LECTURE IV. GRATTAN AND THE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:-I have perceived in the public papers that Mr. Froude seems to be somewhat irritated by remarks that have been made as to his accuracy as a historian. Lest any word of mine might hurt in the least degree the just susceptibilities of an honorable man, I beg beforehand to say that nothing was further from my thoughts than the slightest word, either of personality or disrespect for one who has won for himself so high a name as an English historian. And therefore I sincerely hope, that it is not any word which may have fallen from me, even in the heat of our amicable controversy, that can have given the least offense to that gentleman. Just as I would expect to receive from him, or from any other learned and educated man, the treatment which one gentleman is supposed to show to another, so do I also wish to give to him that treatment. And now, my friends, we come to the matter in hand. Last evening I had to traverse a great portion of my country's history in reviewing the statements of the English historian, and I was obliged to leave almost untouched one portion of the sad story-namely, the period which covers the reign of Queen Anne. This estimable lady, of whom history records the unwomanly vice of an overfondness for eating, came to the English. throne on the demise of William of Orange in 1702, and on that throne she sat until 1714. As I before remarked, it was perhaps natural that the Irish people -the Catholics of Ireland, trodden into the very dust -that they would have expected some quarter from the daughter of the man for whom they had shed their blood, and from the granddaughter of the other Stuart king for whom they had fought with so much bravery in 1649. The return that the Irish people got from this good lady was quite of another kind from what they might have expected. Not content with the atrocious laws that had been already enacted against the Catholics of Ireland; not content with the flagrant breach of the articles of Limerick, of which her royal brother-in-law William was guilty, no sooner does Anne come to the throne and send the Duke of Ormond as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, than the English ascendency, that is to say the parliament faction in Ireland, got upon their knees to the new Lord Lieutenant to beg of him, for the sake of the Lord, to save them from these desperate Roman Catholics. Great God! A people robbed, persecuted, and slain, until only a miserable remnant of them were left, without a voice in the nation's councils, without a vote even at the humblest board that sat to transact the meanest parochial business-these were the men against whom the strong Protestant ascendency of Ireland made their complaint in 1703. And so well were these complaints heard, my friends, that we find edict after edict going out, declaring that no Papist shall be allowed to inherit or possess land, or to buy land, or to have it even under a lease; declaring that if a Catholic child wished to become Protestant, that instantly that child became the owner and the master of his father's estate, and his father remained only his pensioner or tenant for life upon the bounty of his own apostate son; declaring that if a child, no matter how young, even an infant, conformed and became Protestant, that moment that child was to be removed from the guardianship and custody of the father and was to be handed over to some Protestant relation. Every enactment that the misguided ingenuity of the tyrannical mind of man could suggest was adopted and put in force. "One might indeed suppose," says Mr. Mitchell, “that Popery had been already sufficiently discouraged, seeing that the bishops and regular clergy had been banished, that Catholics were excluded by law from all honorable or lucrative employments, carefully disarmed, and plundered of almost every acre of their ancient inheritance. But enough had not yet been done to make the Protestant interest feel secure," consequently other laws were made, and clauses were added by this good Queen Anne declaring that "no papist or Catholic could live in a walled town," especially in the towns of Limerick or Galway; that no Catholic could even enter the suburbs of the town. They were obliged to remain outside of the town as if they were lepers, whose presence would contaminate and degrade their sleek and pampered Protestant fellow-citizens in the land. The persecution went on. In 1711 we find them enacting new laws, and later on, to the very last day of Queen Anne's reign, we find them enacting their laws, hounding on the magistrates and the police of the country and the informers, offering them bribes and premiums to execute these atrocious laws, and to hunt the Catholic people and the Catholic priests of Ireland as if they were fierce, untamable wolves. And, my friends, Mr. Froude justifies all this on two grounds. Not a single word has he of compassion for the people who were thus treated; not a single word has he of manly protest against the shedding of that people's blood by unjust persecution—as well as their robbery by legal enactments. But he says there were two reasons which, in his mind, seemed to justify the atrocious action of the English government. The first of these was that, after all, these laws were only retaliation upon the Catholics of Ireland for the dreadful persecutions that were suffered by the Huguenots, or Protestants, of France; and he says that the Protestants of Ireland were only following the example of King Louis XIV., who revoked the Edict of Nantes. I could not explain this matter better than by quoting the words of the illustrious Irishman who is in the midst of us, John Mitchel. are "The recall of the Edict of Nantes, which edict had secured toleration for Protestantism in France, is bitterly dwelt upon by English writers as the heaviest reproach which weighs on the memory of King Louis XIV. The recall of the edict had taken place in 1685, only a few years before the passage of this Irish 'Act to prevent the further growth of Popery.' The differences between the two transactions mainly these two: first, that the French Protestants had not been guaranteed their civil and religious rights by any treaty, as the Irish Catholics thought they held theirs, by the Treaty of Limerick; second, that the penalties denounced against French Protestants by the recalling edict bore entirely upon their religious service itself, and were truly intended to induce and force the Huguenots to become Catholics; there being no confiscations except in cases of relapse, and in cases of quitting the kingdom; but there was nothing of all the complicated machinery above described, for beggaring one portion of the population, and giving its spoils to the other part. We may add, that the penalties and disabilities in France lasted a much shorter time than in Ireland; and that French Protestants were restored to perfect civil and religious equality with their countrymen, in every respect, forty years before the 'Catholic Relief Act' purported to |