declined, that the last disabilities of the Dissenters were removed.

It appeared probable in the early years of the eighteenth century that the most formidable Church conflicts in Ireland would be those between the Established Church and the Presbyterians. But the expectation was not fulfilled. The Presbyterians were, it is true, free from the innumerable restrictions and oppressions relating to property and to education which ground the Catholics to the dust, but they soon found that Ireland was no country for an enterprising and ambitious population. The commercial restrictions had struck a deathblow to its prosperity, and as leases fell in, and as famine after famine swept over the land, the emigration of Presbyterians continually increased, diminishing their numbers, and carrying away their more enterprising members. At the same time powerful intellectual causes were corroding their belief. Few probably of those who protested against the introduction into the Toleration Act of all subscription to the doctrinal Articles of the Church of England, anticipated that the Toleration Act would be immediately followed by a protest on the part of many Presbyterian ministers. against a subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith. But the principles of Locke, of Hoadly, and of Hutcheson were abroad. A rationalistic spirit which revolted against all formularies intended to check the freedom of theological inquiry was widely diffused among educated men. It was especially strong in the University of Glasgow, where a large proportion of the Irish Presbyterians were educated, and it found a very able leader in Ireland in a young Presbyterian minister named Abernethy. With the authority of human formularies the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity speedily gave way, and Arian, or semi-Arian, doctrines became common in the Presbyterian pulpit. The body

6

was thus divided against itself. Religious controversy passed from questions of Church government to questions of dogma; a tone of thought began to prevail which was wholly incompatible with the old fanaticism, and many who were scandalised at the new doctrines took refuge in the Established Church. In 1726 the New Light Movement,' as it was called, culminated in an open schism, twelve congregations with their ministers seceding and announcing as their distinctive principle freedom from all forms of subscription. The number of the seceders was not greatly increased, but they carried with them much of the culture of the body, and they exercised a wide influence beyond their border.

This schism was followed by another of a very different kind, but which had some of the same results. The lay patronage, which was the proximate cause of the schism of the Associate Presbytery in Scotland, did not exist in Ireland, but the main object of the movement was to revive the old fanaticism of the League and Covenant in an age when all the strongest intellectual tendencies were in a very different direction. About 1746 the secession spread to Ireland, and as early as 1752 a very curious information, sworn by some Dissenting farmers of Donegal before the mayor of that county and sent by him to the Government, described the seceders in the North of Ireland as already reckoning some thousands.2 The ministers were accustomed, the deponents state, to oblige their followers to swear the Solemn League and Covenant for the

1 July 1725. Bishop Nicholson wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury of the Presbyterians: • Their anti-Trinitarian New Lights have much distracted and disjointed them; so that our churches (not only in this diocese, but throughout the whole

province) fill apace.' British Museum Add. MSS. 6116, p. 283.

2 Presentments of the Grand Juries, county Donegal. Sworn before Andrew Knox. See, too, Reid's Hist. of the Irish Presbyterians.

extirpation of Popery and Prelacy, they refused to take the oath of allegiance to any sovereign who had not subscribed the Covenant, they denounced as sinful the Scotch Union, the oath of abjuration, the test clause, the form of kissing the book when swearing, the superstitious practice of keeping holidays at the close of December, the superstitious worship of the Church of England set up in every corner of the land. The new preachers found much acceptance among the poorest and most ignorant of the Presbyterians of the North, and many seceding congregations were formed, but they appear to have been merely simple-minded and wellmeaning fanatics, and they exercised no political influence on the country. The main body of the Presbyterians, however, was somewhat weakened, and it was more and more confirmed in a moderation of doctrine which contributed largely to religious harmony in Ireland.

Still more important than the conflict between the Church and the Nonconformists was that between the English and the Irish interests. The latter had, indeed, no sympathy or connection with the great majority of the Irish people, but it represented the English colony, it aimed at a government intended for its benefit, and it included a large amount of political discontent. In the Irish as in the English Church the prevailing doctrine of passive obedience alienated some of the clergy from the Revolution, and there are a very few instances of Irish Protestants being accused of connection with the Pretender, but on the whole Jacobitism was probably extremely rare among them. The owners of immense masses of confiscated land, scattered thinly anong a subjugated Catholic population, would have been little short of mad had they detached themselves from the English Government and the Protestant succession; and the proceedings of the Parliament of Janes II, remained to show the spoliation which would

have inevitably followed a renewed Catholic ascendency. Still there was a large amount of deep, sullen, and aimless discontent, due in almost equal proportions to the merits and the faults of the government of William. On the one hand, that rare enlightenment which led him at one stage of his career to propose as the solution of the religious difficulty an equal division of the Church property between the contending sects, at another to sign the Articles of Limerick, at a third to sanction the wise and generous policy of restoring on different pretexts to impoverished Catholic families about one-seventh of the confiscated lands which were not included under the Treaty of Limerick, placed him far above the sympathy of fanatics and tyrants. On the other hand, he must bear a large share in the responsibility of that commercial legislation which blasted as in an hour the rising prosperity of the nation, and was the most crushing disaster that ever befell Irish Protestantism. The poverty of the country was greatly aggravated by the Revolution, while the expenses of the Government were increased. Patronage and pensions were distributed with quite as little regard to its interests as under the Stuarts. The Irish Parliament was, it is true, convoked anew, but only because additional supplies were required. The English Parliament lost no occasion of asserting the dependent position of its weaker sister, and the diminution of the power of the Crown, and the aggrandisement of the English commercial classes, were far from advaitageous to Ireland. The King had no interest opposed to the general prosperity of the nation, and the richer it became the more his hereditary revenue would ris, But the very first principle of English commercial policy was to drive every competitor from the market, to crush in the very germ every trade or industry tlat might one day rival its own.

A power actuated by such dispositions exercised an almost absolute authority over Irish affairs, and it is not surprising that even among the Protestants discontent should have been very rife. Jacobite agents, deceived by their wishes and realising imperfectly the deep chasm that separated the Protestant from the Catholic, easily imagined that it might be employed for their purposes. Among the Jacobite papers of the Cardinal who managed the affairs of the Catholics in England in the reigns of William and Anne, there is one on the state of Ireland, drawn up in the early part of the latter reign, which gives a vivid picture of the kind of projects that were floating in many minds. It is certain,' the writer says, 'if one examines closely the affairs of Ireland, that even the Protestants would gladly do all in their power to free themselves from the tyranny of the English, as these latter destroy their commerce and their liberty, bind them by what laws they please, overrule both their Courts of Justice and their Parliament, and subject them to innumerable other inconveniences. But the Protestants can undertake nothing for their deliverance for want of the assistance of the Catholics, who outnumber them, and who are their enemies on account of the land that has been unjustly confiscated.' It was possible, the agent thought, to offer such inducements to the Irish as would put an end to their antagonism and unite both parties against the Government of the Revolution. In the first place Ireland should be rendered independent, not of the King but of England, its Parliament being recognised as possessing the same powers as that of Scotland. In the next place the question of the confiscated land must be boldly dealt with. It was impossible to do anything for the Catholics whose property had been confiscated under Elizabeth, and this was of the less importance because much of that land was in