prince whom they had seen attacked, not for any designs against their religion or their liberties but for an extreme partiality for their sect; and who, far from trespassing on their liberties and properties, secured both them and the independence of their country, in much the same manner that we have seen the same things done at the period of 1782."

Here is the commentary of one of the greatest statesmen who appeared in the eighteenth century, on that part of our history which is held up by the ignorant and the mercenary, as the greatest stain in our national character; which is denominated an act of rebellion, rather than an honorable exertion of men struggling for their freedom and their religion. The great calumniators of the Irish catholic have sunk into the tomb, and the few who remain are no longer attended to. Truth is at length gaining the ascendant. The catholic of the sent day may now confidently trace his freedom to the recollection of that courage which in 1691 so bravely defended it.

pre

THE

HISTORY OF IRELAND.

William and Mary.

- A.D.

1691.

THE surrender of Limerick, on the condition of Irish freedom, closed the struggle between this country and England. The right of William to the Irish throne was acknowledged and submitted to, and the establishment of the civil and religious liberties of Irishmen was expected to have succeeded to the intolerance of fanaticism and the rapacity of monopoly. The battle was bravely fought by the Irish people; and from the character which their illustrious opponent enjoyed in his own country, they most reasonably hoped that they might repose with confidence on the faithful fulfilment of any treaty to which the necessities of the Eng lish monarch might have compelled him to accede. Ireland therefore sheathed her sword in the ingenuous confidence of having an honorable enemy to treat with. How those expectations were fulfilled-how that confidence was preserved-how the honor of the English nation has been maintained in her solemn treaties with Ireland, let it be the office of history to record. It has hitherto been our duty to relate the struggles of an armed though abused nation, with the jealousy, the bigotry and the rapacity of England. The reader has waded through scenes of slaughter and desolation. He has followed the Irishman in his various efforts to defend the religion and liberties

of his country. During this sad melancholy progress, he was sometimes relieved by the spectacle of successful retaliation or unprovoked aggression, and he has been often consoled by the temporary exhibition of a courage which would add lustre to the proudest achievements of ancient or modern days. Until the period to, which we have now arrived, we had never to contemplate the cowardly exercise of a tyranny which trampled on the man it deceived; which tortured the victim it disarmed; which pledged its faith in order to betray; and with all the contemptible malice of a voracious jealousy, was perpetually plundering the courage which it feared.

That revolution which was the fruitful parent of so many blessings to England, was the copious source of Ireland's bitterest sufferings; the great event which completed the establishment of British freedom, confirmed the slavery of Ireland.* The links of that chain which were struck from the English nation were more than doubled on the mind and the arm of Ireland. The accumulated vengeance of the last two hundred years, was poured on the devoted head of our country by the monarch of “immortal memory." Even the miserable instruments of English despotism were chained to the oar; they should

The excellent Dr. Curry commences his history of the Irish persecutions from the revolution in the following feeling and pathetic strain.

"After a tedious and melancholy narrative of the state of the Irish catholics at different periods, for the space of more than one hundred and fifty years, I should have no occasion to relate the following, had their sufferings ended at the surrender of Limerick. Then indeed they might subscribe with others in proclaiming the change a glorious revolution. But the conditions they had by that surrender obtained (I may say sealed with their blood) though agreed upon and signed by both parties, in the most solemn manner, and afterwards ratified and approved by both their majesties, king William and queen Mary, under the great seal of England were soon after basely infringed, contrary to the law of nature, the law of nations, and the public faith. The infringement of those articles on the part of government commenced very early after they were signed; and it was afterwards repeated from time to time," in such a manner as to prepare the minds of the people to receive with less surprise the total violation of them, by atts to prevent the further growth of popery,' which were then in contemplation."

strike at the will of their masters, and truckle to their passions, if they hoped to preserve their confidence. The little miserable monopolists whom the reader will see exhibiting from time to time on the political stage of Ireland, were little more than the well paid executioners of their fellow citizens; their duty was to wield the lash and torture the victim; their employment was the degradation and impoverishment of their country; their wages, the government of that country which their folly or their treason or their avarice had wasted. Every revolution experienced by Ireland, from the invasion, but left a new ingredient of bitterness in the cup of misfortune. Every change was from bad to worse; so that the Irish patriot who sympathized with her fortunes, might have lamented that the sword of annihilation had left a subject on which her future tyrants could indulge their malice. A celebrated writer on the English constitution, speaking of the various revolutions which took place in England, has the following observation :

:

"If we peruse the history of England" says De Lolme "we shall be peculiarly struck with one circumstance to be observed in it, and which distinguishes most advantageously the English government from all other free govvernments, I mean the manner in which revolutions and public commotions have always been terminated in England. If we read with some attention the history of other free states, we shall see the public dissentions that have taken place in them, have constantly been terminated by settlements, in which the interests only of a few were really provided for, while the grievances of the many were hardly, if ever, attended to. In England the very reverse has happened, and we find revolutions always to have been terminated by extensive and accurate provisions for securing the general liberty."

In Ireland we have hitherto found that revolutions terminated in the forging of new chains and the multiplication of new tortures. The liberty of England and the

slavery of Ireland have invariably proceeded together, Ireland going down as England ascended. Posterity have justly concluded that the rights of Irishmen and the prosperity of England cannot exist together-a melancholy truth which the events of the present day only contribute to confirm, and which is still left to the enlightened English government of future days to refute. The lights of history cannot be extinguished, nor her powerful voice silenced. The conclusions we have drawn are irresistible, and the idle violence which attempts to punish their publication only impresses those truths more deeply on the mind. The glories of William and of Annethe victories of Marlborough, and the universal conquests of Chatham, have been the most disastrous epochs of Ireland. Never was the heart of our country so low as when England was the envy and the terror of her enemies. The sounds of English triumphs were to her the sounds of sorrow the little tyrants who ruled her were inflamed with courage, and urged on with increased rancor-the unhappy catholics of Ireland, who always constituted the nation, were doomed to be again insulted and tortured with impunity-and the protestant parliaments of our country, as if their existence depended on their servility, will be seen sacrificing even their own properties, as well as those of their catholic countrymen, to the insatiable monopoly of England-yet all those scenes were the offspring of that revolution in which Englishmen most justly triumph-a revolution which De Lolme says terminated by a series of public acts in which no interests but those of the people at large were considered and provided for. The series of public acts which the same revolution produced in Ireland, were directed to sacrifice the peace, happiness and security of Irishmen to the establishment of a contemptible monopoly which rendered them for seventy years the degraded slaves of a system that beggared and insulted them. The enlightened protestant of the present day, looks back with horror