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shall present a sketch in the succeeding chapter, and which, for atrocious injustice, might challenge comparison with any code ever enacted. These laws left the Catholics a defenceless prey, to the oppression, insult, and outrage, of their fellow subjects, for nearly a century.

It ought to be observed, that the French reinforcements actually arrived, to a most formidable amount, a few days after the capitulation took place.

or paying any manner of duties; and shall not be compelled to leave the houses or lodgings they now have, for the space of six weeks next ensuing the date hereof.

IX. The oath to be administered to such Roman Catholics as submit to their majesties' government, shall be the oath abovesaid, and no other.

X. No person or persons who shall at any time hereafter break these articles, or any of them, shall thereby make, or cause any other person or persons to forfeit or lose the benefit of the same.

XI. The lords justices and general do promise to use their utmost endeavours, that all the persons comprehended in the above-mentioned articles, shall be protected and defended from all arrests and executions for debt or damage, for the space of eight months next ensuing the date hereof.

XII. Lastly, the lords justices and general do undertake that their majesties will ratify these articles within the space of eight months, or sooner, and use their utmost endeavours that the same shall be ratified and confirmed in parliament.

For the true performance hereof, we have hereunto set our hands.

CHAR, PORTER,
THO. CONINGSBY,
BAR. DE GINCKLE.

"And whereas the said city of Limerick hath been since, in pursuance of the said articles, surrendered unto us. Now know ye, that we having considered of the said articles, are graciously pleased hereby to declare, that we do for us, our heirs, and successors, as far as in us lies, ratify and confirm the same, and every clause, matter, and thing, therein contained. And as to such parts thereof, for which an act of parliament shall be found to be necessary, we shall recommend the same to be made good by parliament, and shall give our royal assent to any bill or bills that shall be passed by our two houses of parliament to that purpose.

"Provided always, and our will and pleasure is, that these our letters patents shall be enrolled in our court of chancery, in our said kingdom of Ireland, within the space of one year next ensuing. In witness, &c.: witness Ourself at Westminster the twenty-fourth day of February, anno regni regis et reginæ Gulielmi et Mariæ quarto per breve de privato Sigillo. Nos autem tenorem premissor. predict. ad requisitionem attornat. general. domini regis et dominæ reginæ pro regno Hiberniæ. Duximus exemplificand. per presentes. In cujus rei testimonium has literas nostras fieri fecimus patentes. Testibus nobis ipsis apud Westmon. quinto die Aprilis, annoq. regni eorum quarto. BRIDGES.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Means by which subjugated countries are held in chains. Protestant ascendency. Laws to prevent the growth of Popery. A code of demoralization, tyranny, oppression, rapine, and murder. Robbery of father, mother, sister, and brother, invited by acts of parliament. Prohibition of education. Horse thieves excited and protected by law.

When those laws [the popery laws] were not bloody, they were worse. They were slow, cruel, outrageous in their nature, and kept men alive, only to insult in their persons every one of the rights and feelings of humanity.”—Burke.

Protestant ascendency is neither more nor less than the resolution of one set of people in Ireland, to consider themselves as the sole citizens in the commonwealthand to keep a dominion over the rest by reducing them to absolute slavery, under a military power."-Idem, V. 239.

IN every subjugated country, there is always a small body of the natives, who make a regular contract, not written, but well understood, and duly carried into effect, by which they sell the nation to its oppressors, and themselves as slaves, for the sorry privilege of tyrannizing over their fellow slaves. This has ever been the surest foundation on which the dominion of one country over another is perpetuated. The base and miserable oligarchs who subserve the interests of the ruling nation, indemnify themselves for the chains which they drag about, by the superior weight and pressure of those they impose. When the English Henries overran and subdued France; had the crown placed on their heads, in Paris; and enjoyed a flattering prospect of permanently securing its descent to their posterity, it was not through the force of English skill or English valour, though both were of the highest grade at that period, that they achieved the conquest. They had at all times in their armies hosts of traitorous Frenchmen, who paved the way for the conquest and slavery of their country. Such, too, was the Roman policy, such the means whereby that all-grasping and devastating government extended its empire over, the then known world.

But the case of Ireland is probably among the most forcible illustrations of this maxim that history affords. A herd of wretched oligarchs has for centuries existed there, who have bartered their country's dearest rights and interests, for the privilege of trampling down their countrymen, over whom they have exercised the most galling tyranny that the mind of man can conceive.

This oligarchy, "The Protestant ascendency," is composed of the

professors of the established religion. Its oppression has always extended over the Protestant dissenters, as well as over the Roman Catholics; but with very great disparity of effect. The principal grievance of the Protestant dissenter, which he bears in common with the Catholic, is, that he is obliged to support the ministers of two different religions, his own and the dominant one. In other respects he stands on nearly the same ground as the professor of the estalished religion.

The tyranny exercised by this oligarchy over the Catholics, has displayed itself in the form of a barbarous code of laws, the professed object of which was "to prevent the growth of Popery;"* but the real

"I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland."983

"No country, I believe, since the world began, suffered so much on account of religion."984

"We found the people heretics and idolaters; we have, by way of improving their condition, rendered them slaves and beggars. They remain in all the misfortune of their old errors, and all the superadded misery of their recent punishment."985

"They divided the nation into two distinct parties, without common interest, sympathy, or connexion. One of these bodies was to possess all the franchises, all the property, all the education. The other was to be composed of drawers of water and cutters of turf for them."986

"Every measure was pleasing and popular, just in proportion, as it tended to harass and ruin a set of people who were looked upon as enemies to God and man; and indeed as a race of bigoted savages, who were a disgrace to human nature itself."987

The code against the Roman Catholics "was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man."988

"To render men patient under a deprivation of all the rights of human nature, every thing which could give them a knowledge or feeling of those rights was rationally forbidden. To render humanity fit to be insulted, it was fit that it should be degraded."989

"Let three millions of people but abandon all that they and their ancestors have been taught to believe sacred, and forswear it publicly, in terms the most degrading, scurrilous, and indecent, for men of integrity and virtue, and abuse the whole of their former lives, and slander the education they have received: and nothing more is required of them. There is no system of folly, or impiety, or blasphemy, or atheism, into which they may not throw themselves, and which they may not profess openly and as a system, consistently with the enjoyment of all the privileges of a free citizen in the happiest constitution in the world."990

983 Burke, V. 232. 987 Idem, 473.

984 Idem, 213. 998 Idem, 495.

985 Idem, 211. 999 Idem, 438.

986 Idem, III. 452. 990 Idem, V. 242.

one, to plunder those on whom they were to operate, of their pro perty, and to divest them of their most sacred rights and privileges; and the direct effect of which has been to demoralize the nation; to reduce it to a state of the most deplorable wretchedness and misery, not exceeded throughout the wide world; and to legalize an odious system of rapine and fraud.

"Just Alla! what must be thy look,

When such a wretch before thee stands,
Unblushing, with thy Sacred Book,

Turning the leaves with blood-stained hands,
And wresting from its page sublime

His creed of lust and hate and crime!
Ev'n as those bees of Trebizond,

Which, from the sunniest flowers that glad,
With their pure smile, the gardens round,

Draw venom forth, that drives men mad!"991

This odious and oppressive system was above half a century in maturing. Hardly a session of the Irish parliament took place, in which there was not devised some new penalty, some new forfeiture, or some new disqualification, to crush, to prey on, and to immolate the wretched Roman Catholics. The utmost ingenuity of fraud and rapine was constantly tortured, to add to the weight of their clanking chains.

The intrinsic wickedness of this code, would be sufficient to entitle its authors to be recorded in the annals of infamy, as long as time shall endure. But its turpitude is greatly enhanced by the consideration, that it was a flagrant and perfidious violation, not merely of the spirit, but of the letter of the articles for the surrender of Liimerick, as stated in the preceding chapter, by which the Roman Catholics were to be secured in all the privileges they enjoyed in the reign of Charles II. Still further to aggravate its baseness, if aggravation were possible, the government was not only thus pledged sacredly to secure them whatever they had enjoyed, but the king and queen bound themselves in the most solemn manner, to “endeavour

"No condescension was excessive which could purchase for the Protestants of Ireland the uncontrolled indulgence of their hatred, They did not hesitate to fall, like Samson, beneath the temple, provided the same ruin might become fatal to their adversaries: nor, in the warmth of zeal against Popery, did they recollect that the freedom and commerce, which, with so much solicitude, they rejected, might not perhaps appear equally unacceptable to their children. After having hazarded the possession of every object that can make life precious, to avoid the probability of slavery, they shaped for themselves a bondage which the most hardy tyrant could scarcely venture to propose; and resigned, by an awful interdict," every intercourse with the rest of mankind, whilst, in the narrow compass which remained, they might wanton in the unconstrained enjoyment of revenge. Content to convert their country into one vast prison, if they could find within its bosom a dungeon still more hideous for their unhappy captives."992

99 Lalla Rookh. 992 Review of some Interesting Periods of Irish History, 36

to procure them such further security as might preserve them from any disturbance upon the account of their religion." Far from procuring "further security," the few barriers that existed to "secure them from disturbance," were prostrated, and they were exposed, defenceless, to the mercy of the worst of their fellow subjects, by whom they were, for sixty or seventy years, outraged, oppressed, and most piratically plundered of their estates by all the chicane and fraud to which this detestable code held out so powerful an invitation.

When one of the earliest laws of this code was read for the last time in the Irish house of lords, fourteen peers, whose names ought to be rescued from the infamy attached to those who sanctioned it, entered their protest against it as fraudulent and perfidious.*

Protest against the act to confirm the Articles of Limerick. "Resolved on the question, "that the ingrossed bill sent up by the commons, intitled an act for the confirmation of articles made at the surrender of the city of Limerick, do pass into a law.”

"Ordered on motion, that such lords as please may enter their protest to the last foregoing vote, with their reasons.

"WE the lords spiritual and temporal, whose names are hereafter subscribed, do dissent from the aforesaid vote, and enter our protest against the same for the reasons following:

"I. Because we think, the title of the bill doth not agree with the body thereof, the title being an act for the confirmation of articles made at the surrender of the city of Limerick, whereas no one of the said articles is therein, as we conceive, fully confirmed.

"II. Because the said articles were to be confirmed in favour of them, to whom they were granted. But the confirmation of them by the bill is such, that it puts them in a worse condition, than they were before, as we conceive.

"III. Because this bill omits these material words " and all such as are under their protection in said counties," which are by his majesty's letters patent, declared to be part of the 2d article, and several persons have been adjudged within the said 2d article, by virtue of the aforementioned words. So that the words omitted, being so very material, and confirmed by his majesty, after a solemn debate, as we are informed, some express reason, as we conceive, ought to have been assigned in the bill, in order to satisfy the world as to that omission. "IV. Because several words are inserted in the bill, which are not in the articles; and others omitted, which alter both the sense and meaning of some parts of the articles, as we conceive.

"V. Because we apprehend, that many Protestants may and will suffer by this bill in their just rights and pretensions, by reason of their having purchased, and lent money upon the credit of the said articles; and, as we conceive, in several other respects.

LONDONDERRY,
TYRONE,
DUNCANNON,

S. ELPHIN,

WILL. DERRY,

WILL. CLONFERT,

W. KILLALA,

JOHN OSSORY,
THOMAS LIMERICK,
THOMAS KILLALOE,

KERRY,

HOWTH,

KINGSTON,
STRABANE.

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