This is perfectly natural; and what might have been inferred from the proceedings of the rulers, even were history silent on the subject. The experience of the world proves, that severe laws and good government frequently fail to repress fraud and violence, even when corporal punishments and penalties are held out in terrorem, to awe the offenders. But, we repeat, when a .government assumes the aspect of the plunderer, and sets the alluring example of spoliation; when it violates, in the most profligate manner, the rights of property, held by regular descent, for ages; when, with sacrilegious hand, it tears down all the barriers erected by law, honour, honesty, and justice; but, more particularly than all the rest, when it divides a nation into two casts, and prostrates one, tied neck and heels, at the feet of the other, as the Helots were at the feet of the Spartans,-the native Irish, previous

of any part thereof, were not truly set forth and named; or if, in grants to corporations and bodies politic, whether spiritual or temporal, the right style, by which they were denominated and distinguished, was not used: in all these, and MANY OTHER CASES, the letters patents were liable to be disputed and set aside. This rendered all possessions very precarious; and there were few gentlemen in the kingdom, but had been, some time or other, questioned for their title, or disturbed in the enjoyment of their estates. The inconveniences whereof were very visible, in the discouragement of husbandry (few persons caring to improve lands which they cannot call their own) and in the general dissatisfaction of the people."230

230 Carte, I. 60.

to the reformation, at those of the successive swarms of needy English adventurers, who migrated thither for the purpose of repairing their shattered fortunes, and, subsequent to the reformation, the Roman Catholics at the feet of the miserable oligarchy styling itself "the Protestant ascendency;" what can be the result of such a state of things, but that the favoured cast will be base, corrupt, unjust, and tyrannical; and violate, as they generally may with impunity, every law of God and man, to the oppression of the degraded cast? and that the latter forlorn description will be abject, timid, crouching, and forced to submit to every indignity, insult, and depredation,** or, if they resist, be crushed, with added weight, to their previous sufferings.

* Among the grievances which are so pathetically enumerated in the Remonstrance of the Catholics of Ireland, agreed upon, March 17, 1642, the following is applicable to the subject of the present chapter, and is confirmed by the preceding extract from Leland: "The procuring of false inquisitions upon feigned titles of their estates, against many hundred years' possession, and no traverse or petition of right admitted thereunto, and jurors, denying to find such offices, were censured even to public infamy and ruin of their estates; the finding thereof being against their consciences and their evidences: and nothing must stand against such offices taken of great and considerable parts of the kingdom, but letters patents under the great seal and if letters patents were produced, (as in most cases they were) none must be allowed valid, nor yet sought to be legally avoided: so that of late times, by the underhand working of Sir, William Parsons, knight, now one of the lords justices here, and the arbitrary illegal power of the two impeached judges in Parliament, and others drawn in by

Such was the hideous picture exhibited in Ireland, during that period, which the world, deluded by dishonest writers, of great but undeserved celebrity, has been universally led to regard as "a blessed condition of peace and security."

The great extent of the last chapters precludes the necessity of being prolix with the present one. I shall therefore be as brief as possible, and reduce it within narrow bounds.

The land was covered with hosts of pimps, spies, and informers, whose eternal employment was finding flaws in the titles of gentlemen's estates, and, if possible, ejecting them, in which they were constantly countenanced by government; or, if they failed in this part of the project, forcing them to ruinous compositions.

"Needy projectors and rapacious courtiers still continued the scandalous traffic of pleading the king's title against the possessors of estates, of seizing their lands, or forcing them to grievous compositions.”231

We have asserted that this system of rapine was more oppressive than that of James. A moment's reflection will satisfy every reader on this point. That miserable king only spoliated a twentieth part of the island; whereas the

their advice and council, one hundred and fifty letters patents were avoided in one morning; which course continued until all the patents of the kingdom, to a few, were by them and their associates declared void."232

231 Leland, III. 15.

232 Carte, III. 137.

informers harassed, tricked, and preyed upon the inhabitants of the remaining nineteen-twentieths. In the preceding note, page 225, Carte expressly informs us, that "there were few gentlemen in the kingdom, who had not been, some time or other, questioned for their title, or disturbed in the possession of their estates."

"They who were too poor or too spiritless to engage in distant adventures, courted fortune in Ireland. Under pretence of improving the king's revenue in a country where it was far less than the charge of government, they obtained commissions of inquiry into defective titles, and grants of concealed lands and rents belonging to the crown; the great benefit of which was generally to accrue to the projector, whilst the king had but an inconsiderable proportion of the concealment, or a small advance of rent. DISCOVERERS WERE EVERY WHERE BUSILY EMPLOYED IN FINDING OUT FLAWS IN MEN'S TITLES

TO THEIR ESTATES. The old pipe-rolls were searched, to find the original rents with which they had been charged. The patent rolls, in the tower of London, were ransacked for the ancient grants. No means of industry, or DEVICES, were left untried, to force the possessors to accept of new grants, at an advanced rent. In general, men were either conscious of the defects in their titles, or alarmed at the trouble and expense of a contest with the crown, or fearful of the issue of such a contest, at a time, and in a country, where the prerogative was highly strained, and strenuously supported by the judges. These inquiries, therefore, commonly ended in a new composition, made at as cheap a rate, and as easy an advance of rent, as the possessors could obtain."233

Can the history of the world produce, in a state of peace, such a hideous order of things as is here detailed? An entire nation divided into two classes, plunderers and plundered,-spies

233 Leland, II. 549.

and informers, and victims of their malice and avarice! What scenes of distress and wretchedness, what instances of rapine, what fraud, what trick, what chicane, what forgery, what perjury, must have taken place in such a state of society, when the baleful race of informers and "discoverers were every where busily employed in finding out flaws in men's titles to their estates!" And this in lord Clarendon's millenium! that "blessed condition of peace and security," when "whatsoever their land, labour, or industry produced, was their own!"

Fastidious readers will murmur at the constant repetition of the development of the falsehood of lord Clarendon, which occurs in this work. But what is to be done in such a case? If fraud, falsehood, and imposture, every step we take, cross our path, must we pass them over unnoticed, from deference to that fastidiousness, which, while it submits cheerfully to the eternal repetition of falsehood, affects to be shocked at the repetition of its detection?