was poured forth on the unoffending descendants of those men who took part in the legal butchery of the dearest affections of the human heart), keep in his recollection the picture we shall now give, drawn by the vindicator of the colonizers, of the agonizing distress, and the torturing despotism tỏ which the Irish nation, under the specious pretext of civilization, were barbarously devoted.

of

Mr Leland, speaking of this period, observes, "it was an age of project and adventure; men's minds were particularly possessed with a passion for new discoveries, and planting of countries. They who were too poor, or too spiritless to engage in distant adventures, courted fortune in Ireland, under the pretence of improving the king's revenue, in a country where it was far less than the charge government. They obtained commissions of inquiry into defective titles, and grants of concealed lands, and rents belonging to the crown, the great benefit of which was generally to accrue to the projector, whilst the king was contented with an inconsiderable proportion of the concealment, or a small advance of rent. Discoverers were every where busily employed in finding out flaws in men's titles to their estates. The old pipe rolls were searched to find original rents with which they had been charged; the patent rolls in the tower of London were ransacked for the ancient grants: no means of industry or devices of craft were left untried, to force the possessors to accept of new grants at an advanced rent. In the enforcement of those inquiries, there are not wanting proofs of the most iniquitous practices of hard

ened cruelty, of vile perjury, and scandalous subornation, employed to despoil the fair and unoffending proprietor of his inheritance." But the sufferings of Irishmen did not stop there; they either lay under odious disqualifications, or were neglected by the state in the disposal of offices of trust and emolument; they were overshadowed by new men sent from England to the king's service, whom they saw, with indignation, rising suddenly into affluence;" and the historian might have added, with honest indignation, rising into that affluence on the beggary and calamity of the native Irish.

The poverty of the Irish government was the necessary consequence of that system of rapacity and plunder, which was carried on by every unprincipled English adventurer, under its immediate patronage. Notwithstanding all James's boasted improvements, his regulations of civilization and refinement, the resources of his exchequer were daily diminishing, and the necessity of new financial expedients as rapidly increasing. Various plans of regeneration were adopted; and various artifices, as dishonest and immoral as they were shallow and unwise, were resorted to, to recruit the almost bankrupt go vernment of the colony; the ingenuity of legal advisers was exercised in vain. It is true, a partial supply was eviscerated from the fears of the inhabitants of Connaught, whose lands were threatened to be sacrificed to a contemptible quibble of the law. Their titles to their property were pronounced defective, because the patents, under which they held their lands, happened not to be enrolled in

22

THE HISTORY OF IRELAND.

the proper office. This was, in the opinion of the English 'monarch, a sufficient justification of that revolution which he contemplated with so much enthusiasm, and by which the calamities of the Ulster plantation would have been visited upon the inhabitants of Connaught. The pressing wants of James, however, protected the Irish from this favourite experiment of plantation; and a composition of ten thousand pounds was accepted by him from the trembling landholders of Connaught. Were we to draw any parallel between the sanguinary government of Elizabeth, with the cold and unfeeling ty ranny of James, we should be inclined to think, that the quantity of suffering inflicted on Ireland by the sword of the one, was less cruel than the merciless statute war of the other; that the victories of Mountjoy over Tyrone and his followers, were of a more exalted, and, of course, a more consoling nature, than the treacherous and cowardly schemes of destruction planned by the legal sophist, and acted upon by the insatiable avarice of royal rapacity. The government of Elizabeth put an end to its victim; that of James preserved it, in order to prolong its pains and triumph in its agonies. Under the mask of introducing the law and customs of a civilized and enlightened people, every species of oppression was practised; and Ireland, which could, under a mild and parental system, have enriched the hand that protected it, punished her persecutors by the incumbrance of her poverty, and the unappeasable hostility of her children.

A. D.

*1625.

THE people of Ireland now promised themselves some relaxation of that severe and ri gid system, under which they had hitherto suffered. They calculated on the acknowledged necessities of Charles; his foreign wars, his conflicts with his parliament, his obvious policy in soothing the catholics of Ireland, whose power he might throw into the scale against the stubborn resistance of his puritanical subjects of England. Such considerations raised the hopes of the Irish, and, in an equal proportion, excited the apprehension of the colonists. The latter applied to Charles to increase his Irish army to five thousand foot and five hundred horse. So low was the king's exchequer in Ireland, that Charles was obliged to quarter this army on the different counties and towns. This irresistible evidence of the royal embarrass

ments encouraged the Irish to hope for a full toleration of their religion, and a suspension of those penal statutes, by which their feelings and properties were so injured. With their brethren in England, they offered to contribute liberally to the support of Charles' government, if they would, in return, enjoy the royal protection in the exercise of their religion.

Mr Leland, speaking of the joy with which the Irish catholic contemplated the prospect of future indulgence to his long persecuted conscience, observes, with apparent approbation," that the protestant clergy were provoked at their insolence, and scandalized at the promised concessions of government;" and the same historian triumphantly sets forth the anathema of the established colonial church, as an evidence of the pure and sacred zeal of the leading prelates of this period. We doubt much whether the records of popery can produce any document more furious in its intolerance, or more despicable in its bigotry. Those who deprecate the uncharitable principles of an exclusive doctrine, will, with indignation, read the following protest of the protestant bishops of the colony, against even the toleration of the catholic religion. They will discover the illiberality of every Christian sect which can wield the political power of the state; and they will see that the protestant, presbyterian, and catholic, are equally inclined to trample upon -the rights of conscience, if the government shall lend them their authority, or give them their coun