THE ULSTER CIVIL WAR OF 1641 AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. I. I PROPOSE in the following pages to review some of the principal incidents of a period, perhaps the saddest in the sad history of Ireland, including about the last eight years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth-the reigns of James the First of England, and of Charles the First-and five or six years of the reign of the Sword, commonly, but surely facetiously, called the Commonwealth. The history of Ireland, and of this period especially, has usually been written in the light of the orange or green ray I am carnestly desirous of writing in the pure white light of truth, which, the scientific reader will recollect, contains both the orange and green, each in its due proportion; but, writing in this spirit, I am well aware that I shall often deeply offend both the factions who have persistently travestied and deformed the history of Ireland from 1172 to 1878. Both parties must admit my facts. To enable them to make what deductions they can with truth from my inferences from my facts, I will furnish them with a few particulars of my biography. I have been from my early youth to my eighty-third year, steadfastly, "a base, bloody, and brutal Whig," who never failed to promote by his tongue, his pen, and the exercise of his franchise, to the utmost of his little ability, the cause of equal justice to his Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, from the day (and indeed long before it) on which, according to Lord Clarendon's witty anticipation, as he assumed, the Iron Duke would address the Lords, in his closing speech on Catholic Emancipation, thus:-"My Lords, attention right about face-quick march"-to the day when the last remnant of political and religious wrong was removed by the crowning and great healing Act for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Established Church of Ireland. I doubt whether any Roman Catholic has more sincerely rejoiced over each step towards this consummation than I have. I may add that I am an uncompromising Protestant, and that it is, in my opinion, clearly the true interest of Ireland to form a part of the British Empire, by an equal, firm, and affectionate union with England and Scotland. I have entertained the wish for some years past to write an essay on the so-called massacre of 1641 in Ulster, because I thought I had found some overlooked facts relating to it, calculated to throw some of what M. Lanfrey calls "La lumiére vengeresse de l'histoire" on the on the gross and cruel exaggerations of the received accounts of the Ulster insurrection; but I should probably not have taken up my pen, at my years, but for the spur applied by Mr. Froude's English in Ireland-a most mischievous production, which is solely calculated to exasperate the Irish by the calumnious virulence of its anti-Irish spirit, and to persuade Englishmen and Scotchmen that the oppression which the Celtic Irish savages had suffered was only too mild for their deserts. I shall have occasion to refer to this work more than once again; but I wish, in limine, to give my opinion here, that Mr. Froude, in the first section of the preliminary chapter of his three volumes, propounds two principles which entirely disentitle him to the office, which I am sure he considers he most worthily fills, of teacher of political morality. He says (vol. i., p. 2):— "In a world in which we are made to depend so largely for our well-being on the conduct of our neighbours, and yet are created infinitely unequal in ability and worthiness of character, the superior part has a natural right to govern, the inferior part has a natural right to be governed; and a rude but adequate test of superiority and inferiority is provided in the relative strength of the different orders of human beings." Again: "There neither is nor can be an inherent privilege in any person or set of persons to live unworthily at their own will, when they can be led or driven into more honourable courses; the rights of man-if such rights there be—are not to liberty but to wise direction and control." A more pernicious doctrine than one of these maintains, or a baser than the other, I cannot conceive. In accordance with the former, war would be at once lighted up from one end of the earth to the other; and the latter would extinguish all patriotic love of country, and all love of liberty. In Europe, it would be the right of Russia to seize upon Sweden and Norway of the German Empire, upon Denmark-of France, upon Belgium and the Netherlands—of Spain, upon Portugal-and England must surely exercise the right of taking possession of Crete, Cyprus, and Egypt. Italy, for the present, would have to be satisfied with the little republic of San Marino; and Mr. Froude, I presume, would not grudge to Turkey the re-conquest of Greece. The second principle has certainly this recommendation, that the acceptance of it would keep the peace; but it would be at the sacrifice of some of the noblest virtues that have adorned and immortalized the true heroes of our race. What multitudes of the generous youth of the civilized world have had, and in all future time will have, the flame of love of country and liberty lighted up in their hearts, by the brief and glorious story of Leonidas and his heroic companions. As they read, and their hearts warm as they read, they will assist in imagination at that most touching incident-the celebration by the heroes of their own funeral rites, in the presence of their wives and mothers, on the eve of their departure from Spartaand will fancy themselves marching with the little phalanx across Peloponessus to Doric strains "Such as raised To height of noblest temper heroes old And now they hear the cheers with which the volunteers from Platæa, Corinth, Thespiæ, Ægina, and Athens greet the arrival of the Spartans, and see the united forces occupy the eastern of the two narrow passes that bound the small plain of Thermopyla, into which they permit the entrance of the enemy, and on which they slaughter, day by day, numbers far exceeding their own of the Medes and the Persian immortals. Lastly, shuddering at the sight of the hordes of Asia descending behind the Greeks by the betrayed mountain-pass, and after the dismissal of the allies, they fancy they hear the ringing shout with which the remnant of his men respond to Leonidas's exhortation on the last morning of their lives Fellow-soldiers, make a hearty meal to nerve your arms for this our last battle to-day, for to-night we sup with Pluto." Finally, before quitting the sacred ground, each, standing by the tumulus that covers their dust, hears himself in imagination addressed by the spirits of the departed heroes in the words of the sublime epitaph of Simonides : “ Ω ξειν' αγγειλον Λακεδαιμονιοις ότι τῇδε |