On a close scrutiny it would have been found that neither the Irishry nor the Englishry formed a perfectly homogeneous body. The distinction between those Irish who were of Celtic 66 in all the courts and camps of the the English interest full reliance could Continent. Those despoiled proprie- be placed.* tors who still remained in their native land, brooded gloomily over their losses, pined for the opulence and dignity of which they had been deprived, and cherished wild hopes of another revolution. A person of this class was de-blood, and those Irish who sprang from scribed by his countrymen as a gentle- the followers of Strongbow and De man who would be rich if justice were Burgh, was not altogether effaced. done, as a gentleman who had a fine The Fitzes sometimes permitted themestate if he could only get it.* He selves to speak with scorn of the Os seldom betook himself to any peaceful and Macs; and the Os and Macs calling. Trade, indeed, he thought a sometimes repaid that scorn with averfar more disgraceful resource than ma- sion. In the preceding generation one rauding. Sometimes he turned free- of the most powerful of the O'Neills booter. Sometimes he contrived, in refused to pay any mark of respect to defiance of the law, to live by cosher- a Roman Catholic gentleman of old ing, that is to say, by quartering him-Norman descent. They say that the self on the old tenants of his family, family has been here four hundred who, wretched as was their own condi- years. No matter. I hate the clown tion, could not refuse a portion of their as if he had come yesterday." It pittance to one whom they still regarded seems, however, that such feelings as their rightful lord. The native were rare, and that the feud which had gentleman who had been so fortunate long raged between the aboriginal as to keep or to regain some of his Celts and the degenerate English had land too often lived like the petty prince nearly given place to the fiercer feud of a savage tribe, and indemnified him- which separated both races from the self for the humiliations which the modern and Protestant colony. dominant race made him suffer by governing his vassals despotically, by keeping a rude harem, and by maddening or stupefying himself daily with strong drink. Politically he was insignificant. No statute, indeed, excluded him from the House of Commons; but he had almost as little chance of obtaining a seat there as a man of colour has of being chosen a Senator of the United States. In fact only one Papist had been returned to the Irish Parliament since the Restoration. The whole legislative and executive power was in the hands of the colonists; and the ascendency of the ruling caste was upheld by a standing army of seven thousand men, on whose zeal for what was called the That colony had its own internal disputes, both national and State of religious. The majority was English English; but a large minority colony. came from the south of Scotland. One half of the settlers belonged to the Established Church: the other half were Dissenters. But in Ireland Scot and Southron were strongly bound together by their common Saxon origin. Churchman and Presbyterian were strongly bound together by their common Protestantism. All the colonists had a common language and a common pecuniary interest. They were surrounded by common enemies, and could be safe only by means of common precautions and exertions. The few penal laws, therefore, which had been made in Ireland against Protestant Nonconformists, were a dead letter. * King, chap. iii. sec. 2. + Sheridan MS.; Preface to the first volume of the Hibernia Anglicana, 1699; Secret Consults of the Romish party in Ireland, 1689. "There was a free liberty of conscience by connivance, though not by the law."King, chap. iii. sec. 1. The bigotry of the most sturdy Church- the victory achieved by the great race man would not bear exportation across from which he sprang.* Saint George's Channel. As soon as the Cavalier arrived in Ireland, and found that, without the hearty and courageous assistance of his Puritan neighbours, he and all his family would run imminent risk of being murdered by Popish marauders, his hatred of Puritanism, in spite of himself, began to languish and die away. It was remarked by eminent men of both parties that a Protestant who, in Ireland, was called a high Tory would in England have been considered as a moderate Whig.* Thus the grievances of the Irish Roman Catholic had hardly anything in common with the grievances of the English Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic of Lancashire or Staffordshire had only to turn Protestant; and he was at once, in all respects, on a level with his neighbours: but, if the Roman Catholics of Munster and Connaught had turned Protestants, they would still have continued to be a subject people. Whatever evils the Roman Catholic suffered in England were the effects of harsh legislation, and might have been remedied by a more liberal legislation. But between the two populations which inhabited Ireland there was an inequality which legislation had not caused and could not remove. The dominion which one of those populations exercised over the other was the dominion of wealth over poverty, of knowledge over ignorance, of civilised over uncivilised man. Course ought to The Protestant Nonconformists, on their side, endured, with more patience than could have been expected, the sight of the most absurd ecclesiastical establishment that the world has ever seen. Four Archbishops and eighteen Bishops were employed in looking after about a fifth part of the number of churchmen who inhabited the single diocese of London. Of the parochial clergy a large proportion were pluralists, James himself seemed, at the comand resided at a distance from their mencement of his reign, to be cures. There were some who drew perfectly aware of these truths. which from their benefices incomes of little The distractions of Ireland, he James, less than a thousand pounds a year, said, arose, not from the differ- have folwithout ever performing any spiritual ences between the Catholics function. Yet this monstrous institu- and the Protestants, but from the tion was much less disliked by the differences between the Irish and the Puritans settled in Ireland than the English. The consequences which he Church of England by the English should have drawn from this just prosectaries. For in Ireland religious position were sufficiently obvious; divisions were subordinate to national but, unhappily for himself and for Iredivisions; and the Presbyterian, while, land, he failed to perceive them. as a theologian, he could not but condemn the established hierarchy, yet looked on that hierarchy with a sort of complacency when he considered it as a sumptuous and ostentatious trophy of lowed. If only national animosity could be allayed, there could be little doubt that religious animosity, not being kept alive, as in England, by cruel penal acts and stringent test acts, would of itself fade away. To allay a national * In a letter to James found among Bishop animosity such as that which the two Tyrrel's papers, and dated Aug. 14. 1686, are races inhabiting Ireland felt for each some remarkable expressions. "There are other could not be the work of a few few or none Protestants in that country but such as are joined with the Whigs against the years. Yet it was a work to which a common enemy." And again: "Those that wise and good prince might have conpassed for Tories here" (that is in England) "publicly espouse the Whig quarrel on the other side the water." Swift said the same thing to King William a few years later: "I remember when I was last in England I told the King that the highest Tories we had with us would make tolerable Whigs there."-Letter concerning the Sacramental Test. *The wealth and negligence of the established clergy of Ireland are mentioned in the strongest terms by the Lord Lieutenant Clarendon, a most unexceptionable witness. † Clarendon reminds the King of this in a letter dated March 14. 1685. "It certainly is," Clarendon adds, " a most true notion." tributed much; and James would have | government put an end to the disputes undertaken that work with advantages engendered by the most extensive consuch as none of his predecessors or fiscation that ever took place in Europe. successors possessed. At onee an And thus, if James had been guided Englishman and a Roman Catholic, by the advice of his most loyal Protesthe belonged half to the ruling and half ant counsellors, he would have at least to the subject caste, and was therefore greatly mitigated one of the chief evils peculiarly qualified to be a mediator which afflicted Ireland.* between them. Nor is it difficult to Having done this, he should have trace the course which he ought to laboured to reconcile the hostile races have pursued. He ought to have deter- to each other by impartially defending mined that the existing settlement of the rights and restraining the excesses landed property should be inviolable; of both. He should have punished and he ought to have announced that with equal severity the native who indetermination in such a manner as dulged in the license of barbarism, and effectually to quiet the anxiety of the the colonist who abused the strength new proprietors, and to extinguish any of civilisation. As far as the legitimate wild hopes which the old proprietors authority of the crown_extended,might entertain. Whether, in the great and in Ireland it extended far,-no transfer of estates, injustice had or had man who was qualified for office by not been committed, was immaterial. integrity and ability should have been That transfer, just or unjust, had taken considered as disqualified by extraction place so long ago, that to reverse it or by creed for any public trust. It is would be to unfix the foundations of probable that a Roman Catholic King, society. There must be a time of with an ample revenue absolutely at limitation to all rights. After thirty his disposal, would, without much diffive years of actual possession, after ficulty, have secured the cooperation of twenty five years of possession solemnly the Roman Catholic prelates and priests guaranteed by statute, after innumera- in the great work of reconciliation. ble leases and releases, mortgages and devises, it was too late to search for flaws in titles. Nevertheless something might have been done to heal the lacerated feelings and to raise the fallen fortunes of the Irish gentry. The colonists were in a thriving condition. They had greatly improved their property by building, planting, and enclosing. The rents had almost doubled within a few years; trade was brisk; and the revenue, amounting to about three hundred thousand pounds a year, more than defrayed all the charges of the local government, and afforded a surplus which was remitted to England. There was no doubt that the next Parliament which should meet at Dublin, though representing almost exclusively the English interest, would, in return for the King's promise to maintain that interest in all its legal rights, willingly grant to him a very considerable sum for the purpose of indemnifying, at least in part, such native families as had been wrongfully despoiled. It was thus that in our own time the French Much, however, must still have been left to the healing influence of time. The native race would still have had to learn from the colonists industry and forethought, the arts of civilised life, and the language of England. There could not be equality between men who lived in houses and men who lived in sties, between men who were fed on bread and men who were fed on potatoes, between men who spoke the noble tongue of great philosophers and poets, and men who, with a perverted pride, boasted that they could not writhe their mouths into chattering such a jargon as that in which the Advancement of Learning and the Paradise Lost were written. Yet it is not unreasonable to believe that, if the gentle policy which has been described had *Clarendon strongly recommended this course, and was of opinion that the Irish Parliament would do its part. See his letter to Ormond, Aug. 28. 1686. It was an O'Neil of great eminence who mouth to chatter English. said that it did not become him to writhe his Preface to the first volume of the Hibernia Anglicana. The effect of the insane been steadily followed by the govern- | inflicted. ment, all distinctions would gradually attempt to subjugate England by means have been effaced, and that there would now have been no more trace of the hostility which has been the curse of Ireland than there is of the equally deadly hostility which once raged between the Saxons and the Normans in England. His errors. Unhappily James, instead of becoming a mediator, became the fiercest and most reckless of partisans. Instead of allaying the animosity of the two populations, he inflamed it to a height before unknown. He determined to reverse their relative position, and to put the Protestant colonists under the feet of the Popish Celts. To be of the established religion, to be of the English blood, was, in his view, a disqualification for civil and military employment. He meditated the design of again confiscating and again portioning out the soil of half the island, and showed his inclination so clearly that one class was soon agitated by terrors which he afterwards vainly wished to sooth, and the other by cupidity which he afterwards vainly wished to restrain. But this was the smallest part of his guilt and madness. He deliberately resolved, not merely to give to the aboriginal inhabitants of Ireland the entire dominion of their own country, but also to use them as his instruments for setting up arbitrary government in England. The event was such as might have been foreseen. The colonists turned to bay with the stubborn hardihood of their race. The mother Country justly regarded their cause as Then came a desperate struggle for a tremendous stake. Everything dear to nations was wagered on both sides: nor can we justly blame either the Irishman or the Englishman for obeying, in that extremity, the law of selfpreservation. The contest was terrible, but short. The weaker went down. His fate was cruel; and yet for the cruelty with which he was treated there was, not indeed a defence, but an excuse for, though he suffered all that tyranny could inflict, he suffered nothing that he would not himself have her own. of Ireland was that the Irish became hewers of wood and drawers of water to the English. The old proprietors, by their effort to recover what they had lost, lost the greater part of what they had retained. The momentary ascendency of Popery produced such a series of barbarous laws against Popery as made the statute book of Ireland a proverb of infamy throughout Christendom. Such were the bitter fruits of the policy of James. We have seen that one of his first acts, after he became King, was to recall Ormond from Ireland. Ormond was the head of the English interest in that kingdom: he was firmly attached to the Protestant religion; and his power far exceeded that of an ordinary Lord Lieutenant, first, because he was in rank and wealth the greatest of the colonists, and, secondly, because he was not only the chief of the civil administration, but also commander of the forces. The King was not at that time disposed to commit the government wholly to Irish hands. He had indeed been heard to say that a native viceroy would soon become an independent sovereign. For the present, therefore, he determined to divide the power which Ormond had possessed, to entrust the civil administration to an English and Protestant Lord Lieutenant, and to give the command of the army to an Irish and Roman Catholic General. The Lord Lieutenant was Clarendon: the General was Tyrconnel. Tyrconnel sprang, as has already been said, from one of those degenerate families of the Pale which were popularly classed with the aboriginal population of Ireland. He sometimes, indeed, in his rants, talked with Norman haughtiness of the Celtic barbarians: † but all his sympathies were *Sheridan MS. among the Stuart Papers.. I ought to acknowledge the courtesy with which Mr. Glover assisted me in my search for this valuable manuscript. James appears, from the instructions which he drew up for his son in 1692, to have retained to the last the notion that Ireland could not without danger be entrusted to an Irish Lord Lieu tenant. † Sheridan MS. hatred. tifications. really with the natives. The Protest-fied at finding himself a subordinate ant colonists he hated; and they member of that administra- His morreturned his Clarendon's tion of which he had expected inclinations were very different: but to be the head. He complained he was, from temper, interest, and that whatever he did was misrepreprinciple, an obsequious courtier. His sented by his detractors, and that the spirit was mean: his circumstances were embarrassed; and his mind had been deeply imbued with the political doctrines which the Church of England had in that age too assiduously taught. His abilities, however, were not contemptible; and, under a good King, he would probably have been a respectable viceroy. Clarendon Ireland as tenant. colonists. gravest resolutions touching the country which he governed were adopted at Westminster, made known to the public, discussed at coffeehouses, communicated in hundreds of private letters, some weeks before one hint had been given to the Lord Lieutenant. His own personal dignity, he said, mattered little: but it was no About three quarters of a year light thing that the representative of elapsed between the recall of the majesty of the throne should be arrives in Ormond and the arrival of made an object of contempt to the Lord Lieu. Clarendon at Dublin. During people.* Panic spread fast Panie that interval the King was among the English, when they among the represented by a board of Lords found that the viceroy, their Justices but the military administra- fellow countryman and fellow Protesttion was in Tyrconnel's hands. Already ant, was unable to extend to them the the designs of the court began gradu- protection which they had expected ally to unfold themselves. A royal from him. They began to know by order came from Whitehall for disarm- bitter experience what it is to be a ing the population. This order Tyr- subject caste. They were harassed connel strictly executed as respected by the natives with accusations of the English. Though the country was treason and sedition. This Protestinfested by predatory bands, a Protes-ant had corresponded with Monmouth: tant gentleman could scarcely obtain that Protestant had said something permission to keep a brace of pistols. disrespectful of the King four or five The native peasantry, on the other years ago, when the Exclusion Bill was hand, were suffered to retain their under discussion; and the evidence of weapons.* The joy of the colonists the most infamous of mankind was was therefore great, when at length, in ready to substantiate every charge. December 1685, Tyrconnel went to The Lord Lieutenant expressed his London, and Clarendon came to Dub-apprehension that, if these practices lin. But it soon appeared that the government was really directed, not at Dublin, but in London. Every mail that crossed Saint George's Channel brought tidings of the boundless influence which Tyrconnel exercised on Irish affairs. It was said that he was Clarendon was soon informed, by a to be a Marquess, that he was to be a concise despatch from Sunderland, Duke, that he was to have the sole that it had been resolved to make command of the forces, that he was to without delay a complete change in be entrusted with the task of remodel- both the civil and the military governling the army and the courts of jus- ment of Ireland, and to bring a large tice. Clarendon was bitterly morti-number of Roman Catholics instantly into office. His Majesty, it was most * Clarendon to Rochester, Jan. 19. 1685; Secret Consults of the Romish Party in Ireland, 1690. + Clarendon to Rochester, February 27. 1685. were not stopped, there would soon be at Dublin a reign of terror similar to that which he had seen in London, when every man held his life and honour at the mercy of Oates and Bedloe.t *Clarendon to Rochester and Sunderland, March 2. 168; and to Rochester, March 14. + Clarendon to Sunderland, February 26. 168 |