criticism, is unimportant, compared with what I feel from the convictions of my own mind. I stand self-condemned. That I have not done justice to myself, in presenting the work to the public in such an imperfect state, is of little importance. This might lower the sails of my vanity: but it could affect me alone. But, having undertaken the delightful task of vindicating the country of Swift, Parnell, Goldsmith, Sterne, Farquhar, Burke, Flood, Curran, Grattan, Montgomery, and a long and bright galaxy of such illustrious characters; a country whose natives, notwithstanding the countless blessings bestowed on them by Nature, in local situation, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate, have been for ages doomed to pine in the most abject poverty, wretchedness, and idleness at home; but abroad, in every region and every clime of the known world, have displayed the brightest energies of the human character, in all the varied walks of life; a country which has furnished almost every nation in Christendom with statesmen and warriors, driven from their native soil by lordly despotism, rampant injustice, and religious intolerance; a country the most calumniated, and among the most oppressed, in the world; having as fair a field to explore as ever courted the exertions of any writer, in any age or country, I most deeply regret, and sincerely apologize for, the want of judgment which led me to appear precipitately before the public, without that degree of elaboration which the importance of the subject demanded.

Having candidly avowed thus much with respect to the execution of the work, I trust I shall not be censured for expressing a hope, that there is, in the object I have had in view -the glorious cause I have undertaken-and the impregnable basis on which this Vindication rests, a redeeming virtue, that would atone for defects and imperfections even greater than are to be found in these pages. He must be a most fastidious epicure, who, when hungry, would turn in scorn from excellent viands, merely because the traiteur had been injudicious or inexpert in the cookery: and a reader would be equally injudicious, who should reject a work which shed the

* Extract from an unanimous Address, agreed to by the Federal members of the legislature of Maryland, published in consequence of the Baltimore riots. "A dependency of Great Britain, Ireland has long languished under oppressions reprobrated by humanity, and discountenanced by just policy. It would argue penury of human feeling, and ignorance of human rights, to submit patiently to those oppressions. Centuries have witnessed the struggles of Ireland, but with only partial success. Rebellions and insurrections have continued, with but short intervals of tranquillity. Many of the Irish, like the French, are the hereditary foes of Great Britain. America has opened her arms to the oppressed of all nations. No people have availed themselves of the asylum with more alacrity, or in greater numbers, than the Irish. High is the meed of praise, rich the reward, which Irishmen have merited from the gratitude of America. AS HEROES AND STATESMEN, THEY HONOUR THEIR ADOPTED COUNTRY."

broad glare of truth on an important and much-misrepresented period of history, merely because the writer had failed in the due arrangement of his materials.

Some readers may complain, that the quotations are too numerous; that they disfigure the appearance of the work; and innecessarily enhance its volume: and some may be unjust enough to believe that the latter is one of the objects of the writer.

Whoever entertains this idea must be grossly ignorant of the nature of writing, and have never tried the experiment. The search for some of those passages, not exceeding three or four lines, has cost more time and labour than have been employed in writing five or six pages. In fact the time wasted in examining the dry and dreary details of a soporific volume of Thurloe's State Papers, of eight or nine hundred pages, where hardly a single fact was to be gleaned, would have sufficed for writing a chapter of original matter.

In some cases, however, I may have given more quotations than were necessary: but this error is venial. Those who are satisfied with one or two authorities, out of six or eight, might pass over the remainder: whereas the contrary and common error, of affording inadequate support to what we are ourselves, and suppose others, convinced of, is a vital one. A single instance of the latter is productive of more injurious consequences than twenty of the former.

For the exuberance of quotations, an adequate reason can be given. It requires no ordinary weight of proof, in the gross adulteration of Irish history, to make an impression on the public mind, on points wherein error is só gross, truth so little known, means of correct information so limited, and prejudice so inveterate.

What would it have availed had I written a narrative of the events discussed in this work, even with a long series of references to my authorities? Who, to verify the facts, would take the pains to explore Temple, and Borlace, and Rushworth, and Baker, and Clarendon, and Carte, and Leland, and Warner, and so many other writers whom I have quoted? Not one in a hundred. The facts would be regarded as resting on my mere ipse dixit, and wholly fail to produce the effect intended. But lives there a man who will dare to refuse his assent, when I quote Ludlow, for the butchery at Cashel; the marquis of Ormonde, and Cromwell himself, for that at Drogheda; Borlace, for the starvation of “ 7000 of the vulgar sort,' by one regiment; Rushworth, for the bloodthirsty decree of the Long Parliament, "to give no quarter to Irish prisoners;" and the lords justices themselves, for the murderous order to 66 kill every man able to bear arms, in those places where rebels were harboured ?"

On this subject I desire to be distinctly understood. Though

literary reputation, to every man who employs his pen for the public, must be a desirable object; yet I should be more highly gratified, were this Vindication a mere collection of "shreds and patches," without a single page of my own composition, a collection in which my sole merit would arise from the research for, and arrangement of, facts, forcing conviction on the reader's mind, than if it united the manly boldness of Tacitus with the elaborate elegance of Gibbon, but were as deceptious and fraudulent as Člarendon's account of the state of Ireland previous to 1641, or Hume's, of the insurrection of that year. Wretched, indeed, and meriting pity and contempt, must be the man who could hesitate for a moment between the two results of his labours.

In following the track of such an indefatigable writer as Curry; who has almost exhausted the sickening subject, it would be hardly possible to avoid using the same materials, and frequently making analogous dispositions of, and deductions from, them. This is the fate of every writer who travels over ground already beaten. A man who writes history, or discusses historical subjects, of remote periods, is no further worthy of credit, than as he narrates facts already recorded. Invention and fraud are synonymous terms. All that remain for modern writers, who treat of remote events, are, laborious research; judicious selection of materials; fidelity of reference or quotation; and correct induction. How far I have succeeded with the second and fourth, the world will decide: but to the first and third I fearlessly lay claim. I have spared neither pains nor expense in procuring the necessary materials, nor time nor labour in their examination. Almost every book in the Philadelphia library, bearing on this subject, (and the number is immense,) I have examined; and moreover procured many, which it does not contain, from New York, Baltimore, and Burlington.*

On the subject of fidelity of quotation, I wish to state, that I have been as careful as human frailty would admit, to avoid errors: but in the very unusual number of authorities, some

It is not pretended, that I have read all the books I have quoted. Half a life would scarcely be adequate to this purpose. No man of business could read Thurloe and Rushworth, amounting to fifteen ponderous folios, in less than two or three years. But four-fifths of the books to which I have referred, and many others which were too barren to afford a single passage, I have examined page by page. Others have been more slightly searched; and of some, only certain volumes, on cotemporaneous events. Those accustomed to investigations of this kind, know that a single glance frequently suffices to ascertain whether a page be likely to furnish suitable matter. This has been remarkably the case with Thurloe, Rushworth, and Clarendon. Temple, Carte, Warner, Leland, and some others, who have furnished the principal part of my materials, required, and have accordingly received, a closer examination. But of the matter suitable for my purpose, even in these works, a large portion must have wholly escaped me, from the rapidity of my researches. Moreover, of my selections, I have not been able to avail myself of more than one-fourth part, in consequence of the limits prescribed to this work.

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may have escaped me. If this be the case, I am satisfied they are few and unimportant. Should any be discovered, I shall regard the communication of them as a signal favour.

I have been led to notice slightly, and merely as connected with the subject, some of the proceedings of the Long Parliament and of Charles I. In this, as in all other cases of civil war, there were egregious and multifarious "faults on both sides," some of which truth has called upon me to state. Zealous friends of free government, who have been nurtured in idolatry of the Long Parliament, which they regard as immaculate, will scarcely pardon a writer who exposes them to execration, for their "no quarter" ordinance; for their rancorous opposition to a cessation of arms; and for their devouring rage for the extermination of the Irish, and the confiscation of their estates: and the idolaters of the "royal martyr" will equally denounce me, for daring to expose his base perfidy to the Irish. This result is disregarded. Censure and abuse as they may, volumes of such censure and abuse will not disprove a single fact.

When this work was about two-thirds printed, I met with a most excellent history of Ireland, by John Lawless, Esqr. published anno 1814, wherein the writer defends his country's character and rights, in an unusually bold, eloquent, masterly, and overwhelming manner. Having derived his materials from the same sources as Curry, sources to which I also have had recourse, it is not wonderful that there should be a sameness between his work and this. I am gratified to state, that there is a coincidence between his views of most of the subjects, and those I have taken, particularly with respect to the rapacity and plunder of James I. I regret, however, to find, that he has very slightly passed over the two most important points embraced in this work: I mean the account of the sham general conspiracy, and the legends of the massacre of 1641, which his powerful pen could have so ably exposed, and for the detection of which he must have had far more copious materials in Dublin than I could procure in Philadelphia. This elegant and interesting history ought to be in the possession of every Irishman who feels for the honour and glory of his country.

The strong language of reprobation, which I have used towards the English administrations in Ireland, will probably excite the ire of some unthinking Englishmen, who may regard it as a libel on their nation. Such feelings can be entertained only by illiberal minds. Every enlightened Englishman will sympathize in the horrible sufferings of Ireland, and consign to 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, which had not a

single feature calculated to secure the attachment of a people easily alienated by hostility, but 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. Had the case been wholly reversed, had Ireland been the master nation, probably 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 nations, or bodies of men, are demons when they have uncontrolled power over other nations or bodies. All the oppressions, the tyrannies, the rapines, the bloody persecutions, that disgrace and dishonour 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 miserable 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 ?"* Every man of common sense must see and admit, that it carries its refutation stamped on its face. Yet such is the record of this legend. 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. 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: a thousand such scenes would fall short of the sufferings inflicted on the Irish, in the Desmond war, or the insurrection of 1641 and, in truth, the whole legend fades into insigni

Encyclopædia Perthensis, I. 561,