"Or does he deem us grown so blind

"As not to see what he design'd?

"It were, indeed, a pretty jest

"To hug a serpent to one's breast:

"But he shall find, and to his cost,

"We have not yet our senses lost.

"Who waits there? Do you hear me, hounds?

"Go, drive that fellow from my grounds:

"Should he resist, or grumble, gag him!

"Or, through the nearest horsepond, drag him." Swift to obey their lord's command, Rush'd forth a mean obsequious band,

And, with a yell and fiend-like roar,

Hunted poor Peter from the door:

Who, stript of all, abused, ill-treated,

Saw now how he'd been gull'd and cheated.

In vain, some worthier servants strove

In the Squire's stormy breast to move

Some sense of honour and of shame:

In vain, they urged that Peter's claim

The world, perhaps, might think but right,

And call it treachery to deny't:

That it concern'd his reputation

To give the case consideration;

For Honour own'd a law beyond

The narrow forms of Deed and Bond,

Forms meant for knaves; the nobler soul

Would act aright without controul.

The Squire, disdaining a reply,

Stripp'd each man of his livery;

And, kicking them down stairs, advised 'em,

Try how the world they talk'd of, prized 'em.

The rout rejoiced in their disgrace,

Because they got into their place;

While Martin smiled to find that he

Could blind the Squire so easily,

Who, fearing wrong, laid by remorse

And honor, and committed worse.

THE END.

SHORT ACCOUNT

OF THE

PRESENT STATE

OF THE

IRISH CATHOLICS.

“You have filled me with a great compassion of their calamities, that I do much pity that sweet land to be subject to so many evils as I see more and more to be laid upon her; and do half begin to think, that it is her fatal misfortune above all other countrys that I know, to be thus miserably tossed and turmoyled with these variable storms of affliction."

Edm. Spenser's View of the State of Ireland, p. 207, Ed. fo. 1678.

THAT a people like the English, proud of their

constitution, their equality of rights, and the impartial spirit of their laws, affecting ever in their national and individual conduct a generous, open, and magnanimous character, should sternly persist, un

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