cretly delighted in the humiliation of their native tyrants. The promptitude with which King Wil liam declared his determination to secure the independence of the Irish parliament, is perhaps one of the many reasons why his " immortal memory,' is so often celebrated by that description of Irishmen called Orangemen. The Irish house of commons, in one of their intervals from the [prosecution of their catholic countrymen, had the impru dence to make some little effort on behalf of their own legislative independence; their great zeal for King William, they credulously supposed, would have been a sufficient atonement for such an experiment. The fate of Mr Molyneux's book dissipated all their hopes, and all the power they would be allowed to wield was the power of putting to the torture those of their countrymen who now lay at their feet, unable to resist their oppressors. The English parliament voted an address, desiring he would give directions for the discovery and punishment of the author. They implored his Majesty that he would take care to see the laws which direct and restrain the parliament of Ireland punctually observed, and discourage every thing which might have a tendency to lessen the dependence of Ireland upon England. How was this remonstrance of the house of commons received by King William of" immortal memory?" His Majesty most graciously promised, that he would make every exertion to promote the wishes of his parliament, or in other words, that he would put down the legislative independence of the Irish par liament. The Irish protestant, who reads this transaction, cannot but feel indignant at the ignorant audacity of those persons who are annually holding up King William as the great patron of Irish liberties; he cannot refrain from recalling to his recollection the proceedings of the Irish parliament during the government of King James, which asserted the independence of the Irish legislature; passed one act in favour of liberty of conscience, and another in support of the industry and the trade of Ireland. He will take down with pride and gratification, that this Irish parliament, who so acted in support of Irish freedom, was a parliament composed of protestants and catholics; that the interest and the glory of each was the interest and glory of all ;—and that the parliamentary independence of Ireland was considered by them as best and most firmly secured by maintaining the rights and privileges of all classes and denominations of Christians. The catholics of Ireland most naturally looked around for refuge against the merciless persecution of intolerance. They appealed in vain to the letter of a solemn treaty which secured their liberties and properties; they appealed in vain to the honour of the immortal King William, to stand between them and the never-ceasing fire of the Irish parliament. They therefore made their last appeal to the powers of the continent; to Charles II. of Spain, and Leopold IV. of Austria, the then catholic allies of Great Britain. The overwhelming ambition of Lewis XIV. united the arms of England, Austria, and Spain; but had Austria or Spain interfered for the catholics, the friends of religious liberty in England, the whigs of England, would have been slow in giving to the British monarch the necessary supplies to support him in his favourite object. They required, as the condition of their zeal in his support, full and uncontrolled permission to torture the Irish catholic; and the strange spectacle was now exhibited to the reflection and the indignation of all enlightened men, namely, a miserable competition between the great advocates of British liberty and the French monarch, Lewis XIV. who would be the greatest tyrant over the human mind; who would be the most zealous oppressor of conscience; or who would most boldly set at defiance the laws of God and the rights of human nature. Lewis XIV. banished 800,000 protestants, who were embellishing and enriching his empire by their genius, their industry, and their virtues. He repealed the edict of Nantz, which the enlightened policy of Henry IV. gave to suffering humanity. This does not astonish, because it was the act of an ignorant, rapacious and unprincipled monarch; but that he should find a rival in the British parliament, which boasted of establishing in their own country the finest constitution on earth, must excite the surprise and sorrow of every reader. That parliament, and their creatures in the Irish parlia ment, banished millions from Ireland, because they committed the atrocious crime of persevering in a religion professed by the great majority of the Christian world, which was once the religion of England, and was then the hope and consolation of every Irishman. * Mr Burke, in his admirable tract on the penal laws, (perhaps one of the most valuable productions which came from that great man,) draws the following parallel between the conduct of the French despot and bigot with that of the English and Irish protestants and presbyterians, in the reign of William. The profound views of this great statesman are so likely to be read with interest, and to be estimated with veneration by the majority of those into whose hands this compendium will fall, that we feel it an important part of our duty to make such extracts as bear upon the period and the events which we may happen to be recording. Speaking of that perfidious act of Louis the XIV., namely, the repeal of the edict of Nantz, Mr Burke thus observes:-" This act of injustice, which let loose on that monarch such a torrent of invective and reproach, and which threw so dark a cloud over all the splendour of a most illustrious reign, falls far short of the case in Ireland. The privileges which the protestants of that kingdom enjoyed antecedent to this revocation, were far greater than the Roman Catholics of Ireland ever aspired to under a contrary establishment. The number of their sufferers, if considered absolutely, is not the half of ours; if considered relatively to the body of each community, it is not perhaps a twentieth part; and then the penalties and incapacities, which grew from that revocation, are not so grievous in their nature, nor so certain in their execution, nor so ruinous by a great deal, to the civil prosperity of the state, as those which were established for a perpetual law in our unhappy country.— It cannot be thought to arise from affectation, that I call it so. What other name can be given to a country which contains so many hundred thousand human creatures reduced to a state of most abject servitude. "In putting this parallel, I take it for granted that we can stand for this short time very clear of our party distinctions. If it were enough, by the use of an odious and unpopular word, to determine the question, it would be no longer a subject of rational disquisition; since that very prejudice which gives those We have seen that King William, of" immorreadily assented to the kind and sis tal memory, odious names, and which is the party charged for doing so, and for the consequences of it, would then become the judge also. But I flatter myself, that not a few will be found who do not think that the names of protestant and papist can make any change in the nature of essential justice; such men will not allow that to be proper treatment to the one of those denominations which would be cruelty to the other, and which converts its very crime. into the instrument of its defence. They will hardly persuade. themselves, that what was bad policy in France can be good in Ireland, or that what was intolerable injustice in an arbitrary monarch, becomes, only by being more extended and more violent, an equitable procedure in a country professing to be governed by law. It is however impossible not to observe with some concern, that there are many also of a different disposition ; a number of persons whose minds are so formed, that they find the communion of religion to be a close and endearing tie, and their country to be no bond at all; to whom common altars are a better relation than common habitations and a common civil interest; whose hearts are touched with the distresses of foreigners, and are abundantly awake to all the tenderness of human feeling on such an occasion, even at the moment that they are inflicting the very same distresses, or worse, on their fellow-citizens, without the least sting of compassion or remorse. To commiserate the distresses of all men suffering innocently, perhaps meritoriously, is generous, and very agreeable to the better part of our nature; a disposition that ought by all means to be cherished. But to transfer humanity from its natural basis, our legitimate and home-bred connections; to lose all feeling for those who have grown up by our sides, in our eye, the benefit of whose cares and labours we have partaken from our birth, and meretriciously to hunt abroad after foreign affections, is such a disarrangement of the whole system of our duties, that I do not know whether benevolence so displayed, is not almost the same thing as destroyed; or what effect bigotry could have produced, that is more fatal to society. This no one could help ob |