may not be improper, indeed it appears indispensable, to consider what is the nature of a bill of indictment, what are the duties of a grand jury who are to decide on it, and what are its consequences? Answers to these inquiries will bring the subject so fully before the reader, as to awaken him to the true character of the procedure which has occupied the chief place in this chapter.

According to Jacob's Law Dictionary, "An indictment is an inquisition taken and made by twelve men at the least, who are thereunto sworn, whereby they find and present that such a person, of such a place, in such a county, and of such a degree, hath committed such a treason, felony, trespass, or other offence, against the peace of the king, his crown, and dignity."108

The accusation is delivered to the grand jury, who are swoRN to determine on the probable guilt or innocence of the party accused, according to the evidence brought by the proper officer to support the charge.

Could the jury, who thus found two thousand one bills of indictment in two days, have heard the evidence? Certainly not. Did they not therefore violate their paths? Yes. What were they then? Perjurers. Was not the blood of every man, whom their perjury led to the scaffold, on their heads? Indubitably.

Were not the judges under oath to administer justice correctly? When they received such bills, were they not likewise perjured? Was not the blood of the victims equally to be laid to their charge? Most assuredly.

In ordinary cases, the perjuries of grand juries, however flagitious, are of no great importance, but as respects their own guilt, provided the traverse juries be upright and independent. Not so in that horrible age of perjury. There was hardly any traverse jury used: for the dread of the rack, and the exercise of martial law,* had so terrified the Roman Catholics, that they did not dare to venture into Dublin,† which was a complete den of murder.

* "The prisons of that city [Dublin] were now filled with prisoners: and, as the government increased in strength, were likely to be more crowded every day. It was troublesome, chargeable, and inconvenient to keep them, because of the consumption which it occasioned of victuals; which were already grown very scarce, and their numbers might prove dangerous, for which reason the lords justices resolved to thin them. It was difficult, or rather impossible, for want of freeholders, to find juries in the proper counties where the crimes were acted; so that there was no bringing these persons to a legal trial. In this necessity, it was determined to cause a considerable number of them to be executed by martial law."109

"It was certainly a miserable spectacle, to see every day numbers of people executed by martial law, at the discretion, or rather caprice, of Sir Charles Coote, a hot-headed and bloody man, and as such accounted even by the English and Protestants. Yet this was the man whom the lords justices picked

109 Carte, I. 278.

This inference further follows, from the strong and unequivocal circumstance, that of three thousand persons indicted, as above stated, by Sir Philip Percival, there were two-thirds who did not appear, and were prosecuted to outlawry in their absence.* Thus, for those two thousand men, there was no more use of a traverse jury than if no such body ever existed.

Would that I had the tongue of a Demosthenes, or a Curran, or a Henry, or the pen of a Burke or a Dickinson, to spread this truth before an astounded world, that, on this species of evidence, one foul, bloated mass of fraud and perjury, rests the thousand-times-told story of "the execrable Irish Rebellion." The man who, knowing these

:

out to entrust with a commission of martial law, to put to death rebels and traitors, that is, all such as he should deem to be so; which he performed with delight, and a wanton kind of cruelty and yet, all this while, the justices sat in council; and the judges, in the usual season, sat in their respective courts, spectators of, and countenancing, so extravagant a tribunal as Sir Charles Coote's, and so illegal an execution of justice."110

"Whatever difficulties there were in the case, the lords justices were equal to them all; and carried on the prosecution with great vigour, causing indictments to be preferred not only against open and declared rebels, but also against others who were barely suspected: and, as there was nobody to make defence, nor any great delicacy used, either in the choice of the jury, or in the character and credit of the witnesses, and one witness sufficed, such indictments were readily found."

110 Castlehaven, apud Carte, I. 279.

99111

111 Carte, I. 277.

things, gives credit to the fable, ought to be confined for life to the edifying perusal of the voyages and travels of Sir John Mandeville, of Baron Munchausen, and their illustrious compeer, Sir John Temple.

CHAPTER IV.

Three civil wars. Different degrees of provoca`tion. Different results.

"Dat veniam corvis; vexat censura columbas."112

HE must be a superficial reader or observer, who requires to be informed how very different the reception the world affords to, how different the rewards and punishments it bestows on, acts absolutely similar. Instances occur daily, in public and private life: and among the extraordinary circumstances of the economy of human affairs, this is the most difficult to account for, or to reconcile to our ideas of eternal justice.

The three kingdoms subject to the crown of England, were the theatres of civil war, almost cotemporaneously. The consequences' to the actors during their existence, and to their fame with posterity, were as different as light and darkness. Those who had every possible justification,-on whom had been perpetrated almost every species of outrage, paid the heaviest forfeit in fortune and in cotemporaneous and posthumous fame whilst those whose grievances were comparatively insignificant, attained, living and dead, the highest honours, and many of them

112 Juvenal.