confirmed to them by Louis XV. Many of the exiles were ac panied by their families, but a great many of the women and chil were also left behind, and reduced to a state of utter destitution. wild wailing at the parting scenes in Limerick and Cork, and or shores of Kerry, smote the hearts even of their enemies. Sever the expatriated Irish gentry rose high in the courts and camps d continent, and became the founders of families of distinguished in France, Spain, and Austria; whereas, had they remained at home could only, as Irish Catholics, have participated in the degradati their race and country.

Thus was this unequal struggle brought to a close. Before it menced the Irish had been already reduced by many years of pl and oppression to a state that might well have seemed one of helplessness. They were left almost unaided; for it so happene their French allies did not fight one battle for them. And yet three hard-fought campaigns, it was only the combined forces of land, her foreign allies, and her Protestant colonists of Irelan prevailed against them. The war cost William, according to about £6,637,742, an approximate calculation rather under the than otherwise. During the years 1690 and 1691, William's a Ireland amounted to between 35,000 and 36,000 regular troops, the well-armed and well-trained Protestant militia, who did g duty; and so desirous was his government to terminate the that the lords justices had a proclamation printed offering muc favorable terms than those actually agreed to; but finding o arrival at the camp that negotiations for a capitulation were the document was suppressed, and is therefore known as the proclamation." General Ginkell was, as a reward for his s created earl of Athlone and baron of Aughrim, and obtained a all the forfeited estates of William Dungan, earl of Limerick, counties of Ireland.

↑ Harris's Memoir of Cox, in Ware's Irish Writers, and Leland's History of Ire articles of the Secret Proclamation are not precisely known, but they are presumed to nearly the same as those which were offered, by William to Tirconnell, a little before th Aughrim, and which, as we learn from a letter of the chevalier Charles Wogan to were:-To the Irish Catholics the free exercise of their religion; half the churches of the half the employments, civil and military, if they pleased; and the moiety of their anci ties. The Irish mistrusted these concessions and reiected them

CHAPTER XLII.

FROM THE TREATY OF LIMERICK TO THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

State of Ireland after the departure of the Brigades.-The articles of Limerick violated.-The Catholics reduced to a deplorable condition.-Disposal of the forfeited estates.-William III. and bis Parliament at issue.-Enactment of penal laws in Ireland.-Moylneux's "Case stated."Destruction of the Irish woollen manufacture.-Death of William.-Intolerance of the Protestant colonists.-Penal laws of Queen Anne's reign.-The sacramental test.-Attempts to extirpate the Catholics.-The Palatines (note).-Accession of George I.-Rebellion in Scotland in 1715.Profound tranquillity in Ireland.-Rigorous execution of the penal laws.-Contests between the English and Irish Parliaments.-The latter deprived of its independence.-Bill for more effectually preventing the growth of Popery.-Rise of the patriots in the Irish Parliament.-Dean Swift.Woods' halfpence-Extraordinary excitement.-Frightful state of public morals.-Cardinal Wiseman on the fidelity of the Irish (note).-Accession of George II.-An address from the Catholics treated with contempt.-Primate Boulter.-Charter schools established to proselytise the Catholic children.-Converted Papists suspected.-Distress and emigration.-Fresh rigors against the Catholics.-Proposed massacre.-The great Scottish rebellion of 1745.-Lord Chesterfield in Ireland. Disputes in the Irish Parliament about the surplus revenue.-The patriots weakened by the corrupting policy of the Government.-First movements of the Catholics.-First Catholic Committee.-Discountenanced by the clergy and aristocracy.-Thurot's expedition.-Accession of George III.-The Whiteboys-the Hearts-of-Oak and Hearts-of-Steel Boys.-Efforts of the patriots against the pension list.-Execution of Father Sheehy.-Lord Townsend's administration. The Octennial Bill.-The Irish Parliament struggles for independence.-Outbreak of the American war, and attempts to conciliate Ireland.-Refusal to receive foreign troops.-The Volunteers. Great distress and popular discontent.-Mr. Grattan's resolution of independence.Conduct and resolution of the Volunteers.-The Dungannon resolutions.-Legislative independence of Ireland voted.-New measures of Catholic relief.-Influence of the Volunteers.

W

[A.D. 1691 TO A.D. 1782.]

ITH Sarsfield and his companions in arms departed the bone and sinew of Ireland. Then, indeed, might it be said that the heart of Ireland was broken. Those left behind were a helpless and dispirited, and hence a timid and unresisting people; and it was easy to foresee that when they thus ceased to be formidable, they had little to hope for from the good faith of the victors. Two months had not elapsed from the singing of the treaty of Limerick, when, in open violation of the articles, "the justices of the peace, sheriffs, and other magistrates," says Harris, "presuming on their power in the country, did, in an illegal manner, dispossess several of their majesties' (Catholic) subjects, not only of their goods and chattels, but of their lands and tenements, to the great reproach of their majesties' government;"" and the lords justices, who were compelled to issue a proclamation against the outrageous proceed

*Harris's Life of King William, p. 357.

ings of their subordinates, state in their letter of November 19th, that they had received complaints from all parts of Ireland of treatment of the Irish who had submitted, had their majesties' prot or were included in articles; and that they (the Irish) were so extr terrified with apprehensions of the continuance of that usage tha thousands of them who had quitted the Irish army and went hom the resolution not to go for France, were then come back aga pressed earnestly to go thither, rather than stay in Ireland, where trary to the public faith as well as law and justice, they were rob their substance and abused in their persons." The Protestants exc vehemently against the terms made with the Catholics as bei liberal; it was proclaimed from their pulpits that the peace oug to be observed; they were disappointed in their hopes of obtain the estates of the Papists, and would not yield a shred of the which they claimed for themselves to those over whom foreig had enabled them to prevail. In fine, they were not content to co but should enslave their late foes, and trample them under foo the more these foes were humbled in the dust, the more insole inexorable did the ungenerous victors become. The intolerant de of the Protestant faction were soon to be fully gratified. The disarming of the Irish Catholics was one of the first steps f purpose; the disposal of the forfeited estates was`proceeded Catholics were excluded from the Irish parliament by an act English legislature; the way was prepared for the whole nefario of penal laws; and the native population was reduced to a s abject that oppression might be carried to any extent against the impunity.*

Describing the results of the war of 1691, the great Edmund Burke says:-" The r native Irish, and in a great measure, too, of the first races of the English, was completely acco The new interest was settled with as solid a stability as anything in human affairs can All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression, which were made after the 1 were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people, victors delighted to trample upon, and were not at all afraid to provoke. They were not of their fears but of their security. They who carried on this system looked to the irresis of Great Britain for their support in their acts of power. They were quite certain that no of the natives would be heard on this side of the water (in England) with any other than those of contempt and indignation. Their cries served only to augment their tortu Indeed, at that time in England the double name of the complainants, Irish and Papistsbe hard to say singly which was the most odious-shut up the hearts of every one again (Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, p. 44.) Sir Richard Cox, the anti-Irish author of the Anglicana, in a letter of October 24th, 1705 (preserved in the Southwell papers), says and gentry of the Irish were "destroyed in the rebellion or gone to France; those wh destitute of horses, arms, money, capacity, and courage. Five out of six of the Irish insignificant slaves, fit for nothing but to hew wood and draw water." Swift was in th

DISPOSAL OF THE FORFEITED ESTATES.

675

We learn from official sources that the number of Irish outlawed by king William's English parliament for their fidelity to king James II., whom they regarded as their legitimate sovereign, was 3,921, and that the Irish forfeited estates amounted to 1,060,792 acres, of the annual value, at that time, of £211,623. The sale of this property introduced into Ireland a fresh set of adventurers, being the third migration of new settlers to displace the old race since the reign of Elizabeth.* The Catholics of the native and early Anglo-Irish races still, indeed, constituted the great bulk of the population, but they were not recognised as having a political existence; and although the Protestant colonists raised disputes among themselves, and formed an "English" and an "Irish" party of their own, they were unanimous on the point of denying all civil rights to the Catholic Irish. The question of the independence of the Irish parliament began, immediately after the war, to excite a lively interest. In the parliament which met in Dublin on the 5th of October, 1692, the feeling on this subject ran so high that a bill sent from England for imposing certain duties, was rejected by the commons without any ground for the rejection being assigned save that "the said bill had not its rise in this house." This vote was passed the 28th of October, and on the 3rd November lord Sydney, the lord lieutenant, went, unexpectedly, and

saying that the Irish Papists were "altogether as inconsiderable as the women and children." (See Letter on the Sacramental Test, written in 1708; the Drapier's Letters, &c.) And lord Macaulay, who loved to dwell on any expression implying contempt for the Irish, endeavoured to make this language stronger. "The Protestant masters of Ireland," he writes, "while ostentatiously professing the political doctrines of Locke and Sidney, held that a people who spoke the Celtic tongue and heard mass could have no concern in those doctrines. Molyneux questioned the supremacy of the English legislature. Swift assailed with the keenest ridicule and invective every part of the system of government. Lucas disquieted the administration of lord Harrington. Boyle overthrew the administration of the duke of Dorset. But neither Molyneux nor Swift, neither Lucas nor Boyle, ever thought of appealing to the native population. They would as soon have thought of appealing to the swine." (Hist. of Eng., vol. vi., p. 119.)

Lord Chancellor Clare, in his celebrated speech on the Union, referring to this Williamite confiscation, says: "It is a very curious and important speculation to look back to the forfeitures of Ireland, incurred in the last century. The superficial contents of the island are calculated at 11,042,682 acres," (that is, of arable land, according to the survey of Ireland then received). “In the reign of James I. the whole of the province of Ulster was confiscated, containing 2,836,837 acres; set up by the court of claims at the restoration, 7,800,000; forfeitures of 1688, 1,060,792; total, 11,697,629 acres. So that the whole of your island has been confiscated, with the exception of the estates of five or six families of English blood,......and no inconsiderable portion of the island has been confiscated twice, or, perhaps, thrice, in the course of a century. The situation, therefore, of the Irish nation at the revolution stands unparalleled in the history of the thabitable world....... The whole power and property of the country have been conferred by successive monarchs of England upon an English colony, composed of three sets of English adventurerswho poured into this country at the termination of three successive rebellions. Confiscation is their common title; and from their first settlement they have been hemmed in on every side by the old Inhabitants of the island, brooding over their discontent in sullen indignation."

prorogued the parliament, pronouncing at the same time a severe and ordering the clerk to enter his protest against the vote of the co on the journals of the house of lords, in vindication of the pre of the crown. In the English parliament a discussion took place affairs, and an address to the king was voted, complaining of grea and mismanagement in the affairs of Ireland, such as the recruitin king's troops with Papists, "to the great endangering and disco of the good ana loyal Protestant subjects in that kingdom;" the protection to the Irish Papists, "whereby Protestants are hinder their legal remedies, and the course of law stopt." The letting forfeited estates at under rates; the enormous embezzlements forfeited estates and goods; but above all, the parliament compl an addition which they said was made to the articles of Limeri the town was surrendered, "to the very great encouragemen Irish Papists," which addition, as well as the articles themsel prayed might be laid before the house; and they also beso majesty that no grant might be made of the forfeited estates in until an opportunity was afforded of settling the matter in pa William was annoyed at this interference of the English comm to the Irish forfeitures, he had already bestowed most of them as for the services of his friends; and he was indignant at the atter aside the treaty of Limerick, to which he admitted that "his honor were engaged, which he never would forfeit." His onl to the address was, therefore, conveyed in these few words: always have great consideration of what comes from the hous and I shall take great care that what is amiss shall be r It is generally admitted that William III. was not personall sible for the penal laws against Catholics enacted in his reign. not inclined to persecute any man for his religion; and he was a soldier to wish to trample on a brave but unfortunate foe

mons;

* In the second article, which secured the possession of their estates to the residents of of the other garrisons then in the occupation of the Irish, and to the Irish officers and in the counties of Limerick, Clare, Kerry, Cork, and Mayo, the words:-" and al under their protection in the said counties," were accidentally omitted in the copy of the was signed, although contained in the original draft that had been settled betwee Sarsfield insisted that the mistake should be rectified, and Ginkell accordingly adde words to the treaty after the Irish town of Limerick had been put in his possession. feet were just then coming up the Shannon, and it was admitted, that it would h imprudent, under the circumstances, for the Dutch general to hesitate. The word were duly ratified and confirmed by William and Mary, at the same time with th articles; and yet, to them the English house of commons raised the disgraceful o Lioned above.