II. 1730 or burnt in their beds. If they escaped Irish ven- CHAP. geance, they fell under the displeasure of the English Government. The memories of 1641 and of 1690 were still too recent for the Protestants to feel anything but dismay, if those who, in the speeches from the throne were still called their enemies, were allowed quietly to resume the means of destroying them. They were as a garrison set to hold a conquered country. Placed in a position which experience had shown to be supremely perilous, they had undertaken the service in return for the lands of which the inhabitants had been deprived, and they knew themselves to be the objects of the enduring hatred of the dispossessed proprietors. The means originally intended to complete the conquest had been abandoned. The policy pursued towards Irish industry had thinned their numbers, destroyed their employments, taken from them the only means by which Ireland could have been reconciled to their rule; and, because they dared to complain, the persons whom they were set in their places to control, who regarded the Protestant settlers as aliens and robbers, were being allowed quietly to recover the means of recommencing a struggle which at best would be bloody and dangerous. In the summer of 1730, a Catholic gentleman was indicted at Galway for carrying arms in the streets. His religion was avowed; the fact was not disputed. The defence was that the Disarming Act applied only to persons who were alive at the time that it was passed, and on this ground he was acquitted.2 The BOOK IV. 1730 Dublin Catholics at once put on their swords, at once carried pistols in their holsters; and, when they rode into the country, had their half-score or score of armed servants behind them. Two years later, as if deliberately to assert the re-establishment of their right, Lord Gormanston and one of the Barnwells, both Catholics, appeared with swords at the assizes at Trim. They were both popular men, and against them individually there was no ill-feeling; but the grand jury, 'men of fortune, and several of them members of Parliament,' feeling that acquiescence would be a public sanction to the Galway interpretation of the law, met the challenge as boldly as it was made. Gormanston and Barnwell were indicted under the old Disarming Act, and the question was referred to the Dublin judges for decision. The Viceroy, then the Duke of Dorset, was absent in England. An attempt made by the Irish Parliament to pass an explanatory act had been defeated in England by the action of a Catholic agency there. The Catholics had been heard to boast that they could ensure the failure of all future attempts to take their weapons from them.' The Lords Justices, the Primate, the Chancellor, 1 'Boulter to Newcastle, December 4, 1731.' MSS. Record Office. An investigation in the Irish House of Commons in 1733 revealed the means by which money was raised to defeat all bills in England which the Irish Catholics disapproved. They affected to believe that the attempt to disarm them implied an intention to extirpate their religion, and that it was not to be saved except by money.' Collections were made at the chapel doors all over Ireland. Dublin was the focus of the agitation, where the Catholics had confessedly least cause to complain. In the country there was inexplicable languor. ‘I am sorry,' writes one of the Dublin committee to an agent in the south, that with all your exertions you can raise so little in the city and suburbs of so considerable a place as Cork, in the face of the terrible apprehensions most of us have. . . . We don't like pressing the clergy who are so poor, but the clergy should work on their flocks, and not leave the burden upon us who live at Dublin, who have much more just reason to be excused upon this occasion than those and the Speaker of the House of Commons wrote to They flattered themselves that it could not be taken amiss by any foreign court when truly informed of the circumstances, and of the great lenity generally shown to Catholics in Ireland.' The two offenders might not be convicted' after all; and, if they were convicted, the Government might pardon them if it was thought expedient.1 The trial was, perhaps, hurried over in anticipation of the expected answer from England. Gormanston and his companion were found guilty, apologized, and received a pardon, at the unanimous petition of the grand jury. But the assertion of the law was deprived of its force by the imbecility of the Viceroy and his masters. who live remote from the Government, and are always soonest oppressed. I am sorry to find the gentlemen in most parts of the country do not show so great a regard to religion or liberty. We should have but little hope of putting out those bills here if we should have the misfortune of their returning from England without amendments. Our greatest efforts must be to stop them on that side. We want money, therefore, at once.'-'Wolf to Nagle, Decem ber 25, 1733.' Commons' Journals, Walpole's Cabinet, it appears, 1'The Lords Justices to the Duke of Dorset.' MSS. Dublin, 1733. CHAP. II. 1730 BOOK IV. 1739 The Disarming Act had not been rejected in order They were made to under 'I submit it to your Excellencies,' the Viceroy 1 'The Duke of Dorset to the Lords Justices, July 7, 1733.' MSS. II. 1739 a disarming act as indispensable for Ireland's safety, CHAP. and England continued to resist; until, in 1739, her ministers found themselves on the edge of a rupture with Spain. When danger brought them to their senses, they remembered that the Protestants formed after all the sole part of the population of Ireland on whose loyalty they could rely in time of trial, and wavered back to a policy of coercion, which was doubly galling because it had been so long suspended. Encouraged by England's attitude towards them the Irish Catholics had begun naturally to hope for a complete repeal of each and all of their disabilities. In 1739 they presented an address to George the Second, thanking him for the toleration which they enjoyed, and professing the most ardent loyalty. 'They had a just abhorrence,' they said, 'for their forefathers' primitive actions.' They detested 'the thought of rebellion to aid a foreign power against his majesty's interests.' 'They had acquired fortunes by trade, which they desired to invest in land, and found themselves prevented by the severity of the law.' They were oppressed by idle and wicked vagrants informing against their titles, leases, and tenements ;' and they had thought, they said, of emigrating to some country where they might reap the benefits of their labours,'' and leave some stake in lands to their posterity which would secure them to be faithful subjects of the princes under whom they lived.' But they preferred, if it might be permitted, to remain loyal subjects of the English Crown. 'Money,' they said, 'laid out in improving a long lease' would be a security for their good behaviour; and more dependence could be placed on them when they had |