difference, the English sovereign continued to regulate and control the civil, military, and ecclesias tical departments of Ireland, as if no Irish parlia ment had been in existence.-So truly ridiculous is the struggle of a faction with the strength of a nation. The catholics were excluded and disarmed; they were hated and suspected; the result was, that the ascendant religion of protestantism exhibited all the impatience of intolerance, and all the insignificance of an insulted and feeble sect. The Irish protestant of that day, conceived that his power was advanced by the slavery of the catholic; that England would suffer him to play the tyrant if he would submit to be her slave; but the degradation which he sought against his catholic countrymen, was in the very outset of his foolish triumphs, his most bitter punishment. "It was," as Mr Grattan somewhere beautifully observes, "liberty without energy or power. It presented the protestant with a monopoly, with the image of a monster, in a state when the heart gives no circulation, and the limbs no life-a nominal representative and a nominal people. Call not this your misfortune, it is your sentence, it is your execution. Never could the law of nature suffer one sect of men to take away the liberty of another, and that of a numerous part of their people, without feeling a diminution of their own strength and freedom." The Irish protestant parliament of 1692, who so piously triumphed in the disfranchisement of their catholic countrymen, were in their turn trampled on by the feet of an English parliament.

The Irish protestants most wisely threw down the pillar on which they could have leaned, and were soon seen creeping through the ruins of that temple which their foolish policy contributed to destroy. The unfortunate catholics were no longer regarded by the government of Ireland, but as subjects on which prejudice and avarice might exercise their ingenious malice. The orangemen of this period, estimated their loyalty or their sycophancy by the bitterness of their hostility to the civil and religious liberty of their catholic countrymen. Their ambition was to rule in a land of slavery, and the little efforts which they sometimes made to rise from the degraded character of mere slave drivers, only exhibit their impotence and imbecility. Lord Sydney, Sir Charles Porter, and Thomas Coningsby, were first lords justices of Ireland in the reign we are now recording. Sydney was created lord lieutenant, and proceeded, in 1692, to convene the first parliament which, with the exception of King James's parliament, sat in Ireland for twenty-six years.

This parliament had the courage, after excluding the strength of the country, to aspire to the character of an independent legislature. They disputed the right of the English parliament to legislate for Ireland; they rejected a money bill because it did not originate with the Irish parliament, and put on record their strong reprobation of the smallest infringement on the ancient rights of the Irish legislature. The lord lieutenant was not to be intimidated by words; he was well aware that a le

gislature of monopolists should not be reading lectures on parliamentary independence, and his answer to their high sounding assertion of " rights," was a good lesson of instruction to point out the importance of that principle which excluded the spirit as well as the strength of the nation. When the Irish parliament was a mixed assembly, protestant and catholic, the lord lieutenant might practise his power and his artifice, divide and distract, but he never presumed to utter the language of Lord Sydney, who told this protestant parliament of the pale, "that they ought to go to England to beg their majesties' pardon for their seditious and riotous assemblies." Lord Strafford, in the period of his greatest power, dared not use such language to the parliament of his day; because the people were interested in the support of its character, and would not, as in the instance before us, take pleasure in being the witness of its degradation.

The proceedings of Lord Sydney offended some of the leading men among the protestants, and every effort was made to procure his removal. A promise of more submissive conduct (if we are to judge by the future proceedings of the Irish parlia ment), succeeded in procuring the removal of Sydney; and his Lordship's successor, Lord Capel, was appointed in 1695, as being the best qualified to execute the wishes of his master in the English cabinet. The Irish parliament seemed now to be of opinion, that the price of the few humble privileges which they might be allowed by England to

enjoy, would be the multiplication of several penal statutes against their catholic brethren, and that the best proofs they could give of the sincerity of their loyalty, was the unpitying fury with which they pursued their unoffending countrymen. They therefore began, with a pious and loyal ardour, the glorious work of that penal code which now strikes mankind with horror; which would justify any resistance, however violent-any vengeance, however dreadful. This penal code, for the repeal of which Ireland has had the unexampled patience to petition, would have armed every hand in England. Englishmen would have again appealed to the spirits of their iron barons. Their Russells, their Hampdens, and their Sydneys would have rallied whatever of honour or patriotism was in the land; and the blood of the persecutors, who could have enacted such laws, should have washed out the odious record, and thus have atoned for their crimes against justice and humanity; yet Ireland has carried her chains year after year, she has manifested more than Christian fortitude under somewhat more than Christian suffering,-she has served the hand which so often plunged the dagger in her bosom, and she has been insulted, during the dreadful scene, with the title of rebel to her king and constitution. The catholics of Ireland have petitioned, the people of England would have rebelled. The reward of the Irish nation has been partial freedom, that of England has been the first constitution in the world. The tyrants of Ireland were the champions of British liberty, who have

so often refused to the humility of the Irish petitioners what they extorted from their kings by the terror of their swords. Those historical facts require no comment. The mind of the reader will draw its own conclusions; and whether protestant or catholic, or presbyterian, he will ask himself how a people should speak or act, when they are about seeking the restoration of their rights, the mere performance of a contract which has been infamously violated. Is it in the tones of lady-like meekness that Englishmen assert the rights of their country? Is it in the language of hollow, hypocritical sycophancy, the people of England address their rulers, when they complain of their privileges violated, or their freedom impaired? Do they mea. sure their words, or do they ever suppose that words can be too strong to give expression to their honest indignation? This, then, should ever be the tone and language of the Irish nation: no other is either audible or intelligible in the parliament of England; you are heard because you are respected, and you are respected because you are not afraid to express your resentment. Those observations most naturally precede the recital of the laws which we are now about to set down,-laws which made the protestant despicable, and the catholic a slave; which made Ireland a prison, and the Irish protestant nothing better than the jailor. "Never," says Mr Grattan, the profound and eloquent advocate of religious and political freedom, "could the law of nature suffer one sect of men to take away the liberty of another, and that of a