thus to the Emperor :-" I ought to entreat your Imperial Majesty to be assured, that I will employ all my credit to provide that the Roman Catholics of that country may enjoy liberty of conscience, and be put out of fear of being persecuted on account of their religion."

His employment, too, of Irish Catholics in the army, was one of those criminal symptoms of a wish to make Papists useful and attached to the State, for which the English House of Commons rebuked him in their address of 1692; and there is but little doubt, that, could he have pursued his own liberal views, the same spirit that dictated his instructions to the commissioners of Scotland -"you are to pass an Act establishing that Church Government, which is most agreeable to the inclinations of the people"-would have also regulated his policy towards Ireland.

Even fettered and obstructed as he was by the

* Dryden thus, in one of his letters, does justice to the real disposition of William:-"We poor Catholics daily expect a most severe Proclamation to come out against us (the Five Mile Act), and at the same time we are satisfied that the King is very unwilling to persecute us, considering us to be but a handful, and those disarmed; but the Archbishop of Canterbury (Tennison) is our heavy enemy, and heavy he is, indeed, in all respects."-Letters to Mrs. Stewart, 1698-9.

VOL. IX.

5

bigotry of those about him, it is well known that, previously to the surrender of Limerick, he was prepared to offer to the Catholics no less advanta

*

geous terms, than the free exercise of their religion, half the Church establishment of Ireland, and the moiety of their ancient properties!

What a heterodox idol, then, have the Orangemen set up unto themselves!-That pious and innocent Spaniard, who placed the picture of Lais in his oratory, and daily prayed to the fair Liberal, as a Saint, was not more mistaken in the object of his idolatry than they are.

In the name of history, then, why do they not select some fitter Patron? That learned antiquary, Vallancy, has discovered, that the name, Patrick, which we Irish give to our National Saint, means the Devil: and the same sort of blunder seems to have been committed by the Orangemen, in the selection of their National Saint, King Williamfor who but the Devil would have offered half the Church Establishment to the Papists ?

They must, therefore, lose no time in adopting some more appropriate Patron, and I would ven

*This was called (says Leland) the "Secret Proclamation," because, though printed, it was never published, Laving been suppressed on the first intelligence of the Treaty of Limerick.

ture to recommend Titus Oates to their notice, as a Deliverer entirely after their own hearts. I would, myself, (being anxious for the maintenance of their Institution, and regarding it as one of the main props of the Rock dynasty) subscribe to a statue of old Titus for their use, which they might annually adorn and dress out with Judge Scroggs' wig-if it be still extant-and thus, by this double homage to the Informer and Judge, do justice to their own notions both of Civil and Religious Freedom. Lord Farnham will, I trust, attend to this friendly suggestion.

It was a little before the period of the Revolution, that an important branch of my family first rose into notice, under the name of Rapparees, or Tories-but as a full account of these heroes has been given in an interesting work called "the History of the Irish Rogues and Rapparees,” it is unnecessary for me here to enter into any particulars about them, except just to remark, that one of their appellations, Tories, has been since transferred to an equally valuable class of his Majesty's subjects, who have done as much mischief, at the head of affairs, as the others have at the tail, and who, though in no way related to me, have served me on all occasions even more effectually than if they were,

CHAPTER XIII.

1701-1727.

Reigns of Anne and George I.-Fate of Pope, if born in Munster-Penal Code.-Swift.-His Notions of Tolerance.-Wood's Halfpence.-Independence of Ireland. —Barbarous Law against Romish Priests.—Hints for putting down the Rock Family.

In the reign of Queen Anne, the degradation and enslavement of the great mass of the Irish nation was completed; and at a time when a Catholic poet was illuminating the literature of England, with that true light of genius which never dies, in Ireland to be a Catholic was to be an outcast from the commonest privileges of humanity ;-so that, if Pope had been born a Munster Papist, instead of a London one, by Act 7 William and Mary, and 2 Anne, he would have been voted an irreclaimable brute, and hunted into the mountains.

The Penal Code, enacted at this period, will for ever remain a monument of the atrocious perfection, to which the art of torturing his fellowcreatures may be brought by civilized man. It

was truly, as Burke calls it, a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man."

There was more blood drawn by Dioclesian, and other heathen bunglers in persecution; but the refinement of wasting away the hearts of a whole people by piecemeal was reserved for the Christian and Protestant legislators of Queen Anne. Let us not, however, give all our execrations to them, and their now half broken-up machinery of oppression-let us keep some for those persons (and they are neither few nor obscure) who at this moment still sigh after those good old penal times -who consider liberality and justice as degeneracy from their ancestors, and who try to infuse into every remaining fragment of that polypus of persecution, the same pestilent life that pervaded the whole.

With this part of his country's history, an Irish Chronicler has little else to do than to mourn over it and be silent.-The chief actors in the scene can hardly be called Irishmen, and the sufferers in the back-ground were all mute and nameless.

The best and most patriotic men of the time