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popish oppressors should consent to the emancipation of Milesian catholics, he, it seems, not satisfied with the offer of 8000 marks, recommends a hard bargain to be made with them, "the highest fine of money that you can obtain;" provided however, that these people should hold in readiness a body of good and stout footmen, &c." His majesty of England, it seems, was unacquainted with the temper and policy of his liege-men of his land of Ireland, the pale, or he would have never indulged the chimerical notion, that they would surrender the victims of their daily oppression, their destined prey, to become the instruments of his avarice and ambition. Under various pretences, the objects of the petition were eluded; and this by prelates and barons calling themselves catholics.

Two years afterwards, the cry of oppression reached the ears of the sovereign from the same quarter. The petition of emancipation from the tyranny of English descended papists, was again presented by old native catholics, anno 1280. This petition met the fate of its predecessor, because referred, like it, to the consideration of the colonists. What must have been the feelings of these unhappy men, visibly marked out for slaughter. They would not be allowed as fellow subjects, by the barbarous papists of the pale, both clergy and laity, who eyed them and their patrimony, with the feelings and eyes of a butcher marking out sheep for the knife! Notwithstanding the fines and services they repeatedly profferred for legal protection, every Englishman

might kill and plunder a native. If, perchance, summoned to a court of justice, he obtained perfect impunity, by swearing that he killed only a mere native Irishman. If the murdered person was a man of rank, the assassin was even applauded and rewarded!

These were not the sole misfortunes of the natives. The foreign wolves, after sating their voracity with their spoils and blood, involved them also in their wars with each other, ravaging and slaying without mercy. The native Irish formed the main bulk of their forces; and these were placed in every post of danger.

Besides those already mentioned, they found another mode of recruiting, from those they treated as Irish enemies. While they lulled the neighbouring tribes, by the mockery of treaties of alliance, never meant to be kept, they made a sudden irruption upon some district, marked out as a prey; and, overpowering it, they built a castle, compelling all they condescended not to kill, to work at the building. Thither they conveyed all the provision they chose, together with the best connected and handsomest young women, to be married to some of their followers. These they employed, like the Sabine women, to entice their relatives to enlist under the banners of the new bashaw, who knew how to reward military merit; to exchange famine for plenty; and the scanty and precarious tenure of gavel-kind, for the security and splendor of hereditary estates. Thus the country falling to ruin on every side, and policy dictating something to be saved from

the common wreck for themselves and families, multitudes were forced or seduced, by fraud and violence, to enlist with the destroyers; besides numbers, who volunteered with them for a promised share of plunder. Another source of booty and aggrandizement, was the facility of exciting clans, embittered with hereditary feuds, to make war on each other; sometimes joining one side, sometimes another, untill both were enfeebled and subdued. So easy it was to kindle such petty wars, that the parliament of the Pale passed an act, in the tenth year of Henry VII. forbidding any liege-man, under pain of treason, to excite the Irishry to war against the Pale, or the king's deputy.

The elective form of the petty sovereignties, especially since the downfall of the monarchy and constitution, opened a wide field of constantly recurring opportunities, to the phlegmatic calculating ambition and avarice of the invaders. On such occasions they used every art, to inflame the contest of an election into a civil war among the clan and their followers. These being the most cruel of wars, they were sure to be called in, to the aid of the weaker party, on their own terms. If their allies succeeded, lands, matrimonial alliance with the triumphant chief, and castles for their security, rewarded their services, untill they gradually became greater than the chieftain of the territory. If beaten, as sometimes happened, still it was a splendid though bloody lottery for adventuring speculation; and the next contested election of a chief would re

pair their losses, and amply reward their undermining toils.

By such arts, profiting of the confusion and anarchy of the country, the Fitz-Geralds, Burkes, Butlers, Eustaces, Lacys, &c. became great lords, allied in blood, and ranking with the greatest Irish chieftains. So De Clare, notwithstanding his defeat, and humiliating treaty, and the payment of an eric for the murder of O'Brien Roe, became a great man once more. His remittances from England enabled him to interfere with effect, in the disputed succession to the chieftainry of Thomond. His ally was acknowledged by the majority of the electors. His rival, indignant at English interference, and supported by a powerful party, was preparing to wage a bloody war against the new chieftain, when the amicable interposition of Mac Carty, chieftain of Desmond, assuaged the fury of his countrymen. "He entreated them to consider, that they were arming against their own brethren, preparing to depopulate their lands, blowing up the flame of civil dissension, which had already wasted their unhappy country. That they had a common enemy, industriously fomenting, and taking advantage of their disorder, to subdue them by their own weapons. That their interest, and that of all their countrymen, called loudly on them to compose their private differences, and wait, with patience, some favourable opportunity to recover their lost rights." His mediation was successful.

I see no immediate reason, but this charitable

good office to his deluded countrymen, that made Leland, the Pale historian, say, "The Mac Cartys, ever implacable enemies to the English, proceeding with a dark and determined rancour." I see no dark rancour in this mediation. But, if they were really animated with implacable enmity to their inhuman invaders, it only proved they were men endowed with human feelings. If the bare recital of their deeds of treachery and blood, fills every humane breast now with horror, how must the sufferers and spectators in the tragic scene have felt? Unfortunately for the Milesian race, they felt not an adequate degree of abhorrence for their systematic destroyers, capable of suspending for some time their hereditary animosities, to save themselves from the ruin decreed for them.

The English were not the only enemies the Irish had to fear; they had more to apprehend from their own intestine divisions. O'Connor, prince of Connaught, and Mac Dermot of Moglurg, took the field against each other; waging a cruel and desolating war, perhaps at the instigation, certainly to. the great delight, and for the profit of their enemies. O'Connor was among the number of the slain. Some time before, O'Hanlon, at the instigation of Ralph Peppard, was at war with O'Neil. Meanwhile O'Connor Falie was murdered by Jordan Comin; and his brother Charles was assassinated, by Pierce Butler, at Carrick. What a misfortune, in them days, for a native Irishman to be a large proprietor. The O'Connors were, from the remotest