on by want of employment. During the eighteenth century the peasantry of Ireland were the most miserable in Europe. And in the frequent famines, a large proportion of the inhabitants were quite as badly off as the people of Derry during the worst part of the siege.

But the evil consequences of those evil laws did not end with the eighteenth century: they have come down to the present day. For when, subsequently, the restrictions were removed and trade was partially relieved, the remedy came too late. Some branches of manufacture and trade had been killed downright, and others permanently injured. An industry once extinguished is not easily revived. The trade in wool, a chief staple of Ireland, which was kept down for nearly a century, never recovered its former state of prosperity. The consequence of all this is that Ireland has at this day comparatively little manufacture and commerce; and the people have to depend for subsistence chiefly on the land. And this again, by increasing the competition for land, has intensified the land troubles inherited from the older times of the plantations.

Sculpture on a Capital: Priest's House, Glendalough: Beranger, 1779.
From Petrie's "Round Towers.'

EADERS of Irish History should carefully bear in mind that the proceedings of the Irish Parliament, and the political history of the country during the eighteenth century, have reference almost solely to the Protestant portion of the community; and that the struggles of the Irish legislature for independence, to be related in this and the following chapters, were the struggles of Protestants alone. The Catholics had no power to take part in these contests: for no Catholic could be a member of parliament, or even vote at an election for one. They kept almost wholly silentat least during the first half of the century-believing that the less attention they drew on themselves the better for they cowered under the law, and knew not the moment they might be visited with further crushing enactments. The Protestants of the Irish Patriotic party strove for the rights of the Protestant people only. The Catholics never entered into their thoughts except for the purpose of keeping them down. Moly

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neux, Swift, Lucas, Flood, and many other patriots that will come before us as we go along, were all against granting any political liberty to Catholics. Burke and Grattan were almost the only two great Protestants of the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century who took a broader view, and advocated the right of the Irish Catholics to be placed on terms of equality with the Protestant people.

The position of the Irish parliament during the greater part of the century was this. The high government officials, from the lord lieutenant down, were nearly all Englishmen, with commonly a few Irishmen of English sympathies. These formed what may be called the Court Party. They were in favour of English ascendancy, being always ready to carry out the wishes of the king and the English council; and as, by the various means at their disposal described farther on-bribery, pensions, situations, titles, &c.— they were nearly always able to have a majority of members in their favour, the English interest was all-powerful in the Irish parliament. But among a

thoughtful section of Irish Protestants, who had the interests of their own country, or at least of the Protestant part of it, at heart, the unjust laws that destroyed the industries of Ireland and ruined and impoverished its people to enrich English merchants and tradesmen, and the appointment of Englishmen to all the important posts to the exclusion of Irishmen, provoked feelings of resentment and distrust towards the English government akin to those produced in times. of old by a similar course of ill-treatment (page 162), and kindled in them a sentiment of patriotism which became more intensified as time went on. They were always represented in parliament by a small opposition,

who came to be called Patriots, or the Patriotic or Popular Party. Some of these were indeed selfish and corrupt, and made themselves troublesome merely to induce the government to buy them off by giving them good situations or pensions. But there was always a solid body of men of a different stamp, like Molyneux and Grattan, who, so far as lay in their power, resisted all dictation and all encroachment on the privileges of the Irish parliament, or on the rights and liberties of the country. They held steadily in view two main objects :-To remove the ruinous restrictions on trade and commerce, and to make their parliament as far as possible independent, so that it might have a free hand to manage the affairs of Ireland. It was the unjust trade-laws, and the constant preferment of Englishmen over the heads of Irishmen that gave origin to the Irish Patriotic Party, and brought to the front their great leaders both in and out of parliament, from Molyneux to Swift and from Swift to Grattan. Gradually, year by year, they gained strength, and ultimately, as we shall see, carried their main points against the government : but it was a long and bitter struggle. Sometimes it happened in cases of unusual provocation, that, not only the small party of Patriots, but the great majority of the Irish members were roused to successful resistance in spite of the influence of the Court Party: of which we shall see instances as we go along. The struggle between these two parties forms the main feature in the political history of Ireland during the greater part of the eighteenth century.

The resistance began early. In 1698, some years before the time we are now treating of, William Molyneux, member of parliament for the University of Dublin, a man of great scientific eminence, published

his famous book, "The Case of Ireland's being bound by Acts of parliament in England stated," in which he denounced the commercial injustice done to Ireland, traced the growth of the Irish parliament, and maintained that it was independent of that of England, and had a right to make its own laws. This Essay was received in England with great indignation; and the parliament there, pronouncing it dangerous, ordered it to be burned publicly by the hangman. But the powerful statement of Molyneux, though it taught his countrymen a useful lesson, did not close up the road to ruin; for in the very year after its publication came the most crushing of all the restrictions, the act already described (p. 396) destroying the Irish wool industry.

A few years later on, the bitter feelings excited in Ireland by these and other such proceedings were greatly intensified by a notable event brought about by a lawsuit commonly known as the "Annesley case. case." A dispute about some property arose, in 1719, between two Irish persons, Hester Sherlock and Maurice Annesley, which the Dublin court of exchequer decided in favour of Annesley; but the Irish house of lords, on being appealed to, reversed this and gave judgment in favour of Hester Sherlock. Annesley appealed to the English house of lords, who affirmed the exchequer decision, reversing that of the Irish lords; and they fined Burrowes, the sheriff of Kildare, because he refused to put Annesley in possession in obedience to their decree. But the Irish peers remitted the fine, declaring the appeal to the English lords illegal, commended the sheriff for his action, and went farther by taking into custody the three barons of the court of exchequer who had given judgment for