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faith, and of the sanctity of treaties, the ordinary
wholesale slaughters, the planned murders, the
concerted massacres, which have been inflicted
upon the Irish people by the English Govern.
ments.

I HUMBLY inscribe the following Memoir to
Her most gracious Majesty the Queen; not in the
shape of a dedication, or with the presumptuous
hope of my being able to produce any work of
sufficient interest to occupy the Royal mind. Yet,
It has pleased the English people in general to
there is nothing more desirable than that the
Sovereign of these realms should understand the forget all the facts in Irish history. They have
real nature of Irish history; should be aware of been also graciously pleased to forgive themselves
And the Irish people would
how much the Irish have suffered from English all those crimes!
misrule; should comprehend the secret springs of forgive them likewise, if it were not that much of
Irish discontent; should be acqainted with the the worst spirit of the worst days still survives.
eminent virtues which the Irish nation have exhi.The system of clearance of tenants at the present
bited in every phasis of their singular fate; and,|| day, belongs to, and is a demonstration of, that
above all, should be intimately acquainted with
the confiscations, the plunder, the robbery, the
domestic treachery, the violation of all public

hatred of the Irish people which animated the ad-
vice of Spenser and the conduct of Cromwell.

It is quite true that at the present day Judges

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and sustained as the nucleus of that anti-Irish fac tion which would once again transplant the Catholics of Ireland to the remotest regions, if that faction had the power to do so; and which actu. ally drives those Catholics to transport themselves

are not bribed with "four shillings in the pound," ||-prime favorites at the Castle, countenanced
to be paid out of the property in dispute; but,
may not prejudice and bigotry produce unjust
judgments, as well as pecuniary corruption ?—
And, are those persons free from reproach, or
from guilt, who are ready to select for the Bench
of justice, men whose sole distinguishing charac-in multitudes to every country out of Ireland.
teristic has been the exhibition of their animosity
to the religion and to the people of Ireland?

Did Stanley show none of the temper of Ireton
in his Coercion Bill? Is none of the spirit of
Coote or of Parsons to be found (in a mitigated
form) in those who refuse to the Catholic people
of Ireland their just share of elective or municipal
franchises; and who insist that the Irish shall re-
main an inferior and a degraded caste, deprived of||
that perfect equality of civil and religious liberty
of franchises and privileges-which equality could
alone constitute a Union, or render a Union tolera.
ble?

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I wish to arouse the attention of the Sovereign and of the honest portion of the English people to the wrongs which Ireland has suffered, and which Ireland is suffering from British misrule. The Irish people are determined to preserve their alle giance to the Throne broken and intact but they are equally determined to obtain justice for themselves; to insist on the restoration of their native Parliament, and to persevere in that demand without violating the law; but also without remitting or relaxing their exertions, until the 'ob. ject is achieved and success attained.

What the Sovereign and the Ssatesmen of Eng. land should understand is, that the Irish people feel and know, that there cannot happen a more heavy misfortune to Ireland than the prosperity and power of Great Britain. When Britain is powerful, the anti-Irish faction in this country are encouraged, fostered, promoted; Irish rights are derided; the grievances of Ireland are scoffed at; we are compelled to receive stinted franchises or none; limited privileges, or none!--to submit to a political inferiority, rendered doubly afflictive by the contrast with the advantages enjoyed by the people of England and the people of Scotland. The Tory Landlord class-exterminators and all

N. B.

The worst result of British prosperity is, the protection it gives to the hard-hearted and bigoted class among the Irish Landlords.

It is also of the utmost importance that the Sovereign and Statesmen of England should be apprised that the people of Ireland know and feel that they have a deep and vital interest in the weakness and adversity of England. It was not for themselves alone that the Americans gained the victory over Burgoyne at Saratoga. They conquered for Irish as well as for American freedom. Nor was it for France alone that Dumourier defeated the Austrian army at Gemappe.-The Catholics of Ireland participated in the fruits of that victory.

At the present day it would be vain to attempt to conceal the satisfaction the people of Ireland feel at the fiscal embarrassments of England.— They bitterly and cordially regret the sufferings and privations of the English and Scotch artisans and operatives. But they do not regret the weakness of the English Government, which results from fading commerce and failing manufacture. For the woes of each suffering individual they have warm compassion and lively sympathy.From the consequent weakness of the Govern. ment party, they derive no other feelings than those of satisfaction and of hope.

Was ever folly--was ever fatuity so great, as is evinced in the system of governing such a country as Ireland in such a manner as to create and continue the sentiments and opinions which I have expressed, and feebly endeavored to describe?

HER MAJESTY's most faithful,
most dutiful, and
most devoted Subject,
DANIEL O'CONNELL.

1ST FEBRUARY, 1843.

The proofs and illustrations in this Volume come down to the Restoration. The Second Volume will bring them down to the present period.

NOTE BY THE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS.

The Second Volume of this work will be published in uniform style with the present one, immediately on its receipt from
Dublin, and within six weeks after it is published in Ireland.

AN HISTORICAL MEMOIR

ON

IRELAND AND THE IRISH.

CHAPTER I.

YEARS 1172-1612.

SEC. 1. The English dominion in Ireland com. menced in the year 1172. It was for some centuries extended over only an inconsiderable portion of the island. From various causes the English district or Pale sometimes augmented in, size, sometimes diminished. It did not become generally diffused over Ireland until the last years of Queen Elizabeth, nor universally so, until shortly after the accession of King James the First. The success of the forces of Queen Elizabeth was achieved by means the most horrible; treachery, murder, wholesale massacre, and de. liberately created famine. Take the last instance: the growing crops were year after year destroyed, until the fairest part of Ireland, and in particular the province of Munster, was literally depopulated. I give here one quotation. It is from the English Protestant historian Morrison: No 'spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of the towns, and especially in wasted countries, than 'to see multitudes of these poor people, the Irish, dead, with their mouths all colored green by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could ⚫rend above ground.'

Mark! Illustrious Lady-oh! mark! The most frequent spectacle was, multitudes of dead —of Irish dead-dead of hunger! Lady, after having endeavored to sustain life by devouring, after the fashion of the beasts of the field, the wild-growing herbs. They were dead in multitudes and none to bury them! This was the consummation of the subjugation of the Irish after a contest of 400 years.

Never was a people on the face of the globe so cruelly treated as the Irish.

§ 2. The Irish people were not received into allegiance or to the benefit of being recognized as subjects until the year 1612, only 228 years ago, when the Statute 11 James I. cap. 5, was enacted. That Statute abolished all distinctions of race between English and Irish, with the intent 'that,' as the Statute expresses it,' they may grow 'into one nation, whereby there may be an utter 'oblivion and extinguishment of all former dif'ferences and discorde betwixt them.'

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§ 3. During the four hundred and forty years,

that intervened between the commencement of the English dominion in 1172 and its completion in 1612, the Irish people were known only as the "Irish Enemies." They were denominated' Irish Enemies' in all the Royal Proclamations, Royal Charters, and Acts of Parliament, during that period. It was their legal and technical description.

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4. During that period the English were prohibited from intermarrying with the Irish, from having their children nursed by the wives of Irish Captains, Chiefs, or Lords; and what is still from sending goods, wares, or merchandizes for more strange, the English were also prohibited sale, or selling them upon credit or for ready money to the Irish.

descent might murder a mere Irish man or woman § 5. During that time any person of English with perfect impunity. Such murder was no more a crime in the eye of the law, than the killing of a rabid or ferocious animal.

native Irishman had made legal submission and 6. There was indeed this distinction, that if had been received into English allegiance, he could no longer be murdered with impunity, for his murder was punishable by a small pecuniary fine: a punishment not for the moral crime of murdering a man, but for the social injury of depriving the State of a servant. Just as, at no remote period, the white man in several of our West Indian Colonies was liable to pay a fine for killing a negro, only because an owner was thereby deprived of a slave.

CHAPTER II. YEARS 1612-1625. 'Residue of the reign of King James the First.'

SEC. 1. I have traced the first period of Anglo-Irish History by a few of its distinctive characteristics. It comprised a period of 440 years of internal war, rapine, and massacre. The second period consists only of thirteen years, but possesses an interest of a different and a deeper character.

§ 2. Unhappily there had grown up during the first period another, and alas! a more inveterate source of differences and discorde' between the people. I mean the Protestant Reformation. I

am not now to give any opinion on the religious the perpetrator of this bribery, STRAFFORD, that grounds of that all-important measure. I do not he actually boasted, that he had thus made the treat of it as a theologian. I speak of it merely Chief Baron and other Judges' attend to the afhistorically, as a fact having results of a most in-fair as if it were their own private business.' fluential nature.

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§ 3. The native Irish universally, and the natives of English descent generally, rejected the Reformation. It was embraced but by comparatively few, and thus the sources of differences and discorde' were perpetuated. The distinction of race was lost. Irish and English were amal. gamated for the purpose of enduring spoil and oppression under the name of Catholics. The party which the English Government supported was composed of persons lately arrived in Ireland, men who, of course, took the name of

'Protestants.'

§ 4. The intent of the statute of 1612 was thus frustrated, the discorde' between the Protestant and the Catholic parties prevented the Irish from 'growing into one nation,' and still prevents them from being 'one nation.' The fault however has been and still is with the Government. Is it not time it were totally corrected?

§ 5. The reign of James the First was distinguished by crimes committed on the Irish people under the pretext of Protestantism. The entire of the province of Ulster was unjustly confiscated, the natives were executed on the scaffold, or slaughtered with the sivord, a miserable remnant were driven to the fastnesses of remoto moun tains, or the wilds of almost inaccessible bogs Their places were filled with Scotch adventurers, aliens in blood and in religion. Devastation equal to that committed by King James ir Ulster was never before seen in Christendom save in Ire land. In the Christian world there never was a people so cruelly treated as the Irish.

§ 6. The jurisdiction of Parliament being now extended all over Ireland, King James created in one day forty close boroughs, giving the right to elect two members of Parliament in each of these boroughs to thirteen Protestants, and this, in order to deprive his Catholic subjects of their natural and just share of representation.

CHAPTER III.
YEARS 1625-1660.

§2. By these unjust and wicked means the ministers of Charles the First despoiled for the use of the Crown, the Irish Catholic people of upwards of one million of arable acres, besides a considerably greater extent of land taken from the right owners, and granted to the rapacious individuals by whom the spoliation was effected.

§ 3. The civil war ensued. Forgetting all the crimes committed against them, the Irish Catholics adhered with desperate tenacity to the party of the King. The Irish Protestants, some sooner and others later, joined the usurping powers.

§ 4. During that civil war, the massacres committed on the Irish by St. Leger, Monroe, Tichbourne, Hamilton, Grenville, Ireton, and Cromwell, were as savage and as brutal, as the horrible feats of Attila or Ghengis Khan.

§ 5. In particular the history of the world presents nothing more shocking and detestable, than the massacres perpetrated by O'Brien, Lord Inchiquin in the Cathedral of Cashel; by Ireton, at Limerick, and by Cromwell in Drogheda and

Wexford.

Of the

§ 6. When the war had ceased, Cromwell collected, as the first-fruits of peace, eighty thousand Irish in the southern parts of Ireland, to transplant them to the West India Islands. As many as survived the process of collection were embarked in transports for these islands. eighty thousand, in six years, the survivors did not amount to twenty individuals!!! Eighty thousand Irish at one blow deliberately sacrificed, by a slow but steady cruelty, to the Moloch of English domination!!! Eighty thousand-Oh God of mercy!

§ 7. Yet all these barbarities ought to be deemed light and trivial, compared with the crowning cruelty of the enemies of Ireland. The Irish were refused civil justice. They were still more atrociously refused historical justice, and accused of being the authors and perpetrators of assassinations and massacres, of which they were only the victims.

§ 8. No people on the face of the earth were ever treated with such cruelty as the Irish.

CHAPTER IV.
YEARS 1660-1692.

SEC. 1. The reign of Charles the First began under different auspices. The form of oppression and robbery varied-the substance was still the same. Iniquitous law took place of the bloody SEC 1. We are arrived at the Restoration-an sword: the soldier was superseded by the judge; and for the names of booty and plunder, the event of the utmost utility to the English and words forfeiture and confiscation were substituted. Scotch royalists, who were justly restored to their The instrument used by the Government was the properties. An event, which consigned irrevoca'Commission to enquire into defective titles.' The bly and for ever to British plunderers, and espeKing claimed the estates of the Irish people in cially to the soldiers of Ireton and Cromwell, the three provinces. This commission was instituted properties of the Irish Catholic people, whose fato enforce that claim. It was a monstrous tribu-thers had contended against the usurped powers nal: an attempt was made to bribe juries to find to the last of their blood and their breath. § 2. The Duke of York, afterward James the for the Crown-that attempt failed. Then the Jurors, who hesitated to give verdicts against the Second, took to his own share of the plunder, people, were fined, imprisoned, ruined. The about eighty thousand acres of lands belonging Judges were not so chary-they were bribed-to Irish Catholics, whose cause of forfeiture was aye, bribed, with four shillings in the pound of nothing more than that they had been the friends the value of all lands recovered from the subjects and supporters of his murdered father, and the enby the Crown before such Judges. And so to-emies of his enemies. tally lost to all sense of justice or of shame was

§3. Yet such was in the Irish nation the in

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