skull of their revered priest upon its spike withering away in the wind, could read the fate that, on the first murmur of revolt, was in store for themselves or any who should take their part. The next year (1767), some further arrests were made, and the Ascendency party tried hard to get up an alarm about another "Popish rebellion." No executions followed on this occasion, as several benevolent persons contributed money to procure the prisoners the benefit of the best legal defence. It is with pleasure one reads among the names of the friends of an oppressed race who contributed to this fund, the name of Edmund Burke. One of the persons arrested on this last occasion, but afterwards discharged without trial, was Dr. McKenna, Catholic bishop of Cloyne. He, as well as all other ecclesiastics of his order, was, of course, at all times subject to the penalties of law, to transportation under the acts "for preventing the growth of Popery” in Queen Anne's time; and also to the penalty of premunire under earlier laws: yet these bishops continued to exercise their office, to confirm and confer orders under a species of connivance, which passed for toleration. But their situation, as well as that of all their clergy, in these first years of King George III. was still as precarious and anomalous as it had been during all the reign of George II. Sometimes they were tolerated, sometimes persecuted. Dr. Curry winds up his account of the transaction with these reflections :"Such, during the space of three or four years, was the fearful and pitiable state of the Roman Catholics of Munster, and so general did the panic at length become, so many of the lower sort were already hanged, in jail, or on the informers' lists, that the greatest part of the rest fled through fear; so that the land lay untilled for want of hands to cultivate it, and a famine was with reason apprehended. As for the better sort, who had something to lose (and who, for that reason, were the persons chiefly aimed at by the managers of the prosecution), they were at the utmost loss how to dispose of themselves. If they left the country, their absence was construed into a proof of their guilt: if they remained in it, they were in imminent danger of having their lives sworn away by informers and approvers; for the suborning and corrupting of witnesses on that occasion was frequent and barefaced, to a degree almost beyond belief. The very stews were raked and the jails rummaged in search of eviden.e; and the most notoriously profligate in both were selected and tampered with, to give information of the private transactions and designs of reputable men, with whom they never had any dealing, intercourse or acquaintance; nay, to whose very persons they were often found to be strangers, when confronted at their trial. "In short, so exactly did these prosecutions in Ireland resemble, in every partic-It depended upon the administration ular, those which were formerly set on foot in England, for that villanous fiction of Oates's plot, that the former seem to have been planned and carried on entirely on the model of the latter; and the same just observation that hath been made on the English sanguinary proceedings, is perfectly applicable to those which I have now, in part related, viz.: that for the credit of the nation, it were indeed better to bury them in eternal oblivion, but that it is necessary to perpetuate the remembrance of them, as well to maintain the truth of history, as to warn, if possible, our posterity, and all mankind, never again to fall into so shameful and so barbarous a delusion."" which happened to be in power; upon the temporary alarms to which the " Ascendency" was always subject; and upon the disposition of local proprietors and magistrates, who were occasionally men of liberal education, and relished the society of the neighbouring priests who had graduated at Lisbon, or Salamanca, or Louvain, and who were then frequently far superior in cultivation and social refinement to the Protestant rectors, of whom Dean Swift sometimes betrays his low estimate. Even the regular clergy, although the rage and suspicion of the Ascendency were yet more bitter against them than the secular priests, were always to be found in Ireland. They ran more All now seemed quiet in Munster: but cruel risks, however, than the parish it was the quietude of despair and ex- priest. If any blind or self-interested haustion. The Whiteboy spirit was not bigot desired to show his zeal in trampreally suppressed, because the oppressions ling on the right of conscience, or to raise which had occasioned it were not relaxed, the ferocious old cry of "No Popery! but rather aggravated. Many hearths the regular clergy formed an inexhaustible were now cold that had been the centre subject for his vociferations: if the legisof a humble family circle four years lature of the day wished to indulge the before; and the surviving parishoners of popular frenzy by the exhibition of newClogheen, when they saw the blackening | fashioned enactments, or of a new series of these laws, they are the most abominable heap of self-contradictions that ever were issued in the world. They are framed in such a manner that no Catholic shall have the inducement to become rich. of tragedies-monks, jesuits, and friars, the better securing of these latter objects; were sure to pay the cost of the enter- it was known that men who went regutainment. It has often been affirmed, larly to mass would never take an oath even by the timid Catholic writers of the that the King of England is head of the last century, that the accession of the Church, or that the mass is a damnable House of Hanover inaugurated an era of idolatry; and these oaths formed the very more liberal toleration. It is to be feared barrier which fenced in all the rich and that this kind of admission on their part fat things of the land for the Protestants, was but a courtly device to conciliate, if and shut the Papists out. That observant not to flatter, that odious House and its and honest English traveller, Arthur partisans for the priest-hunters were Young, was so powerfully struck with this never more active than in the reign of true character of the Penal Laws, that in George I., when Garcia brought in his his account of his tour he more than once batches of captured clergymen, and re- dwells upon it with righteous indignation. ceived a good price out of the treasury He says:-"But it seems to be the upon each head of game. In the whole meaning, wish, and intent of the disreign of George II., until the administra- covery laws, that none of them (the tion of Chesterfield, Catholic worship had Irish Catholics) should ever be rich. to be celebrated with the utmost caution It is the principle of that system, that and secrecy. In this reign, Bernard wealthy subjects would be nuisances; MacMahon, Catholic primate, "resided and therefore every means is taken to in a retired place named Ballymascanlon, reduce, and keep them to a state of in the County of Louth; his habitation poverty. If this is not the intention was little superior to a farmhouse, and for many years he was known through the country by the name of Mr. Ennis. In this disguise, which personal safety so strongly prompted, he was accustomed to travel over his diocese, make his visitations, exhort his people, and administer the sacraments."* In the same way, Michael O'Reilly, another primate, "lived in a humble dwelling at Turfegin, near Drogheda, and died here about the year 1758," just two years before the accession of George III. In the reign of George III. himself, we have seen Fathers Sheehy and Quinlan regularly indicted at assizes, for that they had, at such times and places, not having the fear of God before their eyes, but moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, said mass and did other functions of a Popish priest, against the peace of our lord the king, and contrary to the statutes in that case made and provided. We must, therefore, take these grateful acknowledgments of the liberal dispositions of the House of Hanover, with considerable qualification, remembering that the writers in question were labouring in the cause of Catholic Emancipation, under that royal House, and felt obliged to pay it some compliments upon its noble generosity. As for the Catholic laity, their disabilities continued all this time in full force, and while a contemptous connivance was thown to their religious worship, good care was taken to debar them from all profitable occupation, and to seize the poor remnants of their property. Indeed, the toleration of their worship was for *Brennan's Eccl. Hist., p. 573. † Ib. Take the laws and their execution into one view, and this state of the case is so true, that they actually do not seem to be so much levelled at the religion, as at the property that is found in it. The domineering aristocracy of five hundred thousand Protestants feel the sweets of having two millions of slaves; they have not the least objection to the tenets of that religion which keeps them by the law of the land in subjection; but property and slavery are too incompatible to live together: hence the special care taken that no such thing should arise among them."-Young's Tour in Ireland, vol. ii., p. 48. In another place Mr. Young repeats :"I have conversed on the subject with some of the most distinguished characters in the kingdom, and I cannot after all but declare that the scope, purport, and aim of the laws of discovery, as executed, are not against the Catholic religion, which increases under them, but against the industry and property of whoever professes that religion. In vain has it been said, that consequence and power follow property, and that the attack is made in order to wound the doctrine through its property. If such was the intention, I reply, that seventy years' experience prove the folly and futility of it. Those laws have crushed all the industry, and wrested most of the property from the Catholics; but the religion triumphs; it is thought to increase." Readers may now under stand the nature and extent of that vaunted "toleration," and the true intent and purpose of it, such as it was-namely, plunder. CHAPTER XVI. 1767-1773. appears from the report at large, and the returns thereunto annexed; part of the report is to the following effect: Your committee beg leave to take notice, that the entire reduction of the army, after the conclusion of the peace, did not take place till the latter end of the year 1764; and that it appears from the return of the quarter-master-general, that there were great deficiencies in the several regiments then upon the establishment, at the several quarterly musters comprised in the said paper, which precede the Embezzlement. - Parliament prorogued. month of January, 1765; the full pay of Again prorogued.-Townshend buys his majority. such vacancies must amount to a very -Triumph of the English Interest."- New attempt to bribe the Priests. - Townshend's large sum, and ought, as your committee "Golden Drops."-Bill to allow Papists to reclaim apprehends, to have been returned as a bogs.-Townshend recalled.-Harcourt, Viceroy-saving to the public, especially as it apProposal to tax absentees.-Defeated.-Degraded condition of the Irish Parliament.-American Re-peared to your committee, that orders volution, and new era. Townshend, Viceroy.-Augmentation of the army. same time reduce the expense of the establishment in such a manner as might be more suitable to the circumstances of the nation. The Government, however, was able to secure a majority for their measure. As Mr Plowden expresses it, “Vainly did the efforts of patriotism encounter the exertions of the new system to keep individuals steady to their post on the Treasury bench." were issued by government, not to recruit the regiments intended to be reduced." THE history of Lord Townshend's ad- Upon the whole, it was resolved that an ministration, and of the two which fol- address should be presented to his majesty, lowed, is unhappily little more than a to lay before him the report of the said history of the most shameless corruption committee, to acknowledge his constant and servility on the part of the Irish attention to the welfare of the people, to Parliament, relieved, however, by some express the utmost confidence in his examples of a rising national spirit in the majesty's wisdom, that if upon such reassertion of constitutional right. Very presentation any reformation in the said early in the same session of Parliament, establishment should appear necessary to which had finally passed the Octennial his majesty, such alteration would be Bill, the attention of the House of Com-made therein as would better provide for mons was especially called to the con- the security of the kingdom, and at the sideration of the army upon the Irish establishment. A message from the lordlieutenant was sent to the House by the hands of the Right Hon. Sir George Macarteney, in which he informed the Commons "that it is his majesty's judgment that not less than 12,000 men should be constantly kept in the island for service, and that his majesty finding, that, consistently with the general public service, the number before mentioned The Parliament was now dissolved; cannot always be continued in Ireland, and the first Octennial Parliament was to unless his army upon the Irish establish- be elected. There was an unusually long ment be augmented to 15,235 men in the interval of sixteen months from the dissowhole, commissioned and non-commis-lution of the old to the meeting of this sioned officers included, his majesty is of opinion, that such augmentation should be immediately made, and earnestly recommends it to his faithful Commons to concur in providing for a measure which his majesty has extremely at heart, as necessary not only for the honour of his crown, but for the peace and security of his kingdom." The message was ordered to be entered on the journals, and at the same time a committee was appointed to inquire into the state of the military establishment, and also into the application of the money granted for its support from the 25th March, 1751. The result of this inquiry showed manifest misconduct, as new Parliament. This interval was used by the Court in establishing the " new system;" which system was neither more nor less than buying the people's representatives in detail, by direct negotiation with individuals, instead of contracting for them by wholesale with the four or five noble "Undertakers," who owned many boroughs, and influenced the owners of many others. Lord Townshend hoped to render the concession of the Octennial Act worse than nugatory, and to create a new junta in support of the English interest, independent of their former leaders. But he had not yet so matured his plan as to have insured the whole game. He had not altered the nature, but only raised the English Privy Council's money bill. The price of accommodation; and, lavish as motion being made that this bill be read a the Irish have generally been of their first time, it was carried in the affirmavoices in Parliament to the highest bid- tive; and the bill being accordingly read, der, there ever appear to have been some a motion was made, and the question put, cases reserved out of the bargain. Such that the bill be read a second time tohad been the reservation of right to vote morrow morning. The House divided: for limited Parliaments, in some of the ayes, sixty-eight; noes, eighty-seven. most obsequious devotees to the measures Then the motion, that the bill be rejected, of the Castle; and such now was a simi- was put, and carried by ninety-four against lar exception in some of these pensioned seventy-one; and it was resolved, that the supporters to resist the right of the said bill was rejected, because it did not take English Council to make money bills ori- its rise in that House. The lord-lieutenant ginate with them, and not with the Com- took this defeat in the Commons so much mons of Ireland. On this point the British to heart, that he resolved to bring no more Cabinet and the Irish House of Commons Government questions before them during came fairly to issue. The former deter- that session, or until he could, as the mined to test the question in the most Castle phrase then was, make more sure direct way, by the origination of a money of the king's business. The representabill in the Privy Council; and the latter tions which were made of this transaction resolved fairly to meet the issue. Ac-in England soon found their way into the cordingly, it was moved in the House of Commons, that a bill, entitled "An Act for granting to His Majesty the several Duties, Rates, Impositions, and Taxes, therein particularly expressed, to be applied to the Payment of the Interest of the Sums therein provided for and towards the Discharge of the said principal Sums," should be read a second time on the day following. This motion was negatived; and it was resolved that such bill was rejected, because it did not take its rise in that House. The lord-lieutenant, though he thought proper to allow the Irish Parliament to grant their own money in their own way, protested against the right claimed by the House of Commons, and endeavoured, but in vain, to enter his protest upon their journals. The House would not submit to this encroachment upon their privileges: the Lords were less inflexible, and after much opposition and debate, his excellency's protest was solemnly recorded on the journals of the House of Peers. But before that was done, it having been generally suspected that such was his intention, the following motion was made in the House of Peers: "That the Speaker of this House be desired that no protest of any person whomsoever, who is not a lord of Parliament, and a member of this House, and which doth not respect a matter which had been previously in question before this House, and wherein the lord protesting had taken part with the minority, either in person or by proxy, be entered on the Journals of the House." After a warm debate upon this motion, the question was negatived upon a division of 30 against 5. The 21st of November, 1769, was a day fixed for a trial of strength upon the newspapers, and the night in which Mr Woodfall placed the majority of the Irish House of Commons on that important division in the Public Advertiser, fully proved the general sentiment entertained at the time in England upon the whole system of the Irish Government.* On the 18th day of December, 1769, a motion was made, and carried without opposition, that a paper entitled the Public Advertiser, by H. S. Woodfall, London, December the 9th, 1769, might be read. It contained the following words: "Hibernian patriotism is a transcript of that filthy idol worshipped at the London Tavern; insolence, assumed from an opinion of impunity, usurps the place which boldness against real injuries ought to hold. The refusal of the late bill, because it was not brought in contrary to the practice of ages, in violation of the constitution, and to the certain ruin of the dependence of Ireland upon Great Britain, is a behaviour more suiting an army of Whiteboys than the grave representatives of a nation This is the most daring insult that has been offered to Government. It must be counteracted with firmness, or else the state is ruined. Let the refractory House be dissolved; should the next copy their example, let it also be dissolved; and if the same spirit of seditious obstinacy should continue, I know no remedy but one, and it is extremely obvious. The Parliament of Great Britain is supreme over its conquests as well as colonies, and the service of the nation must not be left undone, on account of the factious obstinacy of a provincial assembly. Let our legislature, for they have an undoubted right, vote the Irish supplies, and so save a nation, that their own obstinate repre* Journ. Com., vol. 8, p. 344. sentatives endeavour to ruin." The perfect identity in tone and temper of this article with those of the Times at the present day (when any manifestation of spirit in Ireland irritates the British public) makes it well worth preserving, to show how very little the English feeling towards Ireland has varied or changed in a hundred years. These paragraphs having been read, it was resolved, that they were a false and infamous libel upon the proceedings of that House, a daring invasion of the Parliament, and calculated to create groundless jealousies between His Majesty's faithful subjects of Great Britain and Ireland. It was therefore ordered that the said paper should be burnt by the hands of the common hangman. And on the Wednesday following, viz., the 20th December, the said paper was burned before the gate of the House of Commons, by the hands of the common hangman, in the presence of the sheriffs of Dublin, amidst the indignant shouts of an immense crowd of spectators, who loudly, though without outrage, resented the insult offered to their representatives. regard to my intentions, they will be re- It was evident that Lord Townshend's new system of Government had not yet been sufficiently perfected. There was a newassault in preparation during the month of December, in this year, 1769, against the enormous pension-list, and although he knew he could command a majority upon that (ninety-eight being against the agitation of the pension-list at that time, and eighty-nine for it), still the majority was too trifling to trust to, and a victory on such terms would have been a moral defeat. He determined to prorogue the House. This became known to the Commons, and the country and the House, in Lord Townshend and his creatures were an address, requested that his excellency not idle during the long Parliamentary would inform the House whether he had interregnum. It is painful to be obliged to any instructions or had any intention to record, that his system of personal indiprorogue the Parliament sooner than vidual corruption made good progress. usual. Here again the lord-lieutenant" Patriots" were won over to the adminisfound his deficiency in doing the king's business for upon a division on the main question, the minister was left once more in a greater minority than ever, there being 106 for his excellency's making the declaration, and seventy-three only against it. On the very next day, however, Sir George Macarteney, the Secretary, reported to the House that his excellency had returned the following answer: : "GENTLEMEN,-I shall always be desirous of complying with your request, when I can do it with propriety. I do not think myself authorised to disclose his majesty's instructions to me upon any subject, without having received his majesty's commands for so doing. With tration, among whom appeared conspicuously, Mr Saxton Perry, member for Limerick, who first received the support of the Government in being elected as Speaker of the House, with a promise of a peerage. Many others had been secured, some with money, some with honours; and in February, 1771, his excellency faced the Parliament with full confidence, which it soon appeared was not misplaced. The first division was on an address of the Commons to his majesty, in answer to the lord-lieutenant's speech; In this address they returned their most humble thanks to his majesty for graciously continuing his excellency, Lord Townshend, in the government of the kingdom. The slavish |