three years' duration, and a war on both sides, like that of 1641, for self-preservation. In the parliament held by James at Dublin, in 1690, the act of settlement was repealed, and above 2,000 persons attainted by name; both, it has been said, perhaps with little truth, against the king's will, who dreaded the impetuous nationality that was tearing away the bulwarks of his throne.* But the magnanimous defence of Derry and the splendid victory of the Boyne restored the protestant cause; though the Irish, with the succour of French troops, maintained for two years a gallant resistance, they could not ultimately withstand the triple superiority of military talents, resources, and discipline. Their bravery, however, served to obtain the articles of Limerick on the surrender of that city; conceded by their noble-minded conqueror, against the disposition of those who longed to plunder and persecute their fallen enemy. By the first of these articles, "the Roman catholics of this kingdom shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as are consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of king Charles II.; and their majesties, as soon as their affairs will permit them to summon a parliament in this kingdom, will endeavour to procure the said Roman catholics such further security in that particular as may preserve them from any disturbance upon the account of their said religion." The second secures to the inhabitants of Limerick and other places then in possession of the Irish, and to all officers and soldiers then in arms, who should return to their majesties' obedience, and to all such as should be under their protection in the counties of Limerick, Kerry, Clare, Galway, and Mayo, all their estates, and all their rights, privileges, and immunities, which they held in the reign of Charles II., free from all forfeitures or outlawries incurred by them.+

This second article, but only as to the garrison of Limerick or other persons in arms, is confirmed by statute some years afterwards. (Irish Stat. 9 Will. III. c. 2.) The first article seems, however, to be passed over. The forfeitures on account of the rebellion, estimated at 1,060,792 acres, were somewhat diminished by restitutions to the ancient possessors under the capitulation; the greater part were lavishly distributed to English grantees. (Parl. Hist. v. 1202.) It appears from hence, that at the end of the seventeenth century, the Irish, or Anglo-Irish catholics could hardly possess above one-sixth or one-seventh of the kingdom. They were still formidable from their numbers and their sufferings; and the victorious party saw no security but in a system of oppression, contained in a series of laws during the reigns of William and Anne, which have scarce a parallel in European history, unless it be that of the protestants in France, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, who yet were but a feeble minority of the whole people. No papist was allowed to keep a school, or to teach any in private houses, except the children of the family. (7 Will. III. c. 4.) Severe penalties were denounced against such as should go themselves or send others for education beyond seas in the Romish religion; and, on probable information given to a magistrate, the burthen of proving the contrary was thrown on the accused; the offence not to be tried by a jury, but by justices at quarter sessions. (Id.) Intermarriages between persons of different

England, was authorised by his court to proceed in a negotiation with Tyrconnel for the separation of the two islands, in case that a protestant should succeed to the crown of England. He had accordingly a private interview with a confidential agent of the lord lieutenant at Chester, in the month of Oct., 1687. Tyrconnel undertook that in less than a year every thing should be prepared.-Id. ii., 281, 288; iii., 430.

* Leland, 537. This seems to rest on the authority of Leslie, which is by no means good. Some letters of Barillon, in 1687, show that James had intended the repeal of the act of settlement. Dalrymple, 257, 263.

See the articles at length in Leland, 619. Those who argue from the treaty of Limerick against any political disabilities subsisting at present do injury to a good cause.

religion, and possessing any estate in Ireland, were forbidden; the children in case of either parent being protestant, might be taken from the other, to be educated in that faith. (9 Will. III. c. 3. 2 Anne, c 6.) No papist could be guardian to any child; but the court of chancery might appoint some relation or other person to bring up the ward in the protestant religion. (9 Will. III. c. 3. 2 Anne, c. 6.) The eldest son, being a protestant, might turn his father's estate in fee simple into a tenancy for life, and thus secure his own inheritance. But if the children were all papists, the father's lands were to be of the nature of gavelkind, and descend equally among them. Papists were disabled from purchasing lands, except for terms of not more than thirty-one years, at a rent not less than two-thirds of the full value. They were even to conform within six months after any title should accrue by descent, devise, or settlement, on pain of forfeiture to the next protestant heir; a provision which seems intended to exclude them from real property altogether, and to render the others almost supererogatory. (Id.) Arms, says the poet, remain to the plundered; but the Irish legislature knew that the plunder would be imperfect and insecure while arms remained; no papist was permitted to retain them, and search might be made at any time by two justices. (7 Will. III. c. 5.) The bare celebration of catholic rites was not subjected to any fresh penalties; but regular priests, bishops, and others claiming jurisdiction, and all who should come into the kingdom from foreign parts, were banished on pain of transportation, in case of neglecting to comply, and of high treason in case of returning from banishment. Lest these provisions should be evaded, priests were required to be registered ; they were forbidden to leave their own parishes; and rewards were held out to informers who should detect the violations of these statutes, to be levied on the popish inhabitants of the country. To have exterminated the catholics by the sword, or expelled them, like the Moriscoes of Spain, would have been little more repugnant to justice and humanity, but incomparably more politic.

*

It may easily be supposed, that no political privileges would be left to those who were thus debarred of the common rights of civil society. The Irish parliament had never adopted the act passed in the 5th of Elizabeth, imposing the oath of supremacy on the members of the commons. It had been full of catholics under the queen and her two next successors. In the second session of 1641, after the flames of rebellion had enveloped almost all the island, the house of commons were induced to exclude, by a resolution of their own, those who would not take that oath; a step which can only be judged in connexion with the general circumstances of Ireland at that awful crisis. In the parliament of 1661, no catholic, or only one, was returned; but the house addressed the lords justices to issue a commission for administering the oath of supremacy to all its members. A bill passed the commons in 1663, for imposing that oath in future, which was stopped by a prorogation; and the duke of Ormond seems to have been adverse to it. (Mountmorres, i. 158.) An act of the English parliament after the Revolution, reciting that "great disquiet and many dangerous attempts have been made to deprive their majesties and their royal predecessors of the said realm of Ireland by the liberty which the popish recusants there have had and taken to sit and vote in parliament," requires every member of both houses of parliament to take the new oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and to subscribe the declaration against transubstantiation before taking his seat. (Ibid. 3 W. & M. c. 2.) This statute was adopted and enacted by the

* 9 W. III., c. 1. 2 Anne, c. 3, s. 7. 8 Anne, c. 3.

+ Carte's Ormond, i., 328. Warner, 212. These writers censure the measure as illegal and mpolitic.

Leland says none; but by lord Orrery's Letters, i., 35, it appears that one papist and one anabaptist were chosen for that parliament, both from Tuam.

Irish parliament in 1782, after they had renounced the legislative supremacy of England under which it had been enforced. The elective franchise, which had been rather singularly spared in an act of Anne, was taken away from the Roman catholics of Ireland in 1715; or, as some think, not absolutely till 1727.*

These tremendous statutes had in some measure the effects which their framers designed. The wealthier families, against whom they were principally levelled, conformed in many instances to the protestant church. The catholics were extinguished as a political body; and, though any willing allegiance to the house of Hanover would have been monstrous, and it is known that their bishops were constantly nominated to the pope by the Stuart princes, they did not manifest at any period, or even during the rebellions of 1715 and 1745, the least movement towards a disturbance of the government. Yet for thirty years after the accession of George I. they continued to be insulted in public proceedings under the name of the common enemy, sometimes oppressed by the enactment of new statutes, or the stricter execution of the old; till in the latter years of George II. their peaceable deportment, and the rise of a more generous spirit among the Irish protestants, not only sheathed the fangs of the law, but elicited expressions of esteem from the ruling powers, which they might justly consider as the pledge of a more tolerant policy. The mere exercise of their religion in an obscure manner had long been permitted without molestation.§

Thus in Ireland there were three nations, the original natives, the Anglo-Irish, and the new English; the two former catholic, except some, chiefly of the upper classes, who had conformed to the church; the last wholly protestant. There were three religions, the Roman catholic, the established or Anglican, and the presbyterian more than one half of the protestants, according to the computation of those times, belonging to the latter denomination. These, however, in a less degree were under the ban of the law as truly as the catholics themselves; they were excluded from all civil and military offices by a test act, and even their religious meetings were denounced by penal statutes. Yet the house of commons after the Revolution always contained a strong presbyterian body, and unable, as it seems, to obtain an act of indemnity for those who had taken commissions in the militia, while the rebellion of 1715 was raging in Great Britain, had recourse to a resolution, that whoever should prosecute any dissenter for accepting such a commission is an enemy to the king and the protestant interest. (Plowden, 243.) They did not even obtain a legal toleration till 1720. (Irish Stat. 6 G. I. c. 5.) It seems as if the connexion of the two islands, and the whole system of constitutional laws in the

* Mountmorres, i., 163. Plowden's Hist. Review of Ireland, i., 263. The terrible act of the second of Anne prescribes only the oaths of allegiance and abjuration for voters at elections, § 24.

+ Such conversions were naturally distrusted. Boulter expresses alarm at the number of pseudo-protestants who practised the law; and a bill was actually passed to disable any one, who had not professed that religion for five years, from acting as a barrister or solicitor. Letters, i., 226. "The practice of the law, from the top to the bottom, is almost wholly in the

hands of these converts.'

Evidence of state of Ireland in Sessions of 1824 and 1825, p. 325 (as printed for Murray). In a letter of the year 1775, from a clergyman in Ireland to archbishop Herring, in the British Museum (Sloane MSS., 4164, 11), this is also stated. The writer seems to object to a repeal of the penal laws, which the catholics were supposed to be attempting; and says they had the exercise of their religion as openly as the protestants, and monasteries in many places.

§ Plowden's Hist. Review of State of Ireland, vol. i., passim.

Sir William Petty, in 1672, reckons the inhabitants of Ireland at 1,100,000; of whom 200,000 English, and 100,000 Scots; above half the former being of the established church."Political Anatomy of Ireland," chap. ii. It is sometimes said in modern times, though I believe erroneously, that the presbyterians form a majority of protestants in Ireland: yet their proportion has probably diminished since the beginning of the eighteenth century.