numerous part of their people, without feeling a diminution of their own strength and freedom; but in making laws on the subject of religion, we forget mankind, until their own distraction admonishes statesmen of two truths; the one, that there is a God, the other, that there is a people; never was it permitted to any nation-they may perplex their understanding with various apologies-but never long was it permitted, to exclude from essential, from what they themselves have pronounced essential blessings, a great portion of themselves, for periods of time, and for no reason, or what is worse, for such reason as you have advanced. Conquerors, or tyrants proceeding from conquerors, have scarcely ever, for any length of time, governed by those partial disabilities." "But a people so to govern itself," says Mr Grattan, "or rather, under the name of government, so to exclude one another; the industrious, the opulent, the useful; that part that feeds you with its industry, and supplies you with its taxes, weaves that you may wear, and ploughs that you may eat ;-to exclude a body so useful, so numerous, and that for, and in the mean time, to tax them ad libitum, and occasionally to pledge their lives and fortunes, for what? for their disfranchisement; it cannot be done: continue it, and you expect from your laws what it were blasphemy to ask of your Maker. Such policy always turns on the inventor, and bruises him under the stroke of the sceptre or the sword, or sinks him under the accumulation of debt and loss of dominion." Yet such was the fatal and disastrous policy

which the protestant parliament of King William felt it necessary to adopt, for the security of church and state; it established the ascendancy, but it laid waste the country; and the Irish monopolist, who was daily insulted by the haughty mandates of his English task-master, might console himself for the loss of his proper station as an Irishman, by the wretched sentiment of pride, with which he might parade through the desert fields, and haggard population of his unfortunate country. The Irish parliament of 1695, proceeded to the great work of enlightened legislature, whose effects have been described by the glowing pencil of our Grattan ; and it must be admitted, they proceeded most methodically in their honourable office. They began by striking at the root of human power or human feeling. They passed an act for the establishment of general ignorance among the catholics of Ireland; or, in the words of the act, to restrain foreign and domestic education;* a sort of legislative hu

*Mr Matthew O'Connor, speaking of this proceeding of the Irish parliament, has the following observations :

"In the plenitude of the power now granted to them, they passed the act to restrain foreign education, designing thereby nothing less than to brutalise the Irish. The apology for this violation of the laws of God and man, rests on the danger that resulted to the state from the many seminaries of learning which the Irish had in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany; but the provisions of the act restraining foreign education, evidently demonstrate that its aim was not to guard against the alleged danger, but to root out the seeds of knowledge, and to extirpate the catholic religion altogether."

Mr O'Connor has, in a former part of his work, represented

manity, which enacted, that the mind hereafter to be enslaved, should be as insensible as possible of its degradation; or, as Mr Burke finely describes the act," While this restraint upon foreign and domestic education was part of an horrible and impious system of servitude, the members were well suited to the body. To render them patient, under a deprivation of all the rights of human nature, every thing which could give them a knowledge or feeling of those rights was rationally forbidden. To render humanity fit to be insulted, it was fit that it should be degraded. Indeed, I have ever thought the prohibition of the means of improving our rational nature, to be the worst species of tyranny that the insolence and perverseness of mankind ever dared to exercise. This goes to all men, in all situations, to whom education can be denied."

This loyal parliament then passed an act for banishing all papists exercising any ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and all the regulars of the popish clergy, out of Ireland, contrary to the express letter of the articles of Limerick, which secured the toleration of the catholic religion and the safety of the priest

King William as the friend of the Irish catholics. Was William of so bending a disposition as to yield to the wishes of his Irish parliament, if they did not completely correspond with his own? We fear that the infamous code of laws to which he has given his consent, is sufficient to give a very different species of immortality to King William, than the Irish monopolists are in the habit of bestowing on him. Indeed every enlightened protestant, as well as catholic, must abhor the memory of a monarch, who, willing to give freedom to his own country, could so easily consent to the slavery and the misery of Ireland.

hood. They then passed an act to prevent protestants intermarrying with papists. Such were the acts which the glorious revolution of 1688 gave to Ireland. But this loyal parliament of Lord Capel*

* The Irish house of lords did not surrender to the unprin cipled rapacity of the commons without a struggle; they manifested some regard for their honour and their character, in the resistance which they made to this insulting outrage on the feelings of the Irish nation. Seven spiritual and five temporal peers have put on record their abhorrence of this perfidious violation of a solemn compact, aggravated by the mockery, that it pretended to confirm what it purposed to destroy. It is conclusive on the merits of this infamous transaction, and worthy the attention of those who contend that the articles of Limerick were not violated by the Irish legislature. The protest of the Irish lords is as follows:

"1. Because the title did not agree with the body of the bill; the title being an act for the confirmation of the Irish articles, whereas no one of said articles was therein fully confirmed. 2. Because the articles were to be confirmed to them to whom they were granted; but the confirmation of them by that bill was such, that it put them in a worse condition than they were in before. 3. Because the bill omitted the material words, ❝ and all such as are under their protection in the said counties," which were, by his majesty's titles patent, declared to be part of the second article; and several persons had been adjudged within said articles who would, if the bill passed into a law, be entirely barred and excluded, so that the words omitted being so very material, and confirmed by his majesty after a solemn debate in council, some express reason ought to be assigned in the bill, in order to satisfy the world in that omission. 4. Because several words were inserted in the bill which were not in the articles, and others omitted, which altered both the sense and meaning thereof. Lastly, because they apprehended that many protestants might and would suffer by the bill in their just rights and pretensions, by reason of their having purchased, and lent money, upon the faith of said article."

could not refrain from mocking the nation they thus had injured, they blended their humour with their ferocity, and in a jocular way passed an act for the confirmation of the articles of Limerick. The reader will suppose, that the English government should not have been very jealous of any power with which the protestant ascendancy might be armed, when they so faithfully turned those arms against the civil and religious liberties of their catholic countrymen. The Irish parliament, however, presumed rather too much on their past services to England. Though they were so obedient as to forge chains for the catholics, they should not flatter themselves with the liberty of making their own laws or regulating their own slaves. They were for the future to consider themselves as the humbled agents of an English government, prompt at every call which national jealousy would give to inflict or suspend the torture. The case of Mr Molyneux, the distinguished author of the book styled "The cause of Ireland's being bound by acts of Parliament in England, stated," is a proof in point. This book asserted the legislative independence of Ireland. It talked of the rights of Irishmen; but the author forgot that he was strug gling for the independence of a monopoly, and that in such a contest the people took no part. The catholics of Ireland, who were the great ma, jority, must have smiled at the impotence of that sect which were so infatuated as to strip their natural defenders of their arms; they must have triumphed in the degradation of such folly, and se