writhe their mouths into chattering such a jargon as that in which the Advancement of Learning and the Paradise Lost were written.* Yet it is not unreasonable to believe that, if the gentle policy which has been described had been steadily followed by the government, all distinctions would gradually have been effaced, and that there would now have been no more trace of the hostility which has been the curse of Ireland than there is of the equally deadly hostility which once raged between the Saxons and the Normans in England. Unhappily, James, instead of becoming a mediator, became the fiercest and most reckless of partisans. Instead of allaying the animosity of the two populations, he inflamed it to a height before unknown. He determined to reverse their relative position, and to put the Protestant colonists under the feet of the popish Celts. To be of the established religion, to be of the English blood, was, in his view, a disqualification for civil and military employment. He meditated the design of again confiscating and again portioning out the soil of half the island, and showed his inclination so clearly that one class was soon agitated by terrors which he afterward vainly wished to soothe, and the other by hopes which he afterward vainly wished to restrain. But this was the smallest part of his guilt and madness. He deliberately resolved, not merely to give to the aboriginal inhabitants of Ireland the entire possession of their own country, but also to use them as his instruments for setting up arbitrary government in England. The event was such as might have been foreseen. The colonists turned to bay with the stubborn hardihood of their race. The mother country justly regarded their Then came a desperate struggle for a tremendous stake. Every thing dear to nations was wagered on both sides: nor can we justly blame either the Irishman or the Englishman for obeying, in that extrem cause as her own. * It was an O'Neill of great eminence who said that it did not become him to writhe his mouth to chatter English.-Preface to the first volume of the Hibernia Anglicana. ity, the law of self-preservation. The contest was terrible, but short. The weaker went down. His fate was cruel; and yet for the cruelty with which he was treated there was, not indeed a defense, but an excuse; for, though he suffered all that tyranny could inflict, he suffered nothing that he would not himself have inflicted. The effect of the insane attempt to subjugate England by means of Ireland was that the Irish became hewers of wood and drawers of water to the English. The old proprietors, by their effort to recover what they had lost, lost the greater part of what they had retained. The momentary ascendency of popery produced such a series of barbarous laws against popery as made the statute-book of Ireland a proverb of infamy throughout Christendom. Such were the bitter fruits of the policy of James. We have seen that one of his first acts, after he became king, was to recall Ormond from Ireland. Ormond was the head of the English interest in that kingdom; he was firmly attached to the Protestant religion; and his power far exceeded that of an ordinary viceroy, first, because he was in rank and wealth the greatest of the colonists, and, secondly, because he was not only the chief of the civil administration, but also commander of the forces. The king was not at that time disposed to commit the government wholly to Irish hands. He had, indeed, been heard to say that a native viceroy would soon become an independent sovereign.* For the present, therefore, he determined to divide the power which Ormond had possessed; to intrust the civil administration to an English and Protestant lord lieutenant, and to give the command of the army to an Irish and Roman Catholic general. The lord lieutenant was Clarendon; the general was Tyrconnel. Tyrconnel sprang, as has already been said, from one * Sheridan MS. among the Stuart Papers. I ought to acknowledge the courtesy with which Mr. Glover assisted me in my search for this valuable manuscript. James appears, from the instructions which he drew up for his son in 1692, to have retained to the last the notion that Ireland could not, without danger, be intrusted to an Irish lord lieutenant. of those degenerate families of the pale which were popularly classed with the aboriginal population of Ireland. He sometimes, indeed, in his rants, talked with Norman haughtiness of the Celtic barbarians; but all his sympathies were really with the natives. The Protestant colonists he hated; and they returned his hatred. Clarendon's inclinations were very different; but he was, from temper, interest, and principle, an obsequious courtier. His spirit was mean; his circumstances were embarrassed; and his mind had been deeply imbued with the political doctrines which the Church of England had in that age too assiduously taught. His abilities, however, were not contemptible; and, under a good king, he would probably have been a respectable viceroy. About three quarters of a year elapsed between the recall of Ormond and the arrival of Clarendon at Dublin. During that interval the king was represented by a board of lords justices; but the military administration was in Tyrconnel's hands. Already the designs of the court began gradually to unfold themselves. A royal order came from Whitehall for disarming the population. This order Tyrconnel strictly executed as respected the English. Though the country was infested by predatory bands, a Protestant gentleman could scarcely obtain permission to keep a brace of pistols. The native peasantry, on the other hand, were suffered to retain their weapons.† The joy of the colonists was therefore great, when at length, in December, 1685, Tyrconnel was summoned to London and Clarendon set out for Dublin. But it soon appeared that the government was really directed, not at Dublin, but in London. Every mail that crossed St. George's Channel brought tidings of the boundless influence which Tyrconnel exercised on Irish affairs. It was said that he was to be a marquess, that he was to be a duke, that he was to have the command of the forces, that he was to be Sheridan MS. + Clarendon to Rochester, Jan. 19, 168; Secret Consults of the Romish Party in Ireland, 1690. intrusted with the task of remodeling the army and the courts of justice.* Clarendon was bitterly mortified at finding himself a subordinate member of that administration of which he had expected to be the head. He complained that whatever he did was misrepresented by his detractors, and that the gravest resolutions touching the country which he governed were adopted at Westminster, made known to the public, discussed at coffee-houses, communicated in hundreds of private letters, some weeks before one hint had been given to the lord lieutenant. His own personal dignity, he said, mattered little; but it was no light thing that the representative of the majesty of the throne should be made an object of contempt to the people. Panic spread fast among the English when they found that the viceroy, their fellow-countryman and fellow-Protestant, was unable to extend to them the protection which they had expected from him. They began to know by bitter experience what it is to be a subject caste. They were harassed by the natives with accusations of treason and sedition. This Protestant had corresponded with Monmouth; that Protestant had said something disrespectful of the king four or five years ago, when the Exclusion Bill was under discussion; and the evidence of the most infamous of mankind was ready to substantiate every charge. The lord lieutenant expressed his apprehension that, if these practices were not stopped, there would soon be at Dublin a reign of terror similar to that which he had seen in London, when every man held his life and honor at the mercy of Oates and Bedloe.‡ Clarendon was soon informed, by a concise dispatch from Sunderland, that it had been resolved to make without delay a complete change in both the civil and the military government of Ireland, and to bring a large number of Roman Catholics instantly into office. His majesty, it was most ungraciously added, had taken counsel on these *Clarendon to Rochester, Feb. 27, 1685. + Clarendon to Rochester and Sunderland, March 2, 1685, and to Rochester, March 14. Clarendon to Sunderland, Feb. 26, 1685. matters with persons more competent to advise him than his inexperienced lord lieutenant could possibly be.* Before this letter reached the viceroy, the intelligence which it contained had, through many channels, arrived in Ireland. The terror of the colonists was extreme. Outnumbered as they were by the native population, their condition would be pitiable indeed if the native population were to be armed against them with the whole power of the state; and nothing less than this was threatened. The English inhabitants of Dublin passed each other in the streets with dejected looks. On the Exchange business was suspended. Land-owners hastened to sell their estates for whatever could be got, and to remit the purchase money to England. Traders began to call in their debts and to make preparations for retiring from business. The alarm soon affected the revenue.t Clarendon attempted to inspire the dismayed settlers with a confidence which he was himself far from feeling. He assured them that their property would be held sacred, and that, to his certain knowledge, the king was fully determined to maintain the Act of Settlement which guarantied their right to the soil. But his letters to England were in a very different strain. He ventured even to expostulate with the king, and, without blaming his majesty's intention of employing Roman Catholics, expressed a strong opinion that the Roman Catholics who might be employed should be Englishmen.‡ The reply of James was dry and cold. He declared that he had no intention of depriving the English colonists of their land, but that he regarded a large portion of them as his enemies, and that, since he consented to leave so much property in the hands of his enemies, it was the more necessary that the civil and military administration should be in the hands of his friends.§ * Sunderland to Clarendon, March 11, 168. † Clarendon to Rochester, March 14, 1685. |