action in which Mahomet was engaged, "At that moment the lance of an Arab might have changed the destinies of the world;" and it is not less true, that a stroke from the pen of Edward III. might, at this period, have changed the destinies of the ROCKS for ever.

But Dis aliter visum est"-that spirit, which has always watched over the Anglo-Irish councils, never suffering them, in a single instance, to deviate into right, prevailed as usual, and the result was as follows:-" The petition was remitted to the Chief Governor, Darcy. He was directed to refer it to the Irish parliament, and, as usual, it was either clandestinely defeated, or openly rejected."

Up rose the O's and Macs again, and again did the flame of war extend as before, through Meath, Munster, and those other classic regions of turbulence, which still "live in numbers and look green in song;" and so weakened were the English by the hostility they had thus provoked, that (as the historian remarks) "it was only the want of concert and union among the Irish that prevented them from demolishing the whole fabric of English power."

The following laws passed during this glorious, but arbitrary reign, abundantly prove that the

spirit of the Penal Code did not wait to be evoked by religious rancour, but was as active and virulent when both parties were Papists, as it has been since Henry VIII. made it a war of creeds as well as nations." It was enjoined by Royal mandate that no mere Irishman should be admitted into any office or trust in any city, borough, or castle in the King's land." Again, by the parliamentary ordinance, called the Statutes of Kilkenny, it was enacted" that marriage, nurture of infants, and gossipred with the Irish should be considered and punished as high-treason;" and "it was also made highly penal to the English to permit their Irish neighbours to graze their lands, to present them to ecclesiastical benefices, or to receive them into monasteries or religious houses." Even the poetry and music of the poor Irish were proscribed, and it was made penal" to entertain their bards, who perverted the imagination by romantic tales."

In the reign of Henry IV., the Irish "Enemy" (for so the natives were styled in all legal documents) showed, naturally enough, a disposition to emigrate

* "In the reign of Edward III.," says Leland, “ pride and self-interest concurred in regarding and representing the Irish as a race utterly irreclaimable." Four hundred years after, in the time of Swift, it was the fashion, he tells us, in England, "to think and to affirm that the Irish cannot be too hardly used." A hundred years hence, perhaps, the same language will be repeated.

-but, by a refined mixture of cruelty and absur→ dity, which is only to be found, genuine, in Irish legislation, an act of parliament was passed to prevent them. Those whom the English refused to incorporate with subjects, they would yet compel to remain as rebels or as slaves. “By an act of the Irish parliament, in the eleventh year of Henry IV., it was ordained that no Irish enemy should be permitted to depart from the realm." We have heard of a bridge of gold for a flying enemy, but an act of parliament to compel him to stand his ground could only have been passed by an Irish Legislature.

This unvarying system of hostility and oppression, which had been hitherto directed only against the natives, was now extended to such descendants of the old English settlers as had adopted a more natural policy than the government, and by marriage, commerce, and other peaceful mediums, become gradually mingled with the native population. Upon these, as lying most within the

*

* In remarking upon this coalition, Leland sensibly and candidly remarks-"It may be doubted whether such effect could possibly have been-produced, if the old natives had ever been possessed invariably and unalterably with that inveterate national aversion, to which their repeated insurrections are commonly ascribed. The solution was easy, and might have served the purposes of a selfish policy, but there are other causes equally obvious to be assigned."

reach of their insolence, the new-comers of English birth particularly indulged in the most wanton tyranny; and thus not only gave birth to the distinction of an English and Irish interest, but by identifying some of the oldest English families with the latter, arrayed a new force on the side of their enemies, and gave an additional strength and respectability to rebellion. *·

Perfect policy, throughout!-never, in the paths of legislation, were there " meilleurs guides pour s'égarer." So uniformly, too, has the same tree produced the same fruits, that, at three such distant epochs as the reigns of Henry IV., Elizabeth, and George III., we find the noble and English name of Fitzgerald "flaming in the front" of Revolt!.

Among many minor points of resemblance between our popish rulers of those days and our Reformed ones of the present,† may be counted that

"English by birth and English by race were become terms of odious distinction; and every day produced. violences which gradually became considerable enough to require the immediate interposition of the King.".

There is no end to the resemblances between the two periods. The following passage is not more applicable to the English colonists of those days, than to the English capitalists of the present: "Such conceptions had been formed of the state of Ireland and the disorders of its inhabitants that even they who had received Irish grants could neither be persuaded

VOL. IX.

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quick and distracting change of Lieutenantcies succeeding one another like the groupes of a magic lantern, each in its separate frame or slider, each differing from its predecessor in plans and opinions, and thus rendering the government, like Penelope's web, a mere system of doing and undoing.

The account given by Spenser of this motley procession of Lord Lieutenants is like a picture painted yesterday—so fresh are all its colours and so living its likenesses. "The governors (says he) are usually envious of one another's greater glory, which if they would seek to excel by better government, it would be a most laudable emulation. But they doe quite otherwise. For this is the common order of them, that who cometh next in

to repair thither, nor to send any persons to the custody of their lands, notwithstanding the reiterated edicts of the King."

Again, in the reign of Henry V.-" The king's personal appearance in Ireland is most earnestly entreated to save his people from destruction." And, in the same reign,—“ the infection of party and jealousy spread through all orders, and was caught even by the Clergy, who should have restrained and moderated it." The following coincidence is still more curious:-" Talbot conducted the government with the greater ease, as he seems to have resigned himself entirely to the reigning faction."

Thus, semper eadem" (and generally according to the Irish translation of it "worse and worse,") is destined to be the motto of Ireland to the end of time.