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Bolingbroke brought in a bill, which afterwards passed into a law, that made it high treason to be enlisted for any foreign prince: a caution which was not at this time found necessary to be had in Ireland, notwithstanding the inordinate propensity of the Irish parliament to harass and oppress the Catholics with penal statutes. Now for the first time their loyalty was above suspicion; and a Stuart passed by an opportunity of punishing them. The queen died on the 1st of August, 1714.

CHAPTER III.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE THE FIRST.

IT is foreign from the purpose of this work to analize the political views of the leading men in power upon the demise of Queen Anne. The Jacobites looked up with more confidence to Lord Bolingbroke, than to the Earl of Oxford, for sincerity in favour of the abdicated family. If Oxford, as must be presumed, of most of the Tories of that day, were against the Hanover interest, his conduct was reserved, mysterious, and equivocal; by which he lost the confidence of his own party, without gaining that of the other. Bolingbroke was universally supposed to favour the heir of blood, and was known to be a most determined and implacable enemy of the Whigs. The Jacobites relied much upon his affections, but more upon his resentment. The Tory party preponderated in the landed interest of the country; the Whigs had acquired a majority in the privy council; the Tories were without a head, dispirited, distracted, and consequently irresolute: the Whigs, flushed with their ascendency, acted with concert, energy and effect: they brought into action the principles they had always avowed, and by them they seated the Elector of Hanover on the thrones of Great Britain and Ireland: he was proclaimed and acknowledged king without opposition.* The Tories, as they had every reason to expect, were dismissed from his councils, and the whole management of public affairs was committed to the Whigs.

The parliament of Ireland, convened in November, 1715, was prominently conspicuous in manifesting their zeal for the Hanover succession, and the Whig administration. They passed acts for recognising the king's title; for the security of his person and government; for setting a price (50,000l.) upon the Pretender's head; and for attainting the Duke of Ormond : and they voted the supplies without murmur or opposition. It is to be remarked, that towards the conclusion of the late reign, the commons had, during the last Tory administration, brought in a bill to attaint the Pretender: and it was generally believed that her majesty had prorogued the parliament, with the direct view of preventing that bill from passing against her brother:

* Viz. By the Act of Settlement, as George the First, son of Ernest Augustus, Elector of Brunswick, and of Sophia, grand daughter of King James the First.

and that with a similar intent to facilitate his access to the throne, she had disbanded the greatest part of the army in Ireland. The commons therefore eagerly seized the opportunity so favourable for ingratiating themselves with his majesty, and for justifying that conduct, which had been reprobated as turbulent and factious by the late government. They accordingly presented a very strong address to his majesty, that he would be graciously pleased, for the security of his government, and the Protestant interest of Ireland, to remove the Earl of Anglesey from his councils and service in that kingdom.* Notwith

Vide 3 vol. Journ. Comm. p. 67. This address is founded on the fact of the recruiting service for the Pretender having been openly permitted in Dublin, and the prorogation of the late parliament having been made to prevent the act for attainting the Pretender, and the army's having been disbanded to favour his pretensions. It throws light upon the history of those days, and is to be seen in the Appendix, No. LIV. We are now in an age and circumstances to judge fairly of that wretched policy, which induced our ancestors to trans. port an army of tried bravery, and unshaken loyalty to the House of Stuart, into foreign countries, there to be formed into nurseries for every youth of martial disposition, whom the severe and humiliating laws of his own country shut out of the profession of arms, as well as every other honourable calling which a gentleman could embrace. As this address of the commons, as well as the general stream of the Whig writers of those days, seem to identify Tories and Jacobites, which terms even to this day are by many considered synonymous, it will be an act of justice to submit to the reader the political profession of faith as to the Pretender of a leading Tory, who was one of the most obnoxious to the Whigs, because he was the most reasonable and sensible of their opponents. It is a letter from Dean Swift, written from Trim on the 16th of December, 1716, to the Archbishop of Dublin (King).

"MY LORD,

"I should be sorry to see my Lord Bolingbroke following the trade "of an informer; because he is a person for whom I always had, and still con"tinue a very great love and esteem: for I think as the rest of mankind do, "that informers are a detestable race of people, although they may be some"times necessary. Besides I do not see whom his lordship can inform against, "except himself. He was three or four days at the court of France, while he "was secretary; and, it is barely possible, he might then have entered into "some deep negotiation with the Pretender, although I would not believe "him if he should swear it; because he protested to me, that he never saw "him but once, and that was at a great distance in public at an opera. As to "any other of the ministry at that time I am confident he cannot accuse them; " and that they will appear as innocent, with relation to the Pretender, as any "who are now at the helm: and as to myself, if I were of any importance, I "should be very easy under such an accusation, much easier than I am to "think your Grace imagineth me in any danger; or, that Lord Bolingbroke "should have any ill story to tell of me. He knoweth, and loveth, and think"eth too well of me, to be capable of such an action. But I am surprised to "think your Grace could talk, or act, or correspond with me for years past, "while you must needs believe me a most false and vile, man; declaring to you on all occasions my abhorrence of the Pretender, and yet privately en"gaged with a ministry to bring him in: and therefore warning me to look to "myself, and prepare my defence against a false brother, coming over to discover such secrets as would hang me. Had there been ever the least over"tures or intent of bringing in the Pretender, during my acquaintance with "the ministry, I think I must have been very stupid not to have picked out

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standing the recruiting for the service of the Pretender were one of the principal grounds for the commons address against the Earl of Anglesey, as if countenanced and connived at by his majesty's servants, yet so fully convinced was the ministry of that day of the unquestionable loyalty of the Irish nation, that the lords justices, in their speech to the parliament, rendered them the most honourable testimony, in saying, that it was with no small satisfaction, that they observed the calm, which that kingdom (formerly the seat of so many rebellions) then enjoyed, whilst the traitorous enemies to the king and our happy establishment, discouraged by their early and steady zeal for the Protestant succession, had thought fit to change the place of action, and attempt elsewhere to disturb his majesty's government. Nor was this the soothing art of adulation, but the cordial effusion of active confidence: for the lords justices added, that his majesty had ordered an addition to be made to each company of the militia, till such time as he could replace those regiments, which the necessity of his affairs had obliged him. then to draw from Ireland to suppress the rebels in Great Britain, wherein their safety was equally concerned with that of his other subjects.* Were not anomaly and incongruity the peculiar properties of Irish history, it would be my duty to draw the reader's attention to the gross inconsistency of rendering solemn homage to the exemplary loyalty of the Irish nation in the most perilous crisis, and punishing them at the same time for a disposition to treachery, turbulence, and treason. Whilst rebellion was openly making alarming progress in North Britain, under the Earl of Mar at the head of 10,000 Scotch Presbyterians, and "some discoveries or suspicions. And although I am not sure I should have “ turned informer, yet I am certain I should have dropt some general cautions, " and immediately have retired. When people say things were not ripe at "the queen's death; they say they know not what: things were rotten. And "had the ministers any such thoughts, they should have begun. three years be"fore; and they who say otherwise, understand nothing of the state of the "kingdom at that time.

"But whether I am mistaken or no in other men, I beg your Grace to be"lieve, that I am not mistaken in myself. I always professed to be against "the Pretender, and am so still. And this is not to make my court (which I "know is vain), for I own myself full of doubts, fears, and dissatisfactions, “ which I think on as seldom as I can : yet if I were of any value, the public "may safely rely on my loyalty, because I look upon the coming of the Pre"tender as a greater evil, than any we are like to suffer under the worst Whig "ministry that can be found.

"I have not spoke or thought so much of party these two years, nor could "any thing have tempted me to it, but the grief I have in standing so ill in "your Grace's opinion.

I beg your Grace's blessing, and am, &c.

"JONATHAN SWIFT."

* 2 Journ. Lords, p. 453. The lords justices were the Duke of Grafton and the Earl of Galway, and the speech was delivered by the Duke of Grafton.

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no part of South Britain was secure from the attempts of the friends of a Catholic Pretender to the throne, Catholic Ireland was the only part of the British empire, for which government felt secure, and therefore drew from it the usual sources of national defence to give strength to Protestant Britain. Although malice have been saturated in calumniating the Irish nation, it has (perhaps accidentally) escaped even the charge of guilt in the rebellion of 1715. The speech which bore such honourable. testimony of the tried loyalty of the Irish Catholics, bespoke the disgraceful policy of keeping and treating them, notwithstanding, as a separate and divided people. "We must recommend to you (said the lords justices in their speech to the commons) "in the present conjuncture, such unanimity in your resolutions "as may once more put an end to all other distinctions in Ire"land, but that of Protestant and Papist." Such indeed was the hatred, in which they were then holden, that the usual parliamentary phrase for the Irish body of Catholics was, the common enemy: scarcely an address concerning them during this reign reached the throne, which did not distinguish them with this appellation. Without any fresh charge or even suspicion of misconduct, they were so explicitly represented in the speech of the Lord Carteret. *"All the Protestants of this kingdom "have but one common interest, and have too often fatally ex"perienced, that they have the same common enemy." Vain is it to set up the personal character and private virtues of the monarch, as a security or indulgence to his subjects against the penal code of austerities imposed upon them by the legislature: these persecuting and oppressive laws execute themselves..... Queen Anne has been represented, perhaps not untruly, as fa tender mother, a warm friend, an indulgent mistress, a munificent patron, a mild and merciful prince; and yet the body of Catholics was during her reign more severely punished and persecuted than during that of any of her predecessors. Such, how

"

3 Journ. Commons, p. 399.

† Smol. Hist. p. 268.

This is affirmed by Swift, who says, in his Presbyterian's Plea of Merit,.... "I do not conceive why a sunk discarded party, who neither expect or desire any thing more than a quiet life, should, under the names of High Flyers, Ja"cobites, and many other vile appellations, be charged so often in print and at "common tables with endeavouring to introduce Popery and the Pretender; "while the Papists abhor them above all other men, on account of severities against their priests in her late majesty's reign; when the now disbanded re"probate party was in power. This I was convinced of some years ago by a "long journey into the Southern parts, where I had the curiosity to send for "many priests of the parishes I passed through; and to my great satisfaction "found them every where abounding in profession of loyalty to the late King "George; for which they gave me the reasons above mentioned: at the same "time complaining bitterly of the hardships they suffered under the queen's late "ministry." I cannot take leave of Swift, without reminding the reader, that fever a true Irish patriot existed, he was the man. He is often calumniated D d

VOL. I.

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