colour of right but what is grounded upon the bare pleasure of the king, surprized by the artifice of his prime minister, who keeps up these troops for some sordid, if not criminal end of his

own.

"Let this favourite, who fills his master's soul with a fear more than servile, in order to make him tolerate injustice, take care that his malice or ignorance be not one day detected, and the consequences soon attend him, by being measured unto as he measures to others. Rex est, qui posuit.

The third article, obstructing the Irish even to desperation, is the interest of the officers of 1649, before mentioned, who served either under the king or for the parliament all the time before that year, the arrears of whose pay, by themselves well calculated, amounts to eighteen hundred thousand pounds sterling, for the payment of which sum (whereof the tenth part could never be due to them) the best and richest part of the kingdom, which every body knows to be worth millions, is assigned to them, without examining the extravagance of their accounts, and without considering that the most part of these very officers had been actually engaged in the rebellion of the year 1649, and the precedent years; as among others, the earls of Orrery and Montrath, the lords Kingstown and Colooney, Sir John Cole, Sir Theophilus Jones, Sir Oliver St. George and many others; or at least in a short time after, deserted the king's standard to join the usurper; which piece of service Cromwell rewarded very liberally.

"These officers are invested not only with the lands and lordships of four large counties, to wit, the counties of Wicklow, Longford, Leitrim and Donegal, but with all the walled towns and cities, and the lands thereunto belonging, throughout all Ireland; and all within a mile of the river Shannon, and of the sea-side, commonly called Mile-line, in the province of Connaught and county of Clare; and the benefit accruing out of the redemption of all mortgages, statutestaples, and judgments, not already given or allotted to adventurers or soldiers, with other great advantages therein expressed, all belonging to the Irish, whose right and inheritance is not only thus disposed of (as any one taking pains to read the act may see) but their very deeds and titles declared void and forfeited.

"And least all this might not satisfy that insatiable crew, the last act gives them £100,000 sterling on a year's revenue of the adventurers, soldiers, and such of the Irish as were restored to their estates: whilst the Irish Roman catholic officers, (who all along steadfastly adhered to the king, faithfully served him at all times, and on all occasions, when all or most of these protestant officers deserted him in Ireland, in order to serve under Cromwell, where their greatest inclination lead them,) because they bear the odious name of papists, were thought unworthy any favour or reward (otherwise due to their signal services) they, who generously and unanimously stood by their prince, not out of constraint, nor in view of aggrandizing themselves, adhering

to their fortunes, or other worldly end whatsoever; but excited by a principle of true religion, and motive of honour and glory, to discharge the duty of allegiance they owed to their lawful sovereign: a thing they did for five years together with armed force at their own charges, and at the expence of many thousand lives of brave and gallant men, who rather than abandon the justice of the cause, or not seal their loyalty with their blood, were all sacrificed without spot or stain.

And is it less surprising that these few protestant officers, who scarce served two years in Ireland, should be rewarded with £180,000; and that our loyal English officers and soldiers (who infinitely surpass them in number, served the king three times longer, were never tainted with treason, desertion or parricide, and who never made self-interest the ground of their loyalty) had among them all, without distinction of religion or country, but £70,000 sterling; and even that to be distributed but among the poorest of them, who had neither estates nor employments in the commonwealth to keep them from starving..

"And why, I beseech you, shall the commanders of four or five garrisons in Ireland (whopillaged and plundered those very garrisons, &c. to ten times the value of what could be justly due to them, and then betrayed them to Cromwell) be made proprietors of four large counties, and of all the great towns and cities in a kingdom, with an assignation of 100,000 sterling in money, &c. while all the loyalists in England

(who not only had one single little parish given among them all, but not so much as one foot of land in any town or city of the kingdom) are overlooked, as if they deserved nothing?

"Is it that prince Rupert, the duke of Newcastle, the marquis of Montross, the earls of Bristol, Barkley, Rochester, Gerrard, and those other prime nobility and gentry of England and Scotland, deserved less the arrears of what was due to them, and what they had expended in his majesty's service, than these protestant worthies of 1649? Do we make no other difference betwixt the former and the latter? What great convenience (for justice there is none) to provide so largely for these, and take no care of them? For it can't be alleged, that his majesty was obliged, either by the act 17 Car. 1., or by his declaration from Breda, or by any treaty whatsoever, to reward in so ample a manner the mercenary service of those protestant officers who served for and against him in Ireland, &c. and at the same time neglect and abandon to their wants and miseries, an infinite number of other poor officers and soldiers, as well English as of other nations, who have hardly wherewithal to cover their nakedness, or lodgings to retire to.

"No, but of those officers there are, who have either some real or seeming merit which pleads for 'em; and therefore the better to accomplish the entire ruin of the Irish, to strengthen those of the faction who have no merit, and cover the iniquity of the design, its necessary to join them together, and grant them their commands with

out controul, though never so extravagant, since none but the Irish are like to lose by it, according to the rules of this final settlement.

"And to shew the specious fairness of the wicked contrivers of this settlement, and their pretended detestation of the betrayers of the before-mentioned garrisons into the hands or to the forces of the usurper, they in very soft and tender terms exclude 'em from enjoying (to use their own words in the said act) any lands for their arrears before the year 1649, unless that, within two years after the date of the act, they make it appear to the lord lieutenant or chief governor of Ireland, and six of the privy council, that they made some repair for their former faults (their own expression in the said act) by their timely and seasonable appearance for the king's restoration in the year 1660, where to be sure they came off as cheap as it was intended, since the chief governor and council were all of a piece, and of the same mold and nomination with the head managers of this whole affair; and that whatever slender repairs these blessed reformers pretend to have made, they passed for more than sufficient to atone for crimes, which, though in themselves the blackest, and in the eyes of God and the impartial part of mankind, the most execrably heinous, were reckoned among the party either meritorious actions, or such small slips as were hardly worth mentioning; for, as in John Calvin's new-broached theology, let the elect commit what sins they will, they are still just, and babes of grace, because they'll never be imputed