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hibited Catholics being compelled to attend the Protestant church service every Sunday, under severe penalties.

In this reign, the English laws and administration of justice (humorously so called) were for the first time extended over the whole island.

It is a very curious fact that the Irish, who are now said to be so hostile to law and order, were, in the reign of James, and for a long time before, of an entirely different character, if we may trust the highest English authorities. Sir John Davies and Lord Coke both say, that "no nation love equal and impartial justice more than the Irish;"" which virtue," says Lord Coke, "must necessarily be accompanied by many others." The Irish had suffered so much in the last reign. that they wished for quiet at any rate. Sir John Davies, the king's attorney-general, says: "Whereupon the multitude, being brayed as it were in a mortar, with sword, famine, and pestilence together, submitted themselves to the English government, received the laws and magistrates, and most gladly embraced king James's pardon and peace, in all parts of the realm, with demonstrations of joy and comfort."

This joy and comfort at the prospect of English law and justice, for which the Irish had been duly prepared by "being brayed as it were in a mortar, with sword, famine, and pestilence," was not of long continuance.

Very many of the people, throughout the island, both Catholics and Protestants, Irish and Anglo-Irish, soon found that the laws and judicial courts were mere instruments to rob them of their inheritance for the benefit of the king and a few greedy courtiers and favorites.

Commissions were appointed to make an inquisition into land titles in Ireland, and were conducted in such a manner as to place the estate of every individual and the whole country at the mercy of the crown and its creatures. Vast numbers were robbed of the estates which had been in their families for several generations. Whole counties were declared forfeited to the king. The process was a short one. The commissioners claimed for the king a title to a whole county. The question was submitted to a jury, and, if the jury refused to find a verdict for the king, they were imprisoned by the commissioners until they complied. Six counties of Ulster, the county of Wexford, many estates in other parts of the island, and the whole province of Connaught were thus declared forfeited, and the title vested in the crown. "Discoverers were everywhere

basely employed," says Leland, "in finding out flaws in men's titles to their estates."

The case of Connaught affords a specimen of the manner in which law was then administered in Ireland. To supply any formal defects in the titles of the landed proprietors of that province, new patents had been engrossed by James, and had received the Great Seal; but, by some neglect of the king's officers in chancery, the patents had not been enrolled, though the fee for enrolment, amounting to three thousand pounds, had been duly paid. For this neglect, the whole province was forfeited to the crown. But, it being near the close of this reign, the project was not carried into execution till the next.

In the reign of Charles the First, Lord Wentworth, the famous Earl of Strafford, was the king's deputy in Ireland. The king wanted money, and obtained large sums from the Irish on making fair promises, one of which was to secure them in the quiet enjoyment of their lands. But, having got the money, his promises were entirely disregarded, and the system of forfeitures was pursued by Wentworth with increased vigor. One instance will be sufficient. Wentworth accompanied the commissioners to inquire into the king's title through the province of Connaught, and all the counties in this province were declared forfeited to the crown. In one county, the jury were deaf to every argument in favor of the king's title, and refused to find it. Wentworth was enraged; he laid a fine of one thousand pounds upon the sheriff, and bound the obsti nate jurors to appear in the castle chamber and answer for their offence; where they were fined each in the sum of four thousand pounds, sentenced to imprisonment until it should be paid, and to acknowledge their offence in court upon their knees.

But we have not space for the melancholy tale of Irish his tory, during the reign of Charles and the time of Cromwell and the Commonwealth. The Protestant massacre seems to have been in a great measure, if not entirely, owing to contest for lands, confiscated in the manner we have described, between the Catholics who had been unjustly driven from their estates, and the English to whom they had been granted. The Irish, who had suffered much in the reigns of the first two Stuarts, had still more to fear from Cromwell and the Commonwealth. The Catholics had been, in the main, loyal subjects of Charles and James; but in the eyes of Cromwell and the republicans they were not only enemies as royalists, but

heretics, whom it was lawful to exterminate or drive from the country. The barbarous policy of Cromwell in Ireland is well known. The garrison of Drogheda, who had surrendered on a promise of quarter, were cruelly massacred, to the number of two thousand. Wexford shared a similar fate, and the war, carried on with Cromwell's usual vigor and despatch, in somewhat the same manner as that of Joshua against the Canaanites, was soon terminated. Cromwell, in his letter to the Parlia ment, giving an account of the capture of Drogheda, where the massacre lasted five days, says, "I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone, to whom, indeed, the praise of this mercy belongs!"

In the settlement of affairs in Ireland by Cromwell, Connaught was set apart for the Irish who had not made terms with him. Ulster had already been appropriated by the London companies and the Scotch. The two other provinces, Leinster and Munster, composing about one half of Ireland, were allotted to the soldiers of Cromwell and the English adventurers who had advanced money for the expenses of the war. The Irish were now driven into Connaught, and Cromwell issued a proclamation, "that all Catholics who, after that time, should be found in any other part of the kingdom, man, woman, or child, might be killed by any body who saw or met them," yet Mr. Carlyle says, commenting on this and similar deeds, "This is the first king's face poor Ireland ever saw; the first friend's face, little as it recognizes him. Poor Ireland!" And "the curse of Cromwell" is the only "gospel of veracity I can ever yet discover to have ever been fairly afoot there."

On the restoration of Charles the Second, the Catholic proprietors, who had been expelled from their lands, expected with some reason to regain their former possessions. They were nearly all of English descent, and had been loyal to the Stuarts. But the Cromwellians, as they were called, were numerous and powerful, Charles was indolent and ungrateful, and they were suffered to retain their lands.

It is remarkable that many of the descendants of the Puritans,-Baptists and Presbyterians,-who settled these two provinces, became Catholics in the third generation, and adopted the manners, habits, and in many instances the language of the Irish. A very large majority of the people of these two provinces are now Catholics.

In the reigns of Charles the Second and James the Second,

the Catholics in Ireland had little occasion to complain of religious persecution, and enjoyed nearly all the common privileges of English subjects. We must except, however, the time of the Popish plot in the reign of Charles, when the Catholic archbishop of Armagh, Oliver Plunket, who was considered by Protestants as a wise, sober, pious, and quiet man, was, on a false accusation, hurried over to England, condemned and executed.

The views of Irish history in the following extracts from Burke are very striking:

"The most able antiquaries," says Burke, "are of opinion, and Archbishop Usher, whom I reckon amongst the first of them, has I think shown, that a religion, not very remote from the present Protestant persuasion, was that of the Irish, before the union of that kingdom to the crown of England. If this was not directly the fact, this at least seems very probable, that papal authority was much lower in Ireland than in other countries. This union was made under the authority of an arbitrary grant of Pope Adrian, in order that the church of Ireland should be reduced to the same servitude with those that were nearer to his see. It is not very wonderful that an ambitious monarch should make use of any pretence in his way to so considerable an object. What is extraordinary is that, for a very long time, even quite down to the Reformation, and in their most solemn acts, the kings of England founded their title wholly on this grant; they called for obedience from the people of Ireland, not on principles of subjection, but as vassals and mesne lords between them and the popes, and they omitted no measure of force or policy to establish that papal authority, and all the distinguishing articles of religion connected with it, and to make it take deep root in the minds of the people. Not to crowd instances unnecessarily, I shall select two; one which is in point, the other on record; the one a treaty, the other an act of Parliament. The first, is the submission of the Irish chiefs to Richard the Second, mentioned by Sir John Davies. In this pact, they bind themselves, for the future, to preserve peace and allegiance to the kings of England, under certain pecuniary penalties; but, what is remarkable, these fines were all covenanted to be paid into the apostolical chamber, supposing the pope as the superior power, whose peace was broken, and whose majesty was violated, in disobeying his governor."—(Tracts on the Popery Code.)

"When, by every expedient of force and policy, by a war of some centuries, by extirpating a number of the old, and by bringing in a number of new people full of those opinions, and intending to propagate them, they had fully compassed their object, they suddenly took another turn; commenced an opposite persecution,

made heavy laws, carried on mighty wars, inflicted and suffered the worst evils, extirpated the mass of the old, brought in new inhabitants; and they continue at this day an oppressive system—and may for four hundred years to come to eradicate opinions, which, by the same violent means, they had been four hundred years endeavoring by every means to establish. They compelled the people to submit, by the forfeiture of all their civil rights, to the pope's authority, in its most extravagant and unbounded sense, as a giver of kingdoms; and now we refuse even to tolerate them in the most moderate and chastised sentiments concerning it. No country, I believe, since the world began, has suffered so much on account of religion, or has been so variously harassed both for Popery and for Protestantism."-Burke, on the Popery Code.

Probably the most remarkable instance of persecution and oppression is that of the Jews, for adhering to the religion of their forefathers; a religion which the persecutors themselves acknowledged to be of divine origin, and, for a long time, to have been the only true religion in the world. One Mr. Hamilton has written a book to prove the Irish to be Jews or Israelites. According to this author, a part of the tribe of Joseph had the good fortune to make their exodus from Egypt, before the time of Moses and Aaron, and found their land of promise in Ireland. This may be as true as many other learned conclusions on the origin of nations, to be found in the modern science of Ethnology.

But, whatever may be the facts concerning their origin, there is a great similarity in their fortunes. Both Jews and Irish have been persecuted for many centuries for their attachment to the religion of their ancestors, one of the most conservative principles, as Burke remarks, in society, and one which ought to be treated with great kindness.

Every religious or political revolution in England seems to have brought fresh calamities on Ireland. When the English chose to drive James the Second from the throne, and place thereon William of Orange, the Irish Catholics-the great majority of the nation-adhered to their old sovereign. James was their lawful king, placed over them by the English, without the Irish having any choice in the matter, and was, moreover, in Ireland with an army in actual possession of the country and government. Yet so little regard was had to the forms of justice that many outlawries and confiscations were made, as we have remarked, for treason committed by the Catholics in Ireland against the Prince of Orange, the very