however, yet sent to Ireland for adoption there. It is indeed true that, when the genius of intolerance could safely show itself in this country, it availed itself of the persecuting statutes of Elizabeth and James I., by embodying them in proclamations which, under Poyning's act, had the force of law; but still it was not a race that was to be extirpated, but a faith to be extinguished. That in England the latter was the sole inspiring motive and simple object, is self evident; but the axiom is fortified by the fact, that Elizabeth and her senate persecuted every form of faith except the established one; for martyrdom was sometimes bestowed on the calvinist and puritan, as well as on the papist.

Thus we see that the spirit which moved the Irish justices to obliterate all distinctions except those of protestant and papist, and to enjoin the rigid execution of all laws against the latter, was the same which vivified Elizabeth and her advisers, who could at home legislate for only one race. We are immediately struck with the family likeness between the Sunday fine, the sacramental test, and the exclusion of popish recruits from the army. This faithful resemblance appears in every generation of the penal statutes from Elizabeth's time to George III.— a gloomy distance (from 1585 to 1793) of more than two hundred years.

When laws were enacted against the Irish, something was feared, and something hoped there were patrician armies on one hand, and patrician acres on the other; but when they were levelled against papists, they smote only cripples and beggars. The whip and the halter were introduced for the protection of the gospel, when fears for it could be only simulated or imaginary. But for the few who feared, there were thousands more sincere, who hated; so that the instruments of punishment were plied to gratify rankling malignity, in defiance of protestant principle.

The abolition of a peculiar form of Christian worship by worrying its professors to death or to outward denial, was the grand object of the penal codex, although the

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motives may at times have been a little mixed. The source from which it first sprang, was the distinction between protestant and papist, a distinction which was fondly nursed till the year 1829, when the state withdrew its protection, and committed it to private interest and solicitude. The distinction still survives, with improved taste and temper; and only as a witness of the sincerity of both parties. Still the distinctions between protestant and catholic exist; but they serve, like the partitions of the paternal mansion, not for jealous boundaries, but for mutual convenience.

In 1698, the Irish parliament, roused by some encroachments on its privileges, made an effort to defend them; they rejected a bill of supply because it had not originated in the commons. The bill had been returned from England, on the principle of Poyning's law; and the power of binding Ireland by English statutes was asserted by Sydney, the lord lieutenant. On this occasion Molyneaux stood forward as the champion of the legislative independence of Ireland, which he ably argued in a wellknown book, called "The Case of Ireland." This production the English commons condemned to be burned by the hands of the hangman. During the administration of lord Capel, in 1695, the penal statutes against the Roman catholics received fresh augmentations. In 1695, the British prohibited the exportation of woollen cloth from Ireland, which was the cause of much distress and discontent. The commons, to William's great vexation, resumed seventy-six grants of land, with which he had rewarded his followers. They appointed commissioners to determine claims and make sales; and unconstitutionally forbade petitions against their management and decision. The grants were estimated at £1,500,000 by the trustees themselves, but produced only about onethird of that sum in their corrupt hands.

Amongst those resumptions was one particularly offensive to the king. His uncle, James, had considerable private possessions in Ireland, which were seized by William. His wife recommended him to appropriate

these to the purposes of better educating candidates for orders, and relieving the domestic necessities of the parochial clergy. But, as the luck of a poor parson was as bad then as it is now, the estates were bestowed on his favourite, Elizabeth Villiers. The ugly courtezan, however, who bewitched the king, was plucked by the parliament. His majesty growled his resentment in "raucous Dutch;" but the Irish commons consoled him by humorously voting that "the advising and passing of (all) the grants was highly reflecting upon the king's honour."

As William was always craving men and money to fight the French, so was he always at the mercy of the parliaments of both kingdoms. During his reign he enjoyed not an hour's free-will, except in his Continental schemes. In these he was indulged, on consideration of his suffering the parliament to draw round his prerogatives a spiral, which they narrowed at every grant of a subsidy. When he came to know them, he scoffed at their noise about the constitution, and regarded them as a cabal of selfish cheats and vicious bigots. He struggled for a while to raise his absolute will above their pretensions; not that he was a tyrant, but he found himself a slave to whom any means of liberation were lawful. In order to lighten the work, and lessen the importance, of parliament, he instituted cabinet ministers; but to no purpose; for the house penetrated him, and gave him a hint of his own destination, by unceremoniously sending home the Dutch guards. Mistrusting the mere command of the purse, the commons enlisted the suffrages of the ignorant rabble and the stupid peasantry, by inflaming and pampering their prejudices. They raised the cry of " No popery," and satisfied it with one penal enactment; they created terrors and alarms, and calmed them with another. What laws soever pleased them, the commons passed, whether the king was pleased or not. William avowed his repugnance to persecution; is known to have instructed even English judges on circuitnot to molest catholic priests; and never assented to a penallaw except in submission to a menacing and formidable power.

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CHAPTER XXIV.

ANNE, GEORGE I. AND II., A. D. 1702 TO 1760.

ANNE, 1702-1714.-Two remarkable acts were passed in this reign: the Test Act, and "an Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery." The former rendered the

receiving of the sacrament, according to the rite of the church of England, an indispensable qualification for some of the humblest public offices, from which, consequently, all conscientious dissenters were excluded; the latter greatly aggravated the severity of the penal laws against the Roman catholics. This body was eloquently defended, at the bar of both houses of parliament, by Sir Theobald Butler, Sir Stephen Rice, and Mr. Malone, who forcibly maintained that the proposed acts were a breach of the treaty of Limerick. Those acts were not repealed till 1828. In Ireland, as well as in England, the mutual malice and incessant contentions between the two great parties, the whigs and the tories, agitated civil society and embittered social. The whigs were the supporters of the principles of the late revolution, which placed William on the throne. The tories were the adherents of James II., in Latin Jacobus, and hence the term Jacobites applied to them. They denied the right of parliament to alter the succession, and fondly cherished the hope of restoring the Stuarts, in which they knew themselves to be secretly countenanced by the queen. This party included all the Roman catholics, and many eminent protestants, lay and clerical. Those protestants were distinguished by the name of High churchmen, and Nonjurors. As High churchmen they maintained certain opinions, such as the divine right of kings, non-resistance, and passive obedience, which long continued the fruitful source of violent and restless discussions, though now. entirely disregarded. As Nonjurors they refused to take the oath of allegiance to any prince but James, or his

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legitimate successors, in consequence of which refusal many of them suffered deprivation of office in church and state. Towards the close of Anne's reign, the clergy and peers of the established church of Ireland were mostly Jacobites; the whigs had a small but formidable majority in the commons: this division of parties produced, as usual, endless wrath and altercation. In 1703, the Irish lords vigorously resisted the encroachments of the English legislature upon their privileges. On an appeal to the English peers, the judgment of the Irish house, which had decreed certain lands to be the property of the earl of Meath, was reversed. The Irish peers resolved that their judgment was final and irreversible, and declared that any subject appealing from their jurisdiction, or executing any order contrary to it, should be deemed a betrayer of the privileges of their house, and of the rights of the people of Ireland.

GEORGE I., 1714-1727.-No opposition was given here to the accession of the elector of Hanover; the people were passive, and the parliament full of loyalty. The legislative independence of this body was again entrenched on, in a case similar to that just mentioned. In a suit between Sherlock and Annesley (1719), the British lords reversed the decree of the Irish, and confirmed the decision of the Exchequer court. The Irish peers passed a resolution in support of their privileges, and put the barons of the Exchequer into custody for fining the sheriff who disobeyed them. The English parliament commended the barons, and passed "An act for the better securing the dependency of Ireland on the crown of Great Britain," which deprived the Irish peers of the power of judging in appeals, and left the Irish legislature a doubtful and impotent authority, except in the accomplishment of mischief.

In 1724, one Wood obtained a patent for supplying Ireland with a copper coinage. Jonathan Swift, dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, roused the nation against this base medium, by the publication of his celebrated "Drapier's Letters.'

A reward of £300 was vainly offered