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Ireland of either wool or woollen manufactures to any country but England, to any port in England except six on St. George's Channel, and only from the six towns of Dublin, Waterford, Youghal, Kingsale, Cork, and Waterford.1

The belief that, with a coast line like that of Ireland, and with a population which they were punishing for disloyalty, such restrictions could really be enforced, was one of those illusions which only the intellect of an English merchant could have entertained. The result of this restriction was to convert the Irish, beyond their other troublesome peculiarities, into a nation of smugglers.

How far England adhered to the linen compact will be told in its place. For the present, Mr. Hely Hutchinson's summary of the story will suffice.

'It is true you promised, in return for the restraints, to encourage our linen manufacture. But how have you done it? By giving large bounties for the making of coarse linen in the Highlands of Scotland-bounties on the exportation of English linenopening the linen manufacture to all persons without serving apprenticeships, and imposing a tax of 30 per cent. on all foreign linens, which has been construed to extend to Irish printed, stained, dyed, striped, or chequered.'

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'Will you,' Hutchinson asked, with prophetic indignation, will you have an increased population employed at home, where they will contribute to the wealth and strength of the state; or shall they emigrate to America, where it is possible they may assist in dismembering the British empire?' 2

1 10 William III. cap. 10. English Acts. 10 William III. cap. 5. Irish Acts.

1 'Hely Hutchinson to the Earl of Buckinghamshire, July 1, 1779." MSS. Record Office, Ireland.

SECTION VI.

THE indignation in England at the rejection of the Security Act had been aggravated by the simultaneous appearance of a book dear to Irish patriotism, by William Molyneux, the member for Dublin, denying the obligation of Ireland to submit to statutes passed by the English Parliament, or to re-enact them unless agreeable to herself. The bitterness with which her commercial prosperity was immediately assailed arose from a belief that Ireland was assuming deliberately an attitude of defiance. The book was fiercely condemned. The House of Commons insisted, in a memorial to the King, that the laws which restrained the Irish Parliament must not be evaded 1 -that Ireland was, and should continue, a dependent country. It is likely they considered weakness and poverty the best securities that could be taken for her submission. Having thus however, with one hand, struck so hard a blow at her welfare, with the other they dragged her, or tried to drag her, out of the slough of intrigue into which she had been tumbled. The want of purpose at the Castle, and the hopeless entanglement of religious and political passions, had left the field wide open to avarice and baseness. The lands available to repay the expenses of the war had melted unaccountably into nothing. Notorious Jacobite peers had recovered their property under the exceptions to the Outlawries Bill. The

1 Parliamentary History, vol. v. p. 1181.

CHAP.
I.

1698

BOOK

II.

1698

Court of Claims, undeterred by the exposures of 1693, had gone on with their work as quietly as if nothing had happened. Estates were granted away. Individuals who began with nothing were enormously rich, but the exchequer was empty as ever. Evidently there was no help in Ireland itself; and the House of Commons in England at last, in angry despair, appointed a committee to ravel out the mystery.

The Court of Claims, seeing their end approaching, made the most of the time remaining to them, admitting shoals of Catholics under the Articles of Limerick who had no business there.' Slowly, and with extreme difficulty, the seven commissioners traced out the scandalous history. So strongly was the corruption at work that their own body was tainted. When they had drawn up their report, four only of them signed it.2 Sir Richard Levinge, one of the dissentients, himself a large sharer in the public plunder, and dreading that he might be made to disgorge it, sent in a conflicting statement; and, to damage his companions, charged them with disloyalty. The accusation was looked into in England, and dismissed. Levinge was sent to the Tower for defamation. The House of Commons voted that the four commissioners had conducted themselves with integrity, courage, and understanding;' and the disposition of the forfeitures they considered so disgraceful,

'One thing seems to us very extraordinary, that more persons were adjudged within the Articles since the commencement of our enquiry than had been since the making of the Articles.'-Report of the Commissioners appointed by Parliament. London, 1700.

2 Francis Annesley, John Tren

chard, James Hamilton, and Henry Langford.

3 Trenchard had described the grant to Lady Orkney as scandalous.' Lady Orkney was the late Queen's favourite, and Levinge hoped he could set the King against the report by denouncing Trenchard.

that there was no remedy but to cancel every grant CHAP. which had been made.'

A vote passed on the 18th January, 1700, 'that the advising, procuring, and framing these grants had occasioned great debts and heavy taxes, and highly reflected on the King's honour, and that the officers and instruments concerned in the same had highly failed in the performance of their duty.'2

Leave was given to bring in a bill to resume the

1 Some of the most glaring instances of misappropriation were mentioned in detail. Among other curious features in the story it appeared, that as many of the persons who had applied for and obtained grants of property had purposely understated its value, so in turn they had been themselves cheated by their agents, who, by similar frauds, had tempted them to dispose of lands worth tens of thousands of pounds for as many hundreds.

Of Catholic proprietors who had been in the rebellion, and were covered by no articles, either of Limerick or Galway, many were never informed against; many were tried, but acquitted. The freeholders who formed the juries, by contracting new friendships with the Irish, or by intermarriage with them, but chiefly through a general dislike of the disposition of the forfeitures, were scarcely willing to find any person guilty, even upon full evidence.'

In Connaught the findings were almost what the forfeiting persons pleased.' Forty persons not covered by articles were tried at Galway. There were few Protestant freeholders, and the juries were formed of gentlemen who, most of them, had been officers in James's army,

and had been protected by the
Galway Articles. All the forty
were in consequence acquitted. Mr.
Kirwan, who was one of them, had
served in a regiment which had
been commanded by the foreman
of the jury. Even in Connaught
there was a difficulty in giving a
verdict in the face of evidence so
conclusive, so one of the jurors
absented himself.

The forfeitures, though in appear-
ance considerable, had been so
handled by the Court as to exhibit
an actual deficiency, the cost of
management being made to exceed
the returns either of sale or rent-
'a thing,' the commissioners re-
marked, that might appear extra-
ordinary till it was observed that
obscure men, who had little or no
property before the rebellion, had
become possessed of considerable
and even very great estates.' The
management had been made so
intricate that the accounts were
purposely unintelligible. The law
officers of the Crown, the members
of the Court, even the Lords Jus-
tices themselves, had feathered
their nests out of the spoils. Lord
Coningsby, though he escaped
impeachment, had richly deserved

it.

2 Parliamentary History, vol. v.

p. 1214.

I.

1700

II.

BOOK grants for the use of the public, and an address on the subject was presented by the entire House to the King.

1700

Conscious of the integrity of his own motives, and irritated at the seeming reflection on his personal conduct, William replied briefly, that no private inclination, but the obligations of justice, had led him to reward those who had served in the reduction of Ireland out of the forfeited estates there. The taxes and debts of which the Commons complained had been occasioned by the wars on the Continent, and England would best consult her honour by taking the burden on herself.

William was thinking of Sydney and De Ruvigny. The Commons, not forgetting them, but differently estimating their merits, were thinking also of the Countess of Orkney and the English taxpayers. "Whoever had advised that answer,' they rejoined, in a temper like the Long Parliament's, 'had used his utmost endeavour to create a misunderstanding and jealousy between the King and his people.'

To William's deep mortification, a Resumption Bill was brought in and carried. Every grant of a forfeiture which had been made in the King's name was declared null. In most instances the lands had been resold, the high persons who had been the recipients of the King's bounty not dreaming of seeking a home for themselves in Ireland; but, as the original gift was invalid, the rights depending on it were invalid also. Allowance was made for improvements, and the claims of those who had laid out money on the lands which they believed to be their own were allowed: but the purchase-money the chasers were left to recover from those to whom they

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