change in the religion of the country, which was necessary to assimilate the worship of the two islands. It is surprising that the success of this experiment of Henry's, upon the vanity and good-nature of his Irish subjects, seems never to have tempted any of his successors to imitate this cheap and easy mode of governing that precious portion of their dominions.'

A change of policy in this respect, excited new troubles in the time of Edward VI.; and the sacrilegious violence with which the English garrisons plundered and defaced some of the rich Catholic churches, so irritated the national spirit of O'Neil and his associates, that even before the accession of Mary, they relapsed into the errors of their ancient faith, and prepared to maintain it by force against the armed reformers of the youthful king. The succession of Mary, however, assured them of abundant protection; and the nation went quietly back to its original creed. The following passage is memorable:

As the reformed faith had made little progress in Ireland, the ancient religion was restored without difficulty or violence. It is much to the credit of the people of Ireland, that, satisfied with a quiet and peaceable restoration of their faith, they, in no instance, persecuted or disturbed those who still thought proper to profess the religion of the reformation, and there were many such. While the fires of a ferocious proscription raged in the sister island, in Ireland the Protestants enjoyed their opinions in full security and peace; and numbers fled from persecution in England, to find freedom and protection amongst a people, whom they considered as almost savage, and blindly devoted to the worst of superstitions. Neither in this reign, nor afterwards in that of James the Second, when the religion of the Church of Rome was triumphant, did the Catholics of Ireland persecute or proscribe on account of religion. A rare merit; and which proves that neither superstition nor fanaticism had wholly blotted out all religious principle, nor the misfortunes of the nation extinguished entirely the natural kindness of the Irish people.'

Our author's account of the important reign of Elizabeth is clear and vigorous; and, on the whole, temperate and indulgent. He acquits that princess, and indeed the English government generally, of any direct encouragement of the insolence and oppression by which her deputies and commanders excited hostility in Ireland, or of the atrocious cruelties by which they afterwards sought to repress it. Much of these, he conceives, was unknown at the seat of government, and more shamefully misrepresented; while, on many occasions, attempts were seriously, though ineffectually made, to punish or prevent those provincial oppressions which came slowly and imperfectly to the knowledge of the distant sovereign. It was in this reign, however, and under the queen's direct authority, that the fatal scheme of repressing what was called rebellion by forfeiture, or rather of

breaking the power of the great chiefs, by the most sweeping confiscation of their domains, was first adopted and carried into rigorous execution. Up to this time those reguli had been treated somewhat on the footing of sovereign princes-vassal sovereigns indeed, and owing fealty and homage to the English monarch, but entitled within their own territories to most of the prerogatives of royalty. Between them and the English governors of the Pale, there had, indeed, been frequent hostilities, and inroads, and reprisals, with various fortune and on various pretexts;but these had always been followed by pacifications which left the territories substantially unchanged, and seldom went even so far as to transfer the clannish sceptre to some more submissive member of the ancient family;-and the little parliament of the Pale, though calling itself the Legislature of Ireland, had hitherto enforced its enactments only over the province of Leinster. In the time of Elizabeth, however, the wars with O'Neil and Desmond, which were carried on on both sides with frightful barbarity, terminated in the absolute confiscation of all the possessions of those great chiefs, comprehending the whole provinces of Ulster and Munster, and much of the adjoining country; and the whole of this vast region was immediately divided among the English adventurers, who had flocked to the distracted land, for the very purpose of enriching themselves by its plunder, and had undoubtedly sought both to provoke and to perpetuate the wars, with a view to this desirable result. We cannot now enter into any detail of the course of those terrible contentions; of which Mr O'Driscol, however, has here given a very animated sketch, and in the course of it, vindicated, we think, very successfully, his Irish favourites from the imputation either of inferior discipline, or superior cruelty, to the English. It is enough for us to remark, that under the sway of Sydney, Grey, and Essex, not only were the most inhuman butcheries practised upon the Irish, but a disposition unequivocally manifested, by these and other provocations, to goad them into irreconcilable hostility, with a direct view to the profit to be derived from their forfeitures. It is also certain that Elizabeth herself, though ignorant perhaps of the horrors actually perpetrated by her officers, was perfectly aware of the existence of this detestable principle, and of its efficacy in reconciling her armies to the continuance of the war. If it goes on,' she is known to have said to her council, it will be the better for 'you, for there will be estates for you all. When things were once placed on this footing, it is easy to conjecture in what spirit government would be conducted, and war waged by that band of adventurers, who had pressed into employment for the avow

ed purpose of aggrandising themselves and their followers. Nor can we be very much surprised that it should at last have been openly maintained, both in printed works by persons in authority, and in memorials graciously received by the Sovereign, that the only way to secure the peace and prosperity of Ireland, was utterly to extirpate or displace the whole of its native population, and to settle it anew, as a waste or vacant country, by colonies of industrious English! A great part of the forfeited property was accordingly distributed, at this period, to various new created lords, upon the express condition that each should plant a certain number of English families 6 on his own estate, and that he should not suffer any Irish to rent or otherwise occupy any part thereof.' The experiment was tried, too, with the most intrepid cruelty, and persevered in with the most relentless severity for a long series of years; but it succeeded only in embittering the animosity which divided the hostile races, and sowing the seeds of almost incurable hatred.

The northern plantation had failed entirely. The grantees of the Tirowen territory could not make good their possession, even with all the aid of government. Warned by this difficulty, the southern plantation had been conducted upon a surer principle, as it was supposed, by removing the population. Nevertheless, it was hardly more fortunate; but few of the grantees were enabled to keep possession of their new estates: those who were so successful soon discovered that there was but one mode by which their possession could be secured, and that was by abandoning the system of plantation, and making terms with the old Irish tenantry, or such remnant of them as could be found.'

One short gleam of comfort was afforded amidst these horrors, by the mild and equitable administration of Sir John Perrot.

The principle of his government was, to do justice to the old Irish, to protect them from oppression and confiscations, and give them their due share of influence and employment in the state. By such a system of government, he was confident that he could preserve the peace of Ireland, and answer for its security without a military establishment. But Perrot's plan of government was hardly relished by the old English, because it gave them no preference over the mere Irish; and it was thoroughly detested by the new English, whose object was not the peace and improvement of Ireland, but war and confiscation. That party, though they could not prevail with the queen to remove Perrot, had succeeded in weakening his influence with her majesty. His representations were neglected, his complaints were unheeded, and his enemies in the council, feeling the encouragement thus held out, urged their system of insult and annoyance beyond the forbearance of the deputy. He entreated the queen to be recalled. He assured her majesty that he found no difficulty in governing her Irish

subjects, but that it was impossible to rule her English servants in Ireland. The queen yielded to Perrot's wish and the anxious solicitations of his enemies. He was commanded to deliver the sword of state to Sir William Fitz-William; and having done so, he declared that he left the kingdom in peace; and that, now a private man, he would engage to procure, within twenty days, the submission of any chief in Ireland, without employing force of any kind. Such was the confidence which this good man had in the power of his own character for truth and faithfulness. His departure from Ireland exhibited a scene which has more than once occurred in that country. He was accompanied to the shore by the whole population of Dublin, and by the old Irish of every rank and class, princes and people, all in tears. The grateful recollection of the past, and the fears of the future, pressed heavily upon every heart. Every tongue was loud to acknowledge him as a father and benefactor, and to lament the public loss. Sir John Perrot's administration was a proof that, even in the worst state of society in Ireland, and nothing could be worse than the state of society in this reign, ordinary justice and common humanity are all that are needed to govern the Irish people. The short experiment which Elizabeth made of this principle of government, confirms the truth of Sir John Davis's testimony: that the Irish love justice so much, that they will be content with it, even when its decisions press most heavily against themselves."

Religious differences, though they might exasperate existing animosities, were scarcely used, even as a pretext for the wars of this reign. These were waged professedly for the purpose of putting down or reducing to obedience the great turbulent chiefs of the north and the south-in reality, for the purpose of procuring the confiscation of their estates-and were, as Mr O'Driscol has truly stated, substantially mere struggles of the old pro'prietors to preserve their importance against the tide of new adventurers, which the rapid political changes in Great Britain, and the growing wealth and population of the larger island had thrown upon the lesser.'

The Reformation,' he afterwards observes, had made no progress in Ireland during the reign of Elizabeth. Those who were compelled to war with the power, would not be disposed to favour the religion of the queen. The authority of the queen did not extend beyond her camp, and the religion of the Reformation had even narrower limits. Two-thirds of the British army who won the victory at Kinsale, were Irish Catholics; and the Earl of Clanricard, to whom it was chiefly due, was remarkable for his steady attachment to the religion of Rome. The wars of this reign served, on the contrary, to raise up a powerful and permanent obstruction to the progress of the Reformation. The Irish knew it only as the religion of those strangers who contended with them in mortal strife for their inheritances. They knew it only as the profession of those English ecclesiastics who were sent from time to time from the other island, and are de

scribed by all the British writers of that day as a class of men remarkable for their profligate lives, their ignorance, and entire neglect of the few duties they had to perform. The religion of Rome, on the contrary, was not only their own, but it was the religion of their allies of Spain, Italy, and France. Their political struggles drew closer the ties that bound them to their ancient faith.'

The reign of James was a softened copy of that of Elizabeth, in so far as regards wars and forfeitures. It was marked, however, by a new and more pacific measure, which in the end was productive of great benefits. The law of England was now, in some measure, enforced all over the island-sheriffs at least were appointed, and circuits established in its different provinces, and the supreme court at length solemnly decided that the old Irish tenures by tanistry were at an end, and that their titles must now be made out according to the English method. A still more important change, though naturally resulting from the other, was, that instead of holding his lands in a great degree at the pleasure of his chief, or at least of being liable to indefinite exactions on their transmission to an heir, a rent was now fixed in lieu of all feudal services, and subject to this rent, the title of inheritance was absolute. This prince also created forty new boroughs, and an order of Baronets. His most oppressive measure, was the institution of a commission for inquiring into defective titles-his most paltry, the attempt to set aside the new grants made by himself in Connaught, in consequence of an accidental omission of an enrolment in Chancery, for which, however, the grantees had actually paid the full fees.

The reign of Charles, though opening auspiciously, brought the disorders and sufferings of Ireland to their height. The Catholic Lords, with the concurrence of many of the leading Protestants, drew up a sort of Bill of Rights, which they presented to the King, with an offer of a large subsidy, on condition of their petition being granted. The King accepted the subsidy, and assented to the petition. But Strafford prevailed with him ultimately to refuse the charter in which those Graces, as they were termed, were embodied, and proceeded to exact money by every sort of oppression. The following passages, which introduce the history of the great rebellion in 1641, are written, we think, with singular clearness, and true historical impartiality.

Strafford's administration, though an exceedingly guilty one, was not wholly without merit. He attempted to reform the Established Church, then known in Ireland only as an engine of oppression, and to make it, what it ought to be, an instrument of popular instruction. He attempted to improve and new-model the college of Dublin; he was the first to encourage and promote the linen manufacture, and