I. 1700 The great folks, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, CHAP. went and came between Dublin and the London season; bishops applying for convoys to Holyhead, and a sound vessel for my coach and twelve horses;'1 peers and judges asking permission to take with them their 4,000 or 3,000 ounces of wrought plate duty free for my own use.' 2 The insurrection had ceased to heave, but the death of the Duke of Gloucester and a little later of the King, revived the has not been able to reach them. You also, like him, live in a prince's court, and manage the affairs of state. I'm now very inclinable to believe the transmigration of souls according to that of Pythagoras, for certainly Joseph's soul has crept into your body; and the very same Joseph which presided in Pharaoh's court is even now in the secretary's office in the Castle of Dublin. I'd fain know if you remember that passage between you and Potiphar's wife, when you left your garment in her hand. Twas certainly an unpardonable crime so to treat the lady having so fair an opportunity. Had I been in your place I should certainly have argued the case a little with Marget, and have been elbow-deep in the fleshpots of Egypt. In the first place, my hearty thanks to you for all I have. In the next, may you live as long as Joseph did, and after death be where he is, which shall always be the prayer of yours, RICHARD DAWSON.' The customs appointment did not save the unlucky Richard. The fleshpots of Egypt' and the whiskey tumblers of Cork brought him early to his end, and he died two years after in great misery. The secretary does not seem to have wished to keep his relations too near him. His brother-in-law, Charles Carr, who had taken orders, was sent to an incumbency in Donegal. He, too, writes his gratitude : 'Dear brother, Last night I got safe to the famous city of Raphoe. I hope all friends in the little city of Dublin are well. When I have time to look about me you shall have a more particular account of this place, which Haly Paly was so much against the building of. Tomorrow I design for my parish, which is twenty-five miles nearer to the world's end. If you have any service to the man in the moon, or any of his neighbours, I'll hand 'em up a letter for you. The bishop and all friends here give their service to you. I desire you'll send the enclosed to Ballyrothery, and if any letters come to you for me that you'd frank them hither. No more at present, but duty to my mother, and love and service to my sister and wee ones, and wherever else it is due. Yours most affectionately, 'CHARLES CARR. 'Raphoe, July 14, 1704.' -Dawson MSS. Dublin Castle. 1 'The Bishop of Derry to Dawson, July 7, 1704.' Ibid. 26 Application to the Viceroy, June 7, 1703.' Ibid. II. 1700 BOOK hopes of the Jacobites. With the accession of Anne, the High Churchmen took courage, and again struck at the Dissenters. Bishop King wrote to London to beg that the Regium Donum might cease. The Presbyterian marriages, hitherto connived at, were declared illegal, and prosecutions were threatened for incontinency. The Presbyterians complained to the Earl of Rochester. The Lords Justices, Archbishop Marsh, and Lord Drogheda replied to Rochester's inquiries, that the treatment of the Dissenters was peculiarly mild. They were of opinion, that if the Bishops should desist altogether from the prosecutions, the Dissenters would be encouraged to make further encroachments on the Church, and their own clergy would be too much discouraged.1 1 The Lords Justices to the Earl of Rochester, 1702.' Clarendon Correspondence. CHAPTER II. FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. SECTION I. II. 1700 THOUGH the name of Cromwell was mentioned only CHAP. with execration; though all parties in Ireland, Catholic and Protestant, Dissenters and Churchmen, contended with each other which should most passionately denounce the memory of the usurper and parricide, yet in the face of the resentment of England at the efforts of the Irish legislature to assert its independence, the savage retaliation for the refusal of the Security Act, and the miserable prospects which now lay before the dependent kingdom, thoughtful Irishmen began to look back regretfully on one feature of the Protector's policy, and earnestly to desire that it might be revived. The shadow of a separate national existence might gratify their pride, but was dearly bought at the price of national ruin. A second conflict between the two Parliaments might lead to the suppression of their liberties and to military government. Under the short-lived Legislative Union, Ireland had enjoyed free trade and every advantage of English citizenship. Her disabilities had commenced with the restoration of her constitution; and the more she made her constitution a reality, the more grievous became the burden under which she was crushed. The artisans who had BOOK II. 1700 been employed in her woollen trade were now leaving her in thousands. Her wool, the most valuable of her products, she was forced to sell to England only, on England's own terms, and was at once robbed of occupation for her people, and of the price which she might have commanded for her raw material, had she been permitted to dispose of it elsewhere. Under such treatment the two countries became daily more estranged. Ireland considered England unjust and tyrannical, England considered Ireland ungrateful and unmanageable. Neither understood the other; neither would make allowance for the other; and, therefore, each went deeper into the courses which most exasperated the other. The interests of Protestantism, the interests of order and liberty, were identical on both sides of St. George's Channel. To England it was all-important that the Anglo-Irish should identify themselves rather with her than with the native race; but she thought herself secure of them, as if for their own sakes they must adhere to the mother country, being unable to maintaim themselves without her help. With the same recklessness with which she mismanaged later her other colonies, she was forcing them in self-defence to make common cause with the Celts, among whom their fortunes were flung. The true remedy, could England have seen it, was the abolition of the Irish Parliament, and a political incorporation with Great Britain. The Legislative Union with Scotland was already determined on, the details only requiring to be adjusted. At the accession of Queen Anne, could the English manufacturers have looked beyond their ledgers, a union with Ireland could have been brought about with even greater facility. The Catholics were in no condition to resist. The Protestants rather regarded their exclusion from the English Parliament as a wrong, than valued or wished to preserve the counterfeit at Dublin. At that time they would have welcomed gratefully a proposal for union, and Irish grievances and the Irish character, bred of separation, would have dissolved into things of history. A contemporary tract describes, with curious minuteness, the feelings on the subject entertained in Ireland by reasonable and educated men.1 6 The estates of the English settlers' might be held,' the writer said, ' to belong to England, from the sums of money which England had spent to rescue them from the Irish; and yet, although so closely interested in the welfare of a country which had cost her so dear, England looked on Ireland only as a rival which, if allowed to prosper, might become dangerous. She did not trouble herself to distinguish between the indigenous Celts and the colonists, but regarded them all in the gross as one people, and one people indeed, they were in the way to become, unless England took more pains to understand the Irish problem.' 'While,' so this writer continued, we looked on ourselves as a distinct kingdom with a legislative power within ourselves, we were more ready to forget England and to bandy and side with the Irish. This bred aversion in the English mind, and increased ours to them. We seemed strange and remote to them, a people setting up for ourselves. They looked on us as at a distance. They wished Ireland sunk in the sea, when they might with the same pains have wished it turned 1 Considerations concerning Ireland, and particularly in respect of a Union. Undated, but written 6 evidently immediately before the СНАР. II. 1702 |