the Little Belt, which were followed by the rest of her broadside, and all her musketry;-that he then "gave a general order to fire," which, in "from four to six minutes," partially silenced the guns of his antagonist, and induced the commodore to order a cessation of firing;-that, in four minutes, the fire was renewed by the Little Belt, and returned by the President with so much effect, that the gaff and colours of the former were down, his mainsail-yard upon the cap, and his fire silenced.'

Captain Bingham, on the contrary, stated, that he first hailed the President, of which there was no notice taken;-that he was hailed afterwards by that vessel, which accompanied the inquiry with "a broadside," which was "instantly returned." He adds, He adds, "the action then became general, and continued for three quarters of an hour, when the President ceased firing, and appeared to be on fire." "He was," he adds, "obliged to desist from firing," that is to say, from the attack on the President, as the latter vessel "falling off," his guns "would not bear on her." The inference is not overstrained, that he wished it to be understood that the President had escaped from him.

The discrepancy here is extreme. Each party charges the other with the original of fence of the aggression. This is all-important. And the American commander states, that, in the first instance, he silenced the Little Belt in from

four to six minutes, and, in the second, in from three to five: whereas, according to captain Bingham, the action continued "three quarters of an hour," and was discontinued by commodore. Rodgers, whose vessel was on fire;—and he was disabled from pursuing the President, in consequence of the state of his sails and rigging. To cap the climax, the depositions of a number of the officers and men on both sides were taken, and appeared to confirm these contradictory. accounts; so that to gross and revolting falsehood, is added barefaced perjury, on one side or the other. It is wholly irrelevant to my purpose to inquire where the falsification rested. Subsequent events, however, have shed adequate light upon the subject.

To this strong and pointed case, I invite the most serious attention of the reader. To the falsehood and perjury involved in it, there were no very extraordinary temptations, particularly to the perjury. It might have been of great importance, indeed, to the aggressor, to exonerate himself from the criminality of the aggression, in order to escape the danger of being cashiered : but the officers and men had no such temptation; nor is it easy to perceive what temptation they could have had to the commission of such a heinous offence.

I had intended to adduce other cases in point: but I forbear. I feel convinced, that no analogous facts, how strong soever, could enhance the

cogency of the inferences deducible from this incident. There is one point of view in which it may be regarded, that ought not to be overlooked. In the present state of printing, and the open, unreserved communication between nations, fraud and falsehood can hardly flatter themselves to escape detection. This consideration must have powerful operation to circumscribe and restrain them, and was almost wholly unknown in former times, when of course the inducements to fraud and perjury were so far greater than they are at present.

The application remains, and can hardly fail to have been anticipated by the reader. Notwithstanding the slenderness of the temptation to perjury, and the absolute certainty of detection, it was, we see, flagrantly committed in this case. What a lesson on history generally-but more especially on Irish history! What dependence, under this view of the materials from which history is formed, can be placed on the accounts of the affairs of that nation, which are wholly ex parte-where the temptations were so enormous, (being nothing less than the fee simple of millions of acres) where detection was so difficult, and where numberless palpable perjuries are on record?

NOTES ON CHAPTER I.

▲ P. 17. New Conspiracies.] It is far from extravagant to state, that at various periods, wholly exclusive of the rebellion of 1641, millions of acres of the soil of Ireland have been forfeited for pretended plots and conspiracies, which were a never-failing source of rapine upon, and oppression of, the natives. In a future chapter, I shall state some of them in detail. Nothing could exceed the wickedness of the contrivers, except the clumsiness of the contrivances. Anonymous letters, dropped in the castle of Dublin, accusing of treason noblemen and gentlemen of large estates, were one of the principal levers by which this machinery of plots and conspiracies was put into operation.

P. 17. Manifest forgeries were received as solid proofs.] This line, a fair description of the histories of Ireland, ought to be prefixed, as a motto, to four-fifths of them, as a necessary admonition, a sort of beacon, equivalent to "Traveller, beware." Never, since the world was formed, did "manifest forgery," fraud, and perjury prevail to such an extent, as in the evidence taken to establish the Irish massacre, as it is termed; never were "manifest forgeries" so readily received as "solid proofs." The specimens I shall lay before the reader, must convince

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the most sceptical, that this massacre is perfectly on a level, for truth and probability, with the Arabian Nights Entertainments, or the aunciente travayles of John Mandeville, yclept the knight of lying memory. The astonishing feature in this affair is, that Leland, thus convinced of the existence of these "manifest forgeries," should himself, through a large portion of his history, receive those very "manifest forgeries" as "solid proofs."

P. 19. Anniversary sermons.] For above a century and a half, the talents of numbers of clergymen of the established church in Ireland have been in requisition, to perpetuate and increase the rancour and hostility that are instilled from the cradle into the tender minds of the different denominations of Protestants against their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, which they carry from the cradle to the grave, many of them across an ocean three thousand miles in extent. The store-house, whence are derived these incendiary weapons, has been the "thirty-two volumes" of depositions, in which, according to Dr. Leland, "manifest forgeries were received as solid proofs." If "blessed be the peace makers," surely the sowers of discord must be accursed.

PP. 19. Rode rough-shod.] This refers to the barbarous and piratical code, enacted for the purpose of "preventing the growth of Popery,"