church and state. It was also said, that Ireland could not spare so many of her inhabitants; that the south and west, where these recruits would principally be raised, were thinly peopled; and that the cultivation of those countries would be checked, if not entirely annihilated. The bigotted zeal, which evidently appeared to be the basis of the opposition, undoubtedly added strength to my wishes. The loss of inhabitants was not much ; the defalcation of three thousand men could scarcely be supposed capable of annihilating the cultivation of two great provinces; neither did they seem well' entitled to the benefit of this argument, by whose oppression double the number was annually compelled to emigration; and it was but too evident, that a principle of the most detestable nature lay hidden under this specious mode of reasoning. The Protestant Bashaws of the south and west, were loth to resign so many of those wretches, whom they looked upon, and treated, as their slaves." a

a

Life of Charlemont, 67. Lord Charlemont passed an unne-cessary censure upon these commoners, when he accused them of bigotry; his last sentence assigns an easy and adequate solu-tion of their conduct. As every thing is of some value which tends to set men right with each other, it may be useful to observe, that the earliest, the most disinterested, the only perfectly unsuspicious movements in favour of the Roman Catholics, were made by men who conscientiously shrunk from imposing on them the responsibilities of civil power, as persons under the disturbing influence of an external and possibly hostile force. The great impulse was given by our late good monarch, who regarded all his subjects with the feeling of a christian father; the first measures of relief were proposed, in Ireland by lord Charlemont, in England by Sir George Saville and Mr. Dunning.

2. Towards the English or Protestant population. Earlier policy.-Sir John Davis quotes an Irish statute, of the 10th Henry the Seventh.

"Whereas of long time there hath been used and exacted by the lords and gentlemen of this land, many and divers damnable customs and usages, which been called Coigne and Livery, and pay for their horsemen and footmen; and besides, many murders, robberies, rapes, &c.; and other manifold extortions and oppressions, by the said horsemen and footmen dayly and nightly committed and done; which been the principal causes of the desolation and destruction of said land, and have brought the same into ruin and decay, so as the most part of the English freeholders and tenants of this land been departed out thereof, some into the realm of England, and other some to strange lands; whereupon the foresaid lords and gentlemen have intruded into the said freeholders' and tenants' inheritances, and setten under them in the same the kings Irish enemies, to the diminishing of holie churche's rites, the disinherison of the king and his obedient subjects, and the utter ruin and desolation of the land."

In another passage Davis writes thus: "This most wicked and mischievous extortion was originally Irish, for the chiefs used to lay bonaght upon their people, and never gave their soldiers any other pay. But when the English lords had learned it, they. used it with more insolency and made it more intolerable ; for this oppression

was not temporary, or limited either to place or time; but because there was every where a continual war, either offensive or defensive; and every lord of a country, and every marcher made war and peace at pleasure; it became universal and perpetual; and indeed was the most heavy oppression that ever was used in any christian, or heathen kingdom, and therefore vox oppressorum, this crying sin did draw down as great or greater plagues upon Ireland than the oppression of the Israelites did draw upon the land of Egypt. For the plagues of Egypt, though they were grievous were but of a short continuance. But the plagues of Ireland, lasted 400 years together. This extortion of Coigne and Livery, did produce two notorious effects. First, it made the land waste; next, it made the people idle. For when the husbandman had laboured all the year, the soldier in one night did consume the fruits of his labour; had he reason then to manure the land for the next year? hereupon of necessity came depopulation, banishment, and extirpation of the better sort of subjects; and such as remained became idle, and lookers on, expecting the event of those miseries and evil times. Lastly, this oppression did of force and necessity make the Irish a crafty people for such as are oppressed and live in slavery, are ever put to their shifts; and therefore in the old comedies of Plautus and Terence, the bond slave doth always act the cunning and crafty part.'

We have a similar testimony from baron Finglass, in the reign of Henry the Eighth.

"Item, In the aforesaid manner for the lack of punishment of the great lords of Munster by ministration of justice, they by the extortion of Coyne and Livery, and other abusions, have expelled all the English freeholders and inhabitants out of Munster, so that in fifty years past was none there obedient to the king's laws, except the cities and walled towns; and so this hath been the decay of Munster."

Later Policy." The Londoners found the natives willing to overgive, rather than to remove, and that they could not reap half the profit by the British which they do by the Irish, whom they use at their pleasure, never looking into the reasons which induced the natives to give more than indeed they could well raise, their assured hope that time might, by rebellion, relieve them of their heavy landlords, whom in the mean time they were contented to suffer under, though to their utter impoverishing and undoing. Thus they slighted, for their private profit sake, the planting of religion and civility, (the seeds of peace and plenty) which his majesty especially sought to sow for God's service, and the safety of the country. So as what his majesty intended should have been a terror to his enemies for looking into that kingdom, is now become a bait to invite them thither, where the chief tenants and inhabitants, being Irish, are prepared to entertain them." Sir Thos. Philips's

Letter to Charles the First. Harris's Hibernica,

vol. 1.

Similarly in Pinner's Survey of Ulster.

"No. 132. The earl of Castlehaven hath three thousand acres. Upon this proportion there is no building at all, neither freeholders. I find some few English families, but they have no estates, for since the old earl died, the tenants, as they tell me, cannot have their leases made good unto them, unless they will give treble the rent which they paid, and yet they must have put half the land which they enjoyed in the late earl's time :-all the rest of the land is inhabited with Irish.”

And again." Nos. 133, 134, 135.-The earl of Castlehaven hath six thousand acres. The agent of the earl showed me the rent roll of all the tenants that are on these three proportions; but their estates are so weak and uncertain that they are all leaving the land. There were in number sixty four, and each of them holds sixty acres. The rest of the land (two thousand one hundred and sixty acres,) is let to twenty Irish gentlemen, contrary to the articles of plantation, and these Irish gentlemen have under them about three thousand souls of all sorts."

Here is a pregnant specimen of Anglo-Irish liberality, and the effects which, under circumstances favourable to their development, it will inevitably produce. Lord Castlehaven had very peculiar claims to popularity in Ireland: a Roman Catholic himself, as well as a champion of Roman Catholics,