and 300,000 in two years; (whereas Sir William Petty, as we have stated, makes the whole number that fell in eleven years, by war, plague, famine, and massacre, 112,000, which we have proved extravagantly over-rated; and Warner, who had no partiality for the Roman Catholics, and who took more pains to investigate the subject than any other writer, either of the seventeenth or eighteenth century, reduces the number killed out of war to 4,028; with which Carte's account appears to correspond ;)—who have recorded, that a general insurrection and massacre took place throughout the kingdom, on the 23d of October, 1641, whereas three-fourths of it were, for entire weeks afterwards, in a state of perfect tranquillity ;-who have also recorded the falsehood, that Ireland enjoyed a sort of millenium for forty years previous to the insurrection, whereas she suffered, during that period, every species of the most revolting tyranny; in a word, whom we have, in every page of our work, convicted of a total disregard of truth. All these stories were dictated by the same spirit of imposture; penned by the same writers; rest, of course, on the same authority; and the falsehood of those we have discussed being unanswerably proved, the residue must share the same sentence of condemnation.

This, we trust, would be sufficient. Those convicted of fraud and falsehood, in so many points, where, as we have already stated, detec

tion trod so closely on their heels, are utterly undeserving of credit, in any case; but more particularly in those wherein the difficulty of detection invites the fraudulent to falsehood and forgery.

But of this plea we scorn to avail ourselves. We shall enter into a full examination of the evidence on which these legends rest; and feel confident that it will excite astonishment, how, even in times of the grossest delusion, they could have ever gained the slightest credence.

Temple, of all the writers whom we have quoted, is the only original author. His book is one unvaried tissue of fables, of which he was himself so much and so justly ashamed, that he endeavoured to suppress it; and actually refused permission to the booksellers of London to print a second edition.* But it was in vain: it too much

*Extract of a Letter from the Earl of Essex, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, to Mr. Secretary Coventry.

"Dublin Castle, Jan. 6, 1674-5.

"I am to acknowledge the receipt of yours of the 22d of December, wherein you mention a book that was newly published, concerning the cruelties committed in Ireland, at the beginning of the late war. Upon further inquiry, I find Sir J. Temple, master of the rolls here, author of that book, was this last year sent to by several stationers of London, to have his consent to the printing thereof. But he assures me that he utterly denied it; and whoever printed it, did it without his knowledge. Thus much I thought fit to add to what I formerly said upon this occasion, that I might do this gentleman right, in case it was suspected he had any share in publishing this new edition."429

429 Essex, 2.

flattered the existing prejudices,-too much favoured the views of those who unjustly possessed the estates of which the Irish were plundered, to hope that it would be allowed to sink into oblivion.

The remaining writers are mere copyists; and not only derive their facts, with occasional amplifications, from Temple, but borrow his very language. We shall notice four of them;-Borlase, Carte, Macauley, and Hume.

Borlase's history was published in 1688; and is a most wretched and despicable compilation. In one point, however, he has shown a considerable degree of art, in avoiding an impolitic.step, which Temple took, and which utterly destroyed the credibility of his history. The latter, to give support to his fabulous narrative, annexes the depositions on which it is grounded; and which bear the most indisputable marks of fraud and perjury, as has been proved in Chapter II. and shall be more fully displayed in the present one, whereby it will appear, that nothing but folly and wickedness could have devised, nothing but the grossest delusion have credited them. lase has stated the number of pretended murders in gross, but wholly omitted the depositions, and given merely the names of the witnesses, whereby his readers have no means of ascertaining the rottenness of the foundation on which they rest.

Bor

Carte's account affords a most striking display of the infatuation that prevails on this topic. The

reader, in page 371, will find that he states, that the English were principally settled in Leinster and Munster; that there were few murders committed in those provinces; that the insurgents spared the Scotch, who composed the great mass of the Protestant population of Ulster; that there were not in that province more than 20,000 English; that of this number, "several thousands" escaped to Dublin; that "6,000 were saved in Fermanagh;" that "others," not improbably thousands, found an asylum in three fortified towns and yet

This same historian, in the very same page, and at the distance of a few lines,

Pathetically and feelingly informs his readers,

that

RIVERS OF BLOOD WERE SHED!!

And

MASSACRES PERPETRATED, WHICH IT WOULD BE SHOCKING TO HUMANITY TO REPEAT!!

While we are stating these particulars, we feel mixed sensations of astonishment and indignation, which the reader may conceive, but which language cannot express. We are lost in the mass of reflections excited by this stupendous delirium of the human mind. It affords another instance of the gross and glaring contradictions so constantly found between the different parts of the same history of Irish affairs. It is an extraordinary fatality, from which even the very few whose intentions appear correct have not escaped. We

have frequently had occasion to call the reader's attention to it; and are persuaded, there is not elsewhere any parallel to be found. We have met with various cases, in which, after the historian has given a series of strong, bold, decisive facts, calculated to excite admiration of the endowments, sympathy for the sufferings, and eager wishes for the success, of that oppressed, and, we had almost said, heaven-abandoned nation, he is led to draw inferences not merely unwarranted by his facts, but in direct hostility with them. Of this wonderful contradiction between fact and induction, there are probably in Warner fifty, and in Leland a hundred instances : but there is none more remarkable than this of Carte. It would be like a search after the philosopher's stone; the genial climate and verdure of Italy in Iceland; free government in Turkey; or ease and opulence in the wretched cabins of the Irish peasantry; to go in quest of those "rivers of blood," or those "massacres," so "shocking to humanity," out of the remnant of his 20,000 English, after the "several thousands" whom he rescued from the skein or the stiletto of the Irish assassins.

Mrs. Macauley has outdone the other painters of those imaginary scenes. More than half of her detail appears to be the production of her own invention; as there is nothing in Temple or Rushworth, or any other writer we have seen, to warrant it; particularly the story of the clergy