were to be treated as the Canaanites were by Joshua," most piously acted up to the model set before them; and, accordingly, "all the spoils of the cities and the cattle they took for a prey unto themselves, and every man they smote with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them ; neither left they any to breathe."

A similar taste for the warlike passages of the Old Testament is observable in our modern Oliverians, Sir Abraham Bradley King, and his brother Orangemen ; and, by a remarkable coincidence, it is from the same book, Joshua, that they, too, draw their charitable inspirations. How far these Orange heroes mean to carry their imitation of the soldiers of Joshua remains to be seen; but, I presume, the great victory which their leader Sir Abraham lately gained over the law by means of the House of Commons, was meant as a copy of the conquest of Jericho through the treachery of the harlot, Rahab-the House of Commons enacting the part of Rahab on the occasion.

Then, the ceremony of " taking twelve men out of the tribes" is as evidently followed in the selection of twelve good and true Orangemen for all purposes of impartial law and justice-and "the accursed thing" which got among the soldiers of Joshua (meaning neither more nor less than a

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spirit of jobbing), has been long supposed to lie lurking among these faithfully scriptural Orangemen. They have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff.'

When to these striking points of similitude, we add the perfect truth with which the whole body may say "For even all the inhabitants of the country do faint because of us," it will be granted that in the art of "citing Scripture to their purpose," neither Cromwell nor the other personage mentioned by Shakspeare can, in any degree, compare with their modern imitators, the Orangemen.

CHAPTER XI.

1660-1684.

Reign of Charles II.—Loyalty of the Irish a superfluous Luxury.—Cromwell, Ireton, etc. declared loyal Protestant Subjects.-Their Followers rewarded.-Catholic Loyalists ruined.—Satirical Fictions. - Unsuccessful Attempt to get up a Rebellion in Ireland.-Only one Catholic Primate hanged.

"LOYALTY," Swift says, "is the foible of the Irish”—and it is certain that, whenever an opportunity has been allowed them, they have indulged in this " graceful weakness," even more than was either dignified or necessary. As it has been always, however, their fate to be equally ill-treated when loyal as when rebellious, their loyalty, except as a matter of needless luxury to themselves, makes no difference in the relations between them and their rulers whatever.

The Catholics were the last in the three kingdoms to lay down the Royal banner, after suffering all but utter extermination in its defence. Yet, how was their devotedness rewarded at the Restoration? In one of the very first Acts that issued

from the Royal hand-in order to furnish a pretext for confirming all the robberies of Cromwell -it was coolly and unblushingly declared that they were rebels; and that, having been conquered by his Majesty's Protestant subjects (meaning Cromwell, Ireton, Lord Broghill, etc.), their estates and possessions became vested in the crown. This point once established, the path of iniquity lay clear and open; and upon such monstrous and insulting falsehoods was that Act of Settlement founded; "by which," says Lord Clare, " millions eight hundred thousand acres of land were set out to a motley crew of English adventurers, civil and military, nearly to the total exclusion of the old inhabitants of the island."+

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If such things were read in Gulliver, Candide, or any such satirical fiction, they would be regarded as caricatures, too extravagant and distorted, of

These "rebels," when they were conquered, fought under the command of the Marquis of Ormond, his Majesty's Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and of Lord Clanrickard, who was Deputy after him.

"And thus," adds Lord Clare, " a new colony of new settlers, composed of all the various sects which then infested England, Independents, Anabaptists, Seceders, Brownists, Socinians, Millenarians, and dissenters of every description, many of them infected with the leaven of democracy, poured into Ireland, and were put into possession of the ancient inheritance of its inhabitants."-Speech on the Union.

the perfidy and injustice of Kings and Governments. But when we not only know that such proceedings once took place, but see actual, existing men, who still cling to the principle of those proceedings, and dignify it with the name of "the wisdom of our ancestors," we feel that no romance can do justice to such perverse absurdity; and that Klemius, who represents a man as ready to swear that the sun is triangular, in order to qualify for a place which requires that particular belief, would feel ashamed of the tameness of his satire, if he could but know how some of our statesmen transcend it.

It was, indeed, among the authors and patrons of this memorable Act of Spoliation that the idea of excluding Catholics from the House of Commons (one of the boasted proofs of the "wisdom of our ancestors") first originated. As Catholics were to be the persons despoiled, their concurrence could hardly be expected; and though the House was of Cromwell's own packing, and almost entirely composed of those soldiers and adventurers, who were to become, by this measure, the proprietors of near three-fourths of Ireland, yet, unwilling that Catholics should have a share even in their debates,

* Journey under Ground.