transplanting of the small remainder of the nation into the corner of the province of Connaught, where yet much of the lands were taken from them, which had been assigned with all those formalities of law that were in use and practice under that government. Indeed it was deemed strange indiscretion and folly in the Irish, to insist upon the unworthiness and incapacity of those who for many years had possessed themselves of their estates, and sought then a confirmation of their rebellious title from his majesty; or even to insinuate that their rebellion had been more infamous, and of greater magnitude than that of the Irish, who had risen in arms to free themselves from the rigour and severity that was exercised upon them by some of the king's ministers, and for the liberty of their conscience, without having the least intention or thought of withdrawing themselves from his majesty's obedience, or declining his government; whereas the others had carried on an odious rebellion against the king's sacred person, whom they had horridly murdered in the sight of the sun, with all imaginable circumstances of contempt and defiance, and as much as in them lay, had rooted out monarchy itself, and overturned and destroyed the whole government

of church and state; and therefore they observed, whatever punishment the Irish had merited for their former transgressions, which they had so long repented of and departed from, when they had arms and strong towns in their hands, (which, together with themselves, they put again under his majesty's protection), that surely this part of the English who were possessed of their estates, and had broken all their obligations to God and the king, could not deserve to be gratified with their ruin and total destruction. It was deemed unpardonable indiscretion in the Irish agents to give the most distant intimation of their humble hope, that when all his majesty's other subjects were by his clemency restored to their own estates, and were in full peace and mirth and joy, the Irish alone should not be exempt from all his majesty's grace, and left in tears and mourning and lamentation, and be sacrificed without redemption, to the avarice and cruelty of those who had not only spoiled and oppressed them, but had done all that was in their power to destroy the king himself and his posterity, and who now returned to their obedience and submitted to his government, when they were no longer able to oppose it."

Charles appointed commissioners, denominated "A Court of Claims," to put into execution the act of settlement. The first set of commissioners appointed, were so completely and thoroughly in the interest of the adventurers and Cromwellians, that it would be a long work to detail their acts of partiality and oppression. They overshot their duty,

and were superseded. Another set of commissioners were substituted, of pure character and better feeling. Lord Clarendon says, that they rather leaned to the Irish, and thus exasperated a formidable power in the persons of the Cromwellians; and his lordship further adds, that the commissioners themselves were so conscious of having acted in obedience to the dictates of truth and justice in the several decisions they made, that they would proceed no further in the commission, nor subject themselves more to the whispers of censure, until they could receive his majesty's pleasure; and that they might more effectually receive it, they desired leave from the king that they might attend his royal person; and there being at the same time several complaints made against them to his majesty, and appeals to him from their decrees, he gave the commissioners leave to return, and at the same time, all the other interests sent their deputies to solicit their rights; in the prosecution whereof, after much time spent, the Duke of Ormond was called from Ireland to court, at which time a third bill was transmitted from the Irish parliament, called the additional and supplemental bill of settlement, and to revise many of the decrees made by the commissioners.

This bill, or black act, was brought over to Ireland, signed and sealed by the Duke of Ormond himself. By that bill the claims of the innocent, who had not received any compensation for their immense losses, were for ever extinguished. Thus were the loyal and the faithful adherents to the