numerous conflicts into which they afterwards broke out, nor at the precautions which the dominant party adopted for their own security. It is true that such precautions as the penal laws then. enacted, and rigidly enforced against the Catholics, were never heard of in any other nation; but the Irish had truly great reason to be grateful, for " they were not extirpated!" They were simply stripped of their property, and expelled from their homes, and exposed to die of famine. That was all!

And reading of these transactions, ought we to feel surprised that Ireland is not, at this day, upon a level with England, in wealth, and prosperity? It were a miracle, indeed, if she had been. No; Ireland is yet, and for centuries, we fear, must remain, an eye-sore to the people of this country, and a constant drain upon their resources. This is but a part of the punishment which the crimes of their ancestors have entailed upon them.

Even if Ireland had been permitted to live in peace, during the period that intervened between the Cromwellian settlement, and the commencement of the reign of George III., it is by no means improbable, that a country, so favourably placed in every respect, would have made some important steps in the career of national exertion. But one war was scarcely beginning to be forgotten, when another renewed all the horrors by which war has always been peculiarly characterized in that island. The attachment of the Irish to the Stuarts, brought upon them the vengeance of William III., and the further penal laws, by which his reign, and that of Anne, were disgraced. The effect of these abominable statutes is thus accurately described by Mr. Taylor.

'The grants of extensive forfeitures to several English proprietors was the first great cause of absenteeism, which is usually reckoned one of the chief causes of misery in Ireland. It is certainly absurd to say that evil has not resulted from this system; but it is just as absurd to suppose, that compulsory residence would be a remedy. The mere fact of the landlord living in Ireland or England, would make little difference, if the Irish still continued to export their raw produce, and import all manufactured articles; for there would be still the same impediment to the accumulation of capital, and the exercise of collective industry. Absenteeism is a part, and by no means the worst part, of a destructive system of land-letting, which arose from the joint operation of forfeitures and the penal laws. A great portion of Irish lands is held on leases of lives, renewable for ever, or on leases of extraordinary duration. These tenures arose from the uncertainty of property. The persons to whom estates were granted, eagerly embraced any offer made to them by persons residing on or near the lands. Many of them were English proprietors, and never intended to visit Ireland. Others had learned to dread the peasantry, and sought refuge in the towns. Both classes were glad to get a certain rent, however disproportioned, when they considered the uncertainty of their possessions. In consequence of this, a regular subordination of landlords, sometimes six or seven, existed between the proprietor and the actual tiller of the ground. Thus, the non-productive classes were disproportionately increased; for

each of them was, wholly or partly, supported by his profit-rent; and as the weight of maintaining all fell upon the producers, they derived no advantage from their labours beyond a sufficiency to protract a miserable existence. The numerous class of what were usually called "poor gentlemen," now fast disappearing, became a greater curse to the country, than absenteeism ever has been, or could be-men whose property ranged from one to five hundred a year, and who chose to live on that sum in idleness, deeming trade, commerce, and honourable industry, a degradation. The support of these gentlemen being derived from some lease, or share in a lease, of course fell upon the peasant, and absorbed all the fruits of his industry. The country, therefore, became, and continued, wretched; because the labourers had to provide for a greatly disproportioned number of consumers.

"Forfeitures placed the greater part, indeed almost the whole, of the lands in the hands of the Protestants; and the penal laws continued them in exclusive possession. Having already described the Cromwellians and their descendants, who constituted the great mass of Irish proprietors, it is needless to show how unfit such men were to be trusted with the destinies of a country. Even if we had not the evidence of an impartial witness, common sense would lead us to conclude, that these men would, in the ordinary transactions of life, exhibit the same unprincipled tyranny and injustice which their representatives had displayed in Parliament. Men who, as legislators, had unscrupulously violated a solemn treaty, and enacted persecuting laws sanctioning robbery and crime, could not have been kind landlords, nor equitable justices of the peace. We are not, however, left to mere reasoning, to discover the general character of the landlords in the middle of the last century. That celebrated agriculturist, Mr. Arthur Young, has recorded what he witnessed during his tour in Ireland, with all the indignation which an English gentleman feels at witnessing tyranny and oppression. His picture is not overcharged, as will be readily acknowledged by many who can remember some remnants of the system which he saw, in its full bloom of perfection. He says, "The landlord of an Irish estate, inhabited by Roman Catholics, is a sort of despot, who yields obedience, in whatever concerns the poor, to no law but his will. A long series of oppressions, aided by many very ill-judged laws, have brought landlords into the habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, and their vassals into that of an honest unlimited submission. Speaking a language that is despised-professing a religion that is abhorred and being disarmed, the poor find themselves slaves in a land of written liberty. Nay, I have heard anecdotes of the lives of the people being made free with, without any apprehension from the justice of a jury. The execution of the laws lies very much in the hands of justices of the peace, many of whom are drawn from the most illiberal class in the kingdom. If a poor man lodges a complaint against a gentleman, or any animal that chooses to call itself a gentleman, and the justice isues out a summons for his appearance, it is a fixed offence, and he will infallibly be called out. The peasants know their situation too well to think of it. They can have no defence, but by means of protection from one gentleman against another, who probably protects his vassal as he would the sheep he intends to eat."

The Irish landlords had professed an earnest desire to surround them

selves with a Protestant tenantry; but they soon found that this would be inconsistent with what they deemed their interests. The Protestants would not pay the extravagant rents demanded by the landlords, and were of course rejected. They emigrated in thousands to North America, and furnished the States with a body of determined soldiery, at the moment they were about to commence their contest with Great Britain.

Nor was this the only cause of the disappearance of Protestantism among the lower ranks. The inefficiency, the negligence, and, in many cases, the immorality of the established clergy, were at this unhappy period. perfectly scandalous. Their anxiety was to diminish their congregations, and make their parishes perfect sinecures. To the lower ranks of their flocks they were utter strangers, and would have looked upon any attempt to force intercourse as unpardonable impertinence. The great defect in the constitution of the church of England is, that it makes no provision for the instruction of the poor and ignorant. The sublime service, and simple but touching eloquence of the liturgy, loses much of its effect by constant repetition; but when read carelessly, in the style of a school-boy hurrying over a disagreeable task, its efficacy is wholly lost. The sermons are by no means an adequate substitute for the instruction that should be conveyed by personal communication: a well-written essay, in elegant and classical language, read from the pulpit, is really a very inefficient means of conveying religious knowledge to the illiterate and uninstructed. Irish Protestants have frequently boasted that theirs is the religion of gentlemen -can they forget that such is not the boast of Christianity? A higher merit than the restoration of sight to the blind, health to the sick, or even life to the dead, was, that "to the poor the gospel is preached." The church of Rome, with more wisdom, insists on a personal intercourse between the priest and his flock, by the institution of confession. this is liable to abuse, nay, that it has frequently been abused, is incontrovertible; but equally certain is it, that confession has been the source of many and great benefits. The first reformers felt this; and, in the rubric, required some such intercourse between the minister and the congregation, as a preparation for receiving the sacrament; but if ever practised in the reformed church, it soon fell into disuse; and the legal desecration of the sacrament, by making it a political test, rendered the revival of it impossible.

That

'Another cause for the decay of Protestantism, was the want of service in the Irish language. Whether the liturgy, in their own beloved tongue, would have reconciled the Irish to a religion, known to them only as the great source of their national calamities, may perhaps be doubtful; but the experiment was never tried, and the Irish church could not discern the ludicrous inconsistency of preaching against the church of Rome, for keeping the service of the mass in an unknown tongue, while it itself inflicted penalties on millions, for not attending service in a language almost equally unknown.

Persecution drew still closer the ties that united the priests to the people. Both were cruelly oppressed by the "Protestant ascendancy," and mutual suffering has ever been a source of firm friendship. The poor Protestant felt sensibly the difference between a pastor, who scarcely deigned to recognise his existence, and one who would be his comforter, his adviser, his guide, and his friend. Such a spectacle daily before his

eyes, was a more powerful argument than the most laborious treatise on the differences between the churches. Reason might show, that the opinions of the Protestant rector were the better; but reason and feeling united to prove that the conduct of the Catholic priest was more in accordance with the precepts of the gospel, and the conduct of the apostles. So powerful, indeed, was the effect of the contrast, that but for the labours of the Methodists and other dissenters, whose preachers mixed with the people, there would now be scarcely a single Protestant among the lower ranks in Ireland.

'But with whatever other negligences the church of Ireland may be charged, carelessness in the exaction of tithes is assuredly not among the number. Thrown, by the law, on the miserable tillers of the soil for support, the majority of the clergy employed a class of men, called Titheproctors, to collect their revenues; and never was there a greater scourge inflicted on an unfortunate country. Their exactions, their cruelties, their oppressions, would furnish materials for volumes; and would even then convey but a faint image of the intolerable misery they occasioned. The Irish law of tithe was far more severe than the English-it armed the parson with greater powers-it took from the farmer every means of defence against illegal overcharges. If the Irish clergy and their proctors had been angels, they must have been corrupted by the system; but they were not even the best of men; and they used their tremendous power in its fullest extent. If a f any thing further was required to alienate the hearts of the Irish peasantry from the reformed religion, it was to be found in the exactions of the tithe-mongers; for how could the cottier love, or even respect, pastors who seized the fruits of his industry, and snatched the last morsel from the mouths of his starving family?

• The oppressions of the landlords and the tithe-mongers produced their natural effect. The peasants, driven to despair, broke out in agrarian insurrections, which soon became formidable. The Protestant labourers of the north took the title "Hearts of Oak;" those of the south, from wearing their shirts outside their clothes, were denominated "Whiteboys." They committed the most alarming outrages, and inflicted the most revolting cruelties, on all whom they deemed the authors of their wrongs. There was not a man in Ireland ignorant of the cause of these disturbances; but the rulers of the land were neither willing to acknowledge their tyranny, nor inclined to cease from their rapacity. They adopted the usual favourite remedy of Irish legislators, and passed a sanguinary code of laws, to which no country in Europe can furnish a parallel.

"The Whiteboys," says Mr. Young, "being labouring Catholics, met with all those oppressions I have described, and would probably have continued in full submission, had not very severe treatment in respect of tithes, united with a great speculative rise of rents about the same time, blown up the flame of resistance. The atrocious acts they were guilty of, made them the subject of general indignation. Acts were passed for their punishment, which seemed calculated for the meridian of Barbary. This arose to such a height, that, by one, they were to be hanged under circumstances without the common formalities of a trial, which, though repealed in the following session, marks the spirit of punishment; while others yet remain the law of the land, that would, if executed, tend more to raise than quel an insurrection."

The old cry of a Popish plot was raised; and the cruelty of fear induced the leaders of the ascendancy to commit new acts of tyranny, and several fell victims to the forms of law, under circumstances of very doubtful guilt. Many more would have met a similar fate, but for the exertions of the judges, and especially Sir Edward Aston, Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas. He was nobly rewarded. On his return from a special commission at Clonmel, he found the roads lined by multitudes of both sexes, the friends and relatives of those whom he had rescued from destruction, invoking the blessings of heaven on his head, for his impartiality in the administration of justice-a blessing, of which its rarity had taught them the value.

'There was, however, one victim, whose fate deserves to be recorded, not merely as an illustration of the temper of the times, but as an example of the reckless fury with which the Irish aristocracy then, and since, used to hunt down an obnoxious individual. Nicholas Sheehy, the parish-priest of Clogheen, was a man of strong, generous feeling, and full of a noble sympathy for the injured and oppressed-a sentiment which was long deemed treasonable in Ireland. He had given unpardonable offence to the gentry in the neighbourhood, by resisting their oppression of their tenantry, and denouncing magisterial tyranny. He had frequently shielded persecuted victims, and relieved those whom "the little tyrants of the fields" had reduced to misery; but his character of "village Hampden" was full of danger, even greater than that of his prototype; for in England, at the worst of times, there was some chance of obtaining justice. During the disturbances in the south, he had frequently been tried for "acting as a Popish priest"-an offence then punished with transportation; but evidence sufficient for his conviction could not be obtained. A complaint was next made to government, that he had procured money from France to pay the Whiteboys, and to enlist them in the service of the Pretender. A proclamation was issued, offering a reward of three hundred pounds for Sheehy's apprehension. On hearing of this, he wrote a letter to the Secretary of State, offering to surrender, provided that he should not be tried at Clonmel, where his enemies would easily be able to pack a jury. His offer was accepted; he was brought to trial in Dublin, and, after a laborious investigation of fourteen hours, was honourably acquitted. The evidence against him was that of a vagrant boy, a common prostitute, and an impeached thief, taken from Clonmel jail, and bribed to give testimony, by promises of pardon and reward.

His acquittal only stimulated the malice of his enemies. A report was circulated that a Whiteboy, named Bridge, had been murdered by his associates, to prevent his giving information; and Sheehy was arrested as a participator in the crime. He had reason to dread a Clonmel jury. On the very same evidence that had been rejected in Dublin, he was found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged and quartered. The most essential part of the evidence, we should naturally suppose, would be the proof of Bridge's death; but no such thing was attempted. In fact, it was sworn, by two unexceptionable witnesses, that he had left the country; and it is notorious, that he was known to be alive several years after. During the trial, the faction that conducted the prosecution formed a guard round the court, excluding the prisoner's witnesses, and grossly insulting all who dared to speak in his favour. So far was the system of terror carried, that