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Secondly, if she persecuted her English subjects for their faith, to whom she might feel some national attachment, some other principle, besides friendship or moderation, must have restrained her iron rod over the Irish, whom she hated as a nation and as catholics. If it was good policy to hide from them the view of imposing English government on them, as Essex advised, until they should be broken by their divisions, fighting the battles of England against each other, it was yet more necessary to conceal from them, the intention of extirpating the national catholic faith, and planting what they considered heresy in its place. Religion assailed, might give them a bond of union, a party badge, to which all, who would not adhere, would be regarded as abominable outcasts, execrable apostates. O'Neil knew the artifices of the hypocritical tyrant, and the perfidy of her councils, having personal knowledge of her court and counsellors. She gave abundant proofs of the fury of her zeal, for the extinction of popery, and the propagation of novel doctrines, in England, in Holland, and in France. She, in the beginning of her reign, deposed all the catholic bishops, fourteen in number, for refusing to acknowlege her supremacy and deformed religion, and incarcerated them for life. She punished recusants, i. e. those who refused to attend protestant worship, with fines, imprisonment; and, under various pretences, and fictitious crimes, not willing to own persecution for religion, they were pursued with torture, death, and confiscation of pro

perty. The ordinary jails of the kingdom, unable to hold the victims of persecution, new jails were appointed all over the kingdom for their detention. Treason, sedition, or any thing else, formed the pretence; but religion was the cause. The profession and maintenance of the catholic faith was made treason.* The various instruments of her tyranny are related in the appendix to Hume's Elizabeth. The different sorts of punishment, inflicted on those incarcerated for their religion, in the tower of London, are thus described by a prisoner, in the fifth year of his confinement. "Solitary confinement, without books, pens, ink, paper, or any intercourse with other prisoners, with a turnkey to watch every one at his peculiar cell. Seven kinds of punishment. 1. The black-hole; a subterraneous cavern, twenty feet deep, without light. 2. A most narrow cell, in which one can scarcely stand, called Little ease, on account of the uneasiness it gives. 3. The Rack; a machine impelled by wooden wheels, which violently pulls the limbs from each other. 4. The Scavenger's daughter; an iron wheel, by which the hands, head and feet are forcibly bent together. 5. Iron Gloves, grievously torturing the hands. 6. Chains on the arms. 7. Chains on the legs. When one computes the variety of tortures inflicted here during the last four years, one may easily guess the vast sufferings of the catholics in the ten other prisons of this city, and in the multiplied jails of the kingdom, during a reign of twenty-seven years." * See ut supra, Vol. I. p. 455. + Ibid. p. 458, &c.

She reigned fourteen years longer, the scourge of the catholics of Ireland.

From a view of all the measures, foreign and domestic, of this reign, O'Neil was justified in proclaiming to his countrymen, that Elizabeth's wars on the Irish were for displanting antient generation, and for planting heresy on their ruins. He was prophetic in announcing, that if they gave not their helping hands to national independence, they would bring great ruin and calamity on themselves. That extermination was their object, appears from their not accepting the homage of the Irish on any reasonable terms; such as, liberty of conscience, and security of property, being objects for the insurance of which governments are chiefly appointed and supported. From their forcing English laws, while they made them abominable instruments of rapine and cruelty, as we have seen, in the different Irish territories, to which they sent such profligate marauders as Willis, in quality of sheriffs. From the infernal means practised and avowed, for the reduction of Ireland; forgery, famine, treachery, assassination, and other diabolical stratagems. From their inhumanity, in admitting none to pardon, unless he first betrayed or murdered some of his friends; a condition more intolerable to a man of honor than death; they manifested their intention to go on with the work of death until extermination was accomplished. Consequently, all the odium of that detestable crusade against the religion, lives and properties of the Irish, and of

the hellish barbarities employed to subjugate them, lie at the door of that execrable fury, and her hardened infuriate counsellors and ministers. None of her apologists can justify or acquit her of the perfidious murder of Mary queen of Scots, over whom, as a foreigner and a queen, she had no jurisdiction, chiefly from her hatred to the catholic religion, after inviting her by letters, replete with insidious blandishments, and treacherous professions of friendship, to come to England, as to an asylum from the troubles which persecuted her in Scotland. Actuated by the same hatred, she deprived her of the rites of the church at her last moments; and, instead of suffering a catholic clergyman to attend her, sent an unfeeling, anti-christian brute, to torment and plague her with bigotted nonsense of denunciations, unless she recanted previous to her execution.

Thus miserably expired the Milesian power, after subsisting in Ireland three thousand years; sometimes struggling with difficulties, oftener in splendor, and the most honorable kind of glory; sanctity, learning, hospitality, charity, valor and honor; the merit of diffusing religion, learning and useful arts, among several barbarous nations, the English for instance, as Bede, Alfred, and Cambden testify.

Besides the forementioned causes of their decline, two others may be noticed, verifying the adage, "Pride will get a fall." It was the pride of the provincial kings, unwilling to acknowledge the controul of superiors, that pre

vented the restoration of the monarchy and the states, during the long interregnum of 440 years. The pride of the house of Heber, opposed the patriotic efforts of O'Nial and O'Connor, for restoring the constitution, by crowning Edward Bruce, descended from Heremon, king of Ireland. The same spirit of pride made the Milesians averse to the mechanical arts and traffic, in general to all laborious occupations unattended by eclat or notice; consequently, the towns were always in the possession of foreigners, Phenicians, Carthaginians, Danes and English, one of the principal causes of their final overthrow. In music, poetry, and other branches of learning; in athletic exercises, and feats of arms; in all pursuits that draw attention, and lead to fame, their superior abilities of mind and body shone forth. In such pursuits they could display energy, perseverance and patience unequalled. The remaining history of Ireland, may justly be called the history of the English colonists; as taking the lead in every transaction of importance, and using the remains of the Milesians as instruments.

Hitherto Leland was partial enough to the settlers, but since the demon of discord forced religious parties on the Irish, the bane of Ireland, as lord Clare justly called it, the national partizan is lost in the protestant bigot. From the beginning of this reign, James I. they may expect to share his invectives along with the more antient natives. He begins by a false statement, that religion had no share in the wars of the Irish

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