thor observe That the plagues of Egypt, though they were grievous, were of short continuance; but the plague of İreland lasted four hundred years together!" And speaking of another oppression, the Coygue and livery, now exercised under the name of free quarters: "it produced, he said, two notorious effects; first, it made the land waste; for, when the husbandman had labored all the year, the soldier in one night did consume the fruits of all his labor. And hereupon, of necessity, came depopulation, banishment, and extirpation of the better sort of subjects. Lastly, this oppression did, of necessitie, make the Irish a crafty people; for such as are oppressed, and live in slavery, are ever put to their shifts. And though this oppression was first invented in hell, yet if it had been used and practised there, as it has been in Ireland, it would long ago have destroyed the kingdome of Belzebub." And Dr. Leland describes the free quarters of that day, just what we have seen them in ours. "Every inconsiderable party, who, under the pretence of loyalty, received the King's commission to repel the adversary in some particular district, became pestilent encmies to the inhabitants. Their properties, their lives, the chastity of their families, were all exposed to barbarians, who sought only to glut their brutal passions; and by their horrible excesses, purchased the curse of God and man!"

Such was the persecution of the Irish during four hun-. dred years prior to the reformation of the religion of the English. And yet there are bigots who will impute the indignant feelings of the Irish to their hatred to Protestants, although they were brayed four hundred years in the mortar before there was a Protestant. Whether the two hundred years that are to come, gave them more reason to rejoice, we shall now consider.

LETTER XXXIV.

Of the Reformation.

IN order to understand the new hardships which the Irish were now to endure, it is good to take a short view of the state of religion in England. We shall hear no more now of mere Irish and degenerate English For from this time, their persecutions assume a new form, and are carried on in the name of God! Inexplicable paradox! How the mildest religion on the earth should be, as it has always been, called in aid to sanction the most atrocious crimes; and how men have dared, in profanely invoking it, to make laws so repugnant to it that they never could be obeyed until the laws of God were broken. I cannot better describe the state of religion amongst the English than by a short history of the apostle of the reformation.

The Life and Death of Henry VIII.

He was born in 1491, and began to reign in 1509. He raised his favorites, the instruments of his crimes, from the depth of obscurity to the pinnacle of grandeur, and after setting them up as tyrants, put them to death like slaves. He was pre-eminent in religion; first quarrelling with Luther, whose doctrines he thought too republican, he became defender of the Catholic faith; and then quar

relling with the Pope, who stood in the way of his murders, he was twice excommunicated. He made creeds and articles, and made it treason not to swear to them; he made others quite opposed to them, and made it treason not to swear to them; and he burned his opponents with slow fire. He burned an hysterical girl, the maid of Kent, for her opinions. He disputed with a foolish school-master on the Real Presence, and burned him to convince him. He beheaded Bishop Fisher and sir Thomas Moore, for not swearing that his own children were bastards. He robbed the churches, and gave the revenue of a convent to an old woman for a pudding. He burned a lovely young woman (Anne Ascue) for jabbering of the real presence,

.

He was in love as in religion, delicate and tender. He first married his sister-in-law and, because her children died, divorced her, married her maid of honor and made parliament and clergy declare he had done well. He beheaded the maid of honor for letting her handkerchief fall at a tilting, and two or three gentlemen with her to keep her company, threw her body into an old arrow case and buried it therein, and the very next day married a third wife, and his parliament and his clergy made it treason not to say it was well.

He next proposed to Francis I. to bring two princesses of Guise, and a number of other pretty French ladies, that he might choose a fourth wife among them. The French king was too gallant to bring ladies to market like geldings, so he fell in love with the picture of a Dutch lady, and married her without seeing her. When she came, he found she spoke Dutch, and did not dance well. swore she was no maid, called her a Flanders mare, and

He

turned her loose; and as he had destroyed Cardinal

Woolsey, when he was tired of his former wife, so he be headed Cromwell when he was surfeited with this one.

He married a fifth wife, with whom he was so delighted, that he had forms of thanksgiving composed by his bishops and read in the churches, and then condemned her, her grand mother, uncles, aunts, cousins, about a dozen in all, to be put to death. Having done all this, and much more, he died of a rotten leg, in the 38th year of his reign, and in the 56th of his life, a royal peep-of-day-boy, and a very memorable brute

Of the Popes of London.

Now when we consider what kind of person this Henry was, can we wonder that the Irish were not prepared to swear that he was the elect man of God, the successor of St. Peter; that he kept the keys of Heaven; that he was Christ's vice-gerent upon earth; in short, that he was the supreme head of the church, which in their idea was the POPE; would it not at least have required time, persuasion, gentleness, good offices and great benefits to have engaged the followers of the benevolent St. Patrick to quit his opinions for the extravagant absurdities of this beast? Alas! instead of persuasion, it was new cruelties; and the persecutions that had exhausted inhumanity, seemed but to revive under the more frightful auspices of perverted religion! Yet the interested and the intriguing, those who traffick with the king's conscience and the people's misery, affect to impute all the disaffection of the Irish to religious bigotry, That the same war was carried on against them

after as before the reformation, is certain; the war-whoop was only changed. And the arrows that were prepared for them before, were only dipped anew in this fresh poison. The reformation might be an amelioration, or it might not, according to its effects. The tree is known by its fruit. For my own part, I care as little for Pope Clement as for Pope Henry; for Pope Pious as for Pope George, if persecution be all the benefit they bestow. But upon this new topic I must hold my pen short, for it is apt to run away with me. A few instances out of many may suffice, to shew that the reformation, however good in its principle, brought nothing to the Irish but new afflictions. This is the view of Irish history, which best answers to your question as to the true causes of the troubles in Ireland.

Henry was not too busy disputing with school-masters, broiling young ladies, and murdering his wives, to have time also for tormenting the Irish. He formed a parliament as corrupt and servile as that of England, which, like it, first declared his first marriage void and the children of it bastards; immediately after, hearing of the murder of Anne of Bolein, repealed that law, declared the issue of Anne bastards, and settled the succession upon the issue of lady Jane, with a power to the new Pope of disposing of the Irish by will.

But wicked and ruffian as Henry was, he was not blind; and after many violent attempts, he found it wise to soothe and flatter the Irish, inviting them to his court, and treating their chiefs with marked distinction; by which artifice (for the Irish are too easily won by kindness, though obstinate against oppression) he was followed up by a brigade of Irish to the siege of Bologne, who distin

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