or to any persecutions of their Religion. The Catholics in the House of Commons in 1641, were a strong party, says Carte, and, when joined with the Puritans, they carried all before them; but this is not sufficient to charge them with a design of raising a rebellion..

4

"By all the observations I have been able to "make, says he, I do not find that there was 66 any formed design of the body of the R. Ca"tholic party in this Parliament, for an affair "of that nature."

About three weeks after the adjournment, 1641, their Committees returned from England with the Grants, which the King had made at his departure for Scotland, and with all the

"taken from the example of the English, and perhaps in "concert with them, by the intervention of the Committee " of the former residing in England, and very intimate with "the Heads of the Faction in the latter." Ib. p. 150.

The Irish Committee here alluded to was chiefly directed by the Catholic Lawyers and Gentlemen, Nicholas Plunket, N. Barnwall, Geoffry Browne, Thomas Bourke, John Walsh, Sir Donnach Mac Carthy, Sir Robuck Lynch, Men of considerable abilities, but at that time, the tools of the Puritannical Faction in England. They ought not to have coalesced with such a Man as Sir Hardress Waller.

Bills, which had been transmitted to England, for the approbation of the Council there, before they could pass in Ireland. Amongst

those Bills, one was the Act of Limitation, which unquestionably settled for ever all estates throughout the kingdom, that had been quietly enjoyed for the sixty years immediately preceding; another was for relinquishing the King's titles to the four forfeited Counties of Connacht, to that of Clare, and to great tracts in Tipperary and Limerick; and never were any Acts better adapted to give general satisfaction to the Irish nation.

Who can for a moment suppose, without wounding the honour, and injuring the Religion of the Gentry of Ireland, that they should choose that very juncture, for one of the most barbarous and atrocious rebellions, that ever disgraced the mob of any Country?

No, we must be content to lay the rebellion, and all the violations of faith, and perjuries which attended it, to the conduct and principles of the foreign-influenced intriguers, who argued that Ireland was in temporals the

property of the Holy See, and to those accessory causes which have been mentioned elsewhere.*

Alleged Cruelties of Protestants examined.

83. It has indeed been objected by Dr. Curry, and by my Grandfather, in his letter to Hume, that the Irish were provoked to Massacres by the forfeitures in Ulster; that the rage of the Inquisition was so boundless as to extend even

* See Columbanus, No. ii and iv, from p. 84 to the end. In consequence of this doctrine, Richard the IId, in the Indentures of the Irish Chiefs, made the penalties on the violation of their treaties payable in the Apostolical Chamber of Rome. In the reign of Henry V, the Anglo-Irish petitioned that the Pope should be solicited to support his grant of Ireland to England, by publishing a crusade against the natives. In the 7th of Edw. IV, the Irish Parliament formally asserts the grants of Pope Adrian IV. and Alexander III. as the King's title, and founds the Seigniory of Ireland on these grants. Henry VII. applied to Pope Alexander V. to excommunicate the insurgents of Ireland, as the Holy See's rights were equally affected by their rebellion, as those of the English crown; nor was it till the 11th of Elizabeth, that an Irish Parliament annulled the Roman claims, by founding the English title on the alleged previous rights of the British Kings, Gurmond, and Belin!

1

to the dead; exhibiting a new spécies of contention, wherein the piety of one party exerted itself in stealing the remains of their deceased Relatives to the tombs of their fathers, and the malignant zeal of the other proved equally vigilant to detect the theft, digging up those remains, as unworthy of Christian interment, and throwing them into pits made for that purpose near the highways, after driving stakes through their bodies; that Friars and Priests were so persecuted, that two of them hanged themselves in their own defence; and that the poor were so persecuted for the tax, of one shilling on Sundays, as to fly for safety into dens and caverns, whither they were pursued by blood-hounds!-Countrymen! Is this history?

84. The great mass of mankind can seldom judge from facts of which they themselves are witnesses. Their sphere of action would be extremely limited, unless they trusted to the professions of others, and could rely for fidelity and integrity in return for the trust they repose. To a man who has remaining in his bosom any love for his fellow creatures, or any

regard for their happiness, it will be a sufficient restraint to consider that even venial falsehoods are often productive of very extensive calamities; for it often happens that such falsehoods, being received for truths, are adopted as principles of conduct; and if they tend to inflame against each other the minds of men, who live together in one Country, or in one community, the mischief which they occasion can seldom or never be repaired.

To take advantage of the ignorance of mankind, for the propagation of falsehood, aggravates the guilt; and perhaps it is as silly as it is criminal, to hope that such treachery may be practised without danger, or repeated without detection; for there is a principle planted in the human mind, which teaches us that it is our duty to discover as much truth as we can. We are not content barely to vegetate on this earth; we will be solicitous to understand how our own happiness, and the happiness of society may be obtained; we will be equally solicitous to communicate our discoveries; and we will expose to the indignation of mankind,