tain of my family, and, as the proffered handle of the sword had been rejected, made their inexorable masters at least feel its edge.

Still, such a hankering had the poor Irish after law and justice, that, about fifty years after, in the reign of Edward III., they again tried to soften the hearts of their oppressors, and "addressing themselves once more to the Throne of England, petitioned that all those odious distinctions, which had so long deluged the land with blood, should, at last, be abolished, and that the Irish inhabitants should be admitted to the state and privileges of English subjects."

We need not ask, what was the fate of this second memorable petition. Had it succeeded, Captain Rock would not have been here to tell

were the natural consequences. Every inconsiderable party, who, under pretence of loyalty, received the king's commission to repel the adversary, in some particular district, became pestilent enemies to the inhabitants. Their properties, their lives, the chastity of their families were all exposed to these barbarians.”

A historian of the Rebellion of 1798 might transfer this passage to his page with perfect truth and fitness.

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the story. Gibbon says, in speaking of some early action in which Mahomet was engaged, "At that moment the lance of an Arab might have changed the destinies of the world;" and it is not less true, that a stroke from the pen of Edward III. might, at this period, have changed the destinies of the Rocks for ever.

But "Dis aliter visum est"-that spirit, which has always watched over the Anglo-Irish councils, never suffering them, in a single instance, to deviate into right, prevailed as usual, and the result was as follows:- 66 The petition was remitted to the Chief Governor, Darcy. He was directed to refer it to the Irish parliament, and, as usual, it was either clandestinely defeated, or openly rejected."

Up rose the O's and Macs again, and again did the flame of war extend as before, through Meath, Munster, and those other classic regions of turbulence, which still "live in numbers and look green in song;" and so weakened were the English by the hostility they had thus provoked, that (as the historian remarks) "it was only the want of concert and

union among the Irish that prevented them from demolishing the whole fabric of English power."

The following laws passed during this glorious, but arbitrary reign, abundantly prove that the spirit of the Penal Code did not wait to be evoked by religious rancour*, but was as active and virulent when both parties were Papists, as it has been since Henry VIII. made it a war of creeds as well as nations.

"It was enjoined by Royal mandate that no mere Irishman should be admitted into any office or trust in any city, borough, or castle in the King's land." Again, by the parliamentary ordinance, called the Statutes of Kilkenny, it was enacted, "that marriage, nurture of infants, and gossipred with the Irish

"In the reign of Edward III." says Leland, "pride and self-interest concurred in regarding and representing the Irish as a race utterly irreclaimable.” Four hundred years after, in the time of Swift, it was the fashion, in England, "to think and to affirm that the Irish cannot be too hardly used." A hundred years hence, perhaps, the same language will be repeated.

should be considered and punished as hightreason;" and "it was also made highly penal to the English to permit their Irish neighbours to graze their lands, to present them to ecclesiastical benefices, or to receive them into monasteries or religious houses." Even the poetry and music of the poor Irish were proscribed, and it was made penal "to entertain their bards, who perverted the imagination by romantic tales."

In the reign of Henry IV., the Irish "Enemy" (for so the natives were styled in all legal documents) showed, naturally enough, a disposition to emigrate-but by a refined mixture of cruelty and absurdity, which is only to be found, genuine, in Irish legislation, an Act of Parliament was passed to prevent them. Those whom the English refused to incorporate with subjects, they would yet compel to remain as rebels or as slaves. “By an Act of the Irish Parliament, in the eleventh year of Henry IV., it was ordained that no Irish enemy should be permitted to depart from the realm.” We have heard of a bridge of gold for a flying enemy, but an Act of Par

liament to compel him to stand his ground, could only have been passed by an Irish Legislature.

This unvarying system of hostility and oppression, which had been hitherto directed only against the natives, was now extended to such descendants of the old English settlers, as had adopted a more natural policy than the government, and by marriage, commerce and other peaceful mediums, become gradually mingled with the native population*. Upon these, as lying most within the reach of their insolence, the new comers of English birth indulged in the most wanton tyranny; and thus not only gave birth to the distinction of an English and Irish interest,

* In remarking upon this coalition, Leland sensibly and candidly remarks-"It may be doubted whether such effect could possibly have been produced, if the old natives had ever been possessed invariably and unalterably with that inveterate national aversion, to which their repeated insurrections are commonly ascribed. The solution was easy, and might have served the purposes of a selfish policy, but there are other causes equally obvious to be assigned."