infamy the memory of those oppressors, whose rapine and cruelty inflicted so much misery on so fair a portion of the globe, and pursued a system so well adapted to eternize hostility between the two nations, and which had not a single feature calculated to secure the attachment of a people who, easily alienated by hostility, are proverbially celebrated for being as easily conciliated by kindness as any in the world.

But the dreadful scenes exhibited in Ireland were not the result of any peculiarity in the English nation: they arose from the relations between the two islands. Perhaps, had the case been wholly reversed,—had Ireland been the master nation, Irishmen would have

"Play'd such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make e'en angels weep,"

and run riot in England, as Englishmen have done in Ireland: for, if there be one truth more clearly proved by history than another, it is, that bodies of men, or nations, are demons, when they have uncontrolled power over other bodies or nations. All the oppressions, the tyrannies, the rapines, the bloody persecutions, that load the polluted and wretched annals of mankind, bear the most irrefragable evidence to this appalling position.

The English, for two hundred years, have commemorated, with horror against the Dutch, the massacre at Amboyna; the statement of the atrocity of which bears the strongest marks of

gross

exaggeration and falsehood: for who can allow himself to believe the tale, that "the tortured wretches were forced to drink water till their bodies were distended to the utmost pitch, and then caused to disgorge the water, and the process repeated," that they were burned, from the feet upwards, in order to extort the confession of a conspiracy," that "the nails of their fingers and toes were torn off;" or, finally, that "holes were made in their breasts, and the cavities filled with inflammable matter ?"* No man of common sense can pay a moment's attention to it. Yet this is the precise story, as it stands recorded. A rancorous hostility prevailed between the English and the Dutch: and it is by no means improbable, that the conspiracy charged upon the former by the latter was real, and that the conspirators were justly and regularly punished. All the rest of the story, I repeat, has the most manifest and palpable appearance of exaggeration and embellishment, contrived for the purpose of rendering the Dutch odious. This is the more probable, from a consideration of the lying spirit of that age, of which I have given so many striking instances.

But suppose the story of "the massacre of Amboyna" true; suppose all those horrid deeds were really perpetrated: ten thousand such scenes would fall incalculably short of the sufferings inflicted on the Irish, in the Desmond war, or the

* Encyclopædia Perthensis, I. 561.

insurrection of 1641: and, in truth, the whole legend fades into insignificance, compared with the single fact of the butchery at Drogheda.

Let any candid, fair, and honourable Englishman, therefore, lay his hand on his heart, and say whether he can justify himself for censuring an Irishman for mourning over the melancholy story of his country's sufferings; for vindicating her character; and for attempting to remove the mountains of obloquy and abuse with which wicked men have overwhelmed her for centuries? The Englishman feels deeply for the honour of his country. Why should he condemn, why should he not rather applaud, the same feeling in an Irishman? Has not an Irishman, like an Englishman,

"Senses, affections, passions? Is he not fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as" an Englishman? "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not" defend ourselves?

My requisitions on the reader are few and simple. I merely request a candid and patient hearing; that no inveterate prejudice may be allowed to operate against me; and that the “Vindiciæ Hibernica" may not be arraigned at the bar of criticism as if it were injudiciously offered to the world as a regular, systematic, finished work, to which it explicitly declines making

any pretensions,--but rather as a series of distinct and somewhat desultory chapters, tending to prove certain points, each insulated from the rest. To this view I request the most particular attention; and that it may be constantly borne in mind, throughout the perusal of the work. I court and defy the most rigorous scrutiny into my facts and inductions. Let no mercy be shown to those on which there is the least doubt or uncertainty: let all be rejected, that do not carry with them irresistible conviction. If, in the ardent zeal I feel in what I deem the noblest of causes, I have occasionally over-rated the force of the evidence, and drawn conclusions which that evidence does not appear to warrant, on some particular points, and if my positions on those be rejected, I trust that this decision will not affect any of the others. Let each stand forth substantively by itself, and not bring on the downfal of its neighbour by its error, or support its neighbour's error by its truth.

Pecuniary considerations have had no place among the motives that led to this undertaking. This edition consists of only seven hundred and fifty copies, of which two hundred and fifty are intended to be gratuitously distributed to public libraries, reading-rooms, and enlightened individuals; in order to afford the work a fair chance of perusal, and my calumniated country an opportunity of justification. While that number

lasts, any library company, sending an order for a copy, shall be supplied, without expense. Agents shall be appointed, to distribute the books, on this plan, in Boston, New York, Baltimore, &c.

P. S. One passage of this work will justify a further trespass on the reader's attention.

In page 31, I have quoted Milton, as stating that there were above 600,000 Protestants massacred in Ireland, during the insurrection of 1641 :

"The rebellion and horrid massacre of English Protestants in Ireland, to the amount of 154,000 in the province of Ulster only, by their own computation; which, added to the other three, makes up the total sum of that slaughter, in all likelihood, four times as great.”

This extract is taken from his "Iconoclastes," second edition, page 49. There are, however, in the Philadelphia library, two editions of Milton's works complete, dated 1738 and 1753, in both of which the latter part of the passage, in italics, is omitted.

This discrepancy requires explanation. I have taken the citation of Milton from "Harris's Historical Account of the Lives and Writings of James I. and Charles I."* in these words:

"Milton, in the second edition of his Iconoclastes, has the following passage: 'The rebellion and horrid massacre,'" &c. verbatim, as before.

* Vol. II. p. 391, London, 1814.