who could not brook an association with an humbler character than the son of a king, might in some degree be checked by the presence of the royal duke. The north is invaded by the Scotch; who, supported by the native Irish, obtained some important settlements in that country. The duke of Lancaster, anxious, if possible, to satisfy the complaints which were made to him by his subjects of the colony, of the oppressions and exactions under which they suffered, appointed commissioners to hold inquisition in several counties, to ascertain the names of the sufferers, and the actual damage they had sustained. Even the hope of redress tranquillized the public mind. Several of the Irish chieftains of Leinster renewed their submissions to the duke; and the whole province being considered as restored to peace, a parliament was summoned at Castledermot, to consider of the most effectual means of repelling the Scotch invasion.

The citizens of Dublin and Drogheda collected their troops, and carried the marauding war to the coast of Scotland, where they amply revenged the depredations of the enemy." Amidst all this parade and triumph," says Mr. Leland, "the celebrated Arthur Mac Murchad lay like a canker in the heart of the Leinster territory." This unwearied spirit was not to be soothed by concessions, nor intimidated by the sword. He despised the power of the English, and was indefatigable in seducing from their allegiance those chieftains who had submitted to the duke of Lancaster. The deputy, aided by the arms of Ormond and Desmond, marched against him; and, after a furious battle, Mac Murchad retreated, with a diminished though unconquered army. The English had no sooner repelled Mac Murchad, than they were attacked from other quarters, and the impositions and exactions which such repeated contests with the native Irish induced, were so exces. sive, that the deputy found it necessary to put in force the provisions of the statute of Kilkenny. R

The duke of Lancaster, convinced of the necessity of the most vigorous and decisive measures, not only for the purpose of repelling with effect the common enemy, but also for restraining the insolent licentiousness of the great lords of his government, armed himself with powers more 'extensive than those he possessed when he first landed inIreland. He insisted on an annual pension of one thousand marks, to render him independent of the precarious issues of the Irish revenue. But all the measures adopted by the duke of Lancaster to preserve the peace of the colony were ineffectual, when opposed to the desperate valour of Mac Murchad. The viceroy was pursued to the walls of Dublin, wounded, and forced to surrender his administration to Butler, the prior of St. John of Jerusalem. Thus were the English abandoned to their own resources and expedients. The necessity of the times, and power of the great lords, again imposed the torturing taxes of coyne and livery. The statute of Kilkenny was put in force; but, as the historian very properly observes, "such a statute was only politic or useful in case the parties putting it in force, were able to follow up with the sword, the principles of extermination it enacted:" The Irish were too powerful, and the sanguinary statute of Kilkenny served but to recruit their ranks, and inflame their animosity; its absurd provisions were defeated by the circumstances of the colony; and the excluding and barbarous object of the legislator was counteracted by the weakness of the hand which was doomed to execute his law.

The colony, by this statute of Kilkenny, were prohibited from holding any commerce or traffic with the Irish enemy; but their richest and most flourishing towns were so environed with the native Irish, that they had no other people to trade with, and were often reduced by legal restraints to the danger of being utterly impoverished, Still so refined was the cruelty of English policy against the native Irish, that the very same malignity which dic

tated the statute of Kilkenny, recommended the act which would not permit the persecuted Irish to migrate. Thus, in the same moment, refusing to incorporate them with their own people, and denying them the opportunity of seeking peace and tranquillity in a foreign land.

By an act of the Irish parliament, in the eleventh year of Henry IV. it was ordained, that no native Irishman should be permitted to depart from the realm, without special license, under the great seal of Ireland; and that the person and goods of an Irishman, attempting to transport himself without such license, might be seized by any subject, who was to receive one moiety of the goods for such service, the other to be forfeited to the king. The devoted Irish would not be received as subjects, nor even suffered to leave their country, where perpetual persecution awaited them." This can appear in no other light," says Mr. Taaffe," than a game-act, not unlike the act forbidding the transportation of hawks, under a penalty heavier than the eric allowed for the murder of twenty-four mere Irishmen, residing within English jurisdiction.”

Notwithstanding the ingenious cruelty with which the native Irish were hunted by the law-makers of the colony, it is consolatory to find that the effects of such legislation were as unprofitable as the policy was infamous; and that the English interests declined in exact proportion to the fury and multiplicity of their statutes against humanity and justice. The English were forced to the dishonorable refuge of paying to the victorious Irish the annual tribute called the black rent; thus recognizing the ancient sovereignty of the Irish chieftains, ministering to their pride, and gratifying their vengeance. Such has ever been the consequence of vicious and cruel counsels-defeat, poverty, and dishonor.

THE

HISTORY OF IRELAND.

Henry V.

1

A.D.

1414.

THE same melancholy scene of distress, turbulence, disaffection, oppression, and resistance, continues to weary our eyes until the arrival of sir John Talbot, in the reign of Henry V. This Englishman was distinguished by his military abilities; his vigorous and decisive character. Even the proud and intrepid Mac Murchad bowed to his superior talents, and gave his son as an hostage for his peaceable demeanour. Other chieftains in the west and in the north, followed the example of Arthur Mac Murchad. Though vigorous and able in his military achievements, and peculiarly successful in checking the progress of the common enemy, yet sir John Talbot is handed down to posterity as partial, oppressive, and severe in the administration of his government. We find at this period a notable instance of the barbarous policy with which Ireland was pursued by the sister country. An act was passed by the English parliament, that all those Irish who wandered from their own country in search of that protection denied them in their native land, should immediately depart from the English territory; and this infamous and inhospitable statute was

not only directed against the poorest or the meanest of the Irish, but against the Irish students, who were contumeliously excluded from the British inns of court, lest the English people should be infected with the barbarous principles of the wild and unhospitable Irish. Such is the ignorant and insolent denunciations of a nation, at the moment it was outraging every feeling of the heart, and violating every law human and divine, against a people whom English historians record as the most generous, the most hospitable, the most social and warm-hearted on earth. So writes the venerable Bede, Keating, Camden, sir John Davis, and every authority of respectability and veracity. We are not to wonder that those English viceroys who came over to Ireland, should have exercised their authority with insolence or with scorn, over a people whose characters and principles were represented in so odious and so horrible a light, nor should it excite our astonishment, that the national animosity should be extreme, after the laborious efforts of the enemies of Ireland to root out of its breast those sentiments of forgiveness or pardon, which are the offspring of generous hearts, and the grand characteristic of the Irish disposition.

So fallen were the Irish of the pale, as well as its English inhabitants, and so completely at the mercy of their taskmasters, that we find the chancellor Merbury, hardy enough to refuse affixing the seal to the petition framed by the old English settlers against the monopolizing avarice of their modern countrymen. Here we find a chancellor resisting the wishes of the parliament of the colony, composed of those very persons whose forefathers stifled the prayers of the native Irish.

There is a law of action, and re-action, pervading every department of nature; there is a law of retributive justice, in the moral system of intelligent beings, which the settlers experienced in an eminent and striking degree. All appointed to station and office were of English birth. Every