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When the monarch of three powerful kingdoms, who ought to be a pattern of honour, honesty, and justice, and, as Sir John Davies declared, to have scorned to "dispossess the meanest of his subjects wrongfully," becomes a common depredator on their estates, and acts the part of the ravening wolf, instead of that of the vigilant shepherd, it is not wonderful that such portion of those subjects as form a privileged cast, should prey upon and devour the others. This has ever been, and ever will be, the result, in all analogous cases.

CHAPTER IX.

Projected spoliation of Connaught. Jury fined eighty thousand pounds sterling, for not perjuring themselves by a false verdict. Historical obliquity.

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THE project formed by the pious James, of an extensive plantation in Connaught, for the purpose of spoiling the Egyptians, those wretches who "did not esteem lawful matrimony," who "built no houses, and planted no orchards nor gardens," was, as shown in the preceding chapter, defeated by death, who snatched him away, in the midst of his career, to render an account, in another world, before the omniscient Judge of mankind, of his rapine and depredation in this. But, alas! the respite thus afforded to the western province of Ireland, was of short duration. During the succeeding reign, the nefarious project was revived, by the arrogant, rapacious, and vindictive Wentworth, who meditated nothing less, according to Leland, than the subversion of the title of every estate in the province.*

"His project was nothing less than to subvert the title to every estate in every part of Connaught, and to establish a new plantation through this whole province; a project, which,

For this stupendous scheme, Wentworth was peculiarly fitted. He possessed great energy of character, and talents of a high order; but was withheld by no sense of shame, no tie of honour, no regard to equity, and no "compunctious visitings of conscience." He He completely filled Sallust's character of Catiline :

"Alieni appetens, sui profusus."

Thus fortified with every requisite of head and heart to qualify him for a remorseless oppressor, he undertook to carry this project into execu

when first proposed, in the late reign, was received with horror and amazement, but which suited the undismayed and enterprising genius of lord Wentworth. For this he had opposed the confirmation of the royal graces, transmitted to lord Faulkland, and taken to himself the odium of so flagrant a violation of the royal promise. The parliament was at an end; and the deputy at leisure to execute a scheme, which, as it was offensive and alarming, required a cautious and deliberate procedure. Old records of state, and the memorials of ancient monasteries, were ransacked, to ascertain the king's original title to Connaught. It was soon discovered, that in the grant of Henry the Third to Richard De Burgo, five cantreds were reserved to the crown, adjacent to the castle of Athlone; that THIS GRANT INCLUDED THE WHOLE REMAINDER OF THE PROVINCE, which was now alleged to have been forfeited by Aedn O'Connor, the Irish provincial chieftain; that the lands and lordship of De Burgo, descended lineally to Edward the Fourth; and were confirmed to the crown by a statute of Henry the Seventh. The ingenuity of court lawyers was employed to invalidate all patents granted to the possessors of these lands, from the reign of queen Elizabeth."220

220 Leland, II. 35.

tion, and would have infallibly succeeded, but for the convulsions in Scotland and England, which called him to aid his master, in whose cause he lost a head which his career in Ireland had indubitably forfeited.

Few men have performed a distinguished part in society, whose history is so contradictorily narrated. A correct account of, him is still a desideratum. Clarendon, Nalson, Carte, Hume, and all the long train of monarchical writers, whine and lament over his grave, as if he had been a mirror of virtue,-a Phocion, an Aristides, a Socrates, a De Witt, or a Washington; and as if he had been offered up, an immaculate victim, to popular rage. But those who take a correct view of his career, must acknowledge that he was a bloated mass of almost every species of vice and crime of which a public officer is capable.

Candour, however, calls for the acknowledgment that the proceedings against him, in the trial of the impeachment, were in many respects informal and irregular; and that he was offered up, by the republican party in the Long Parliament, full as much to appease their resentment at his apostacy from their cause, and to allay their fears of his talents and influence, as for his crimes, atrocious as they were. But, whatever may have been the informality of the course pursued, few public functionaries have ever been brought to the block, whose fate was more com

pletely sanctioned by the claims of substantial justice. No man ever had much less reason to complain of informality: for whoever compares the proceedings on his trial, with those on the trial of lord Mountnorris, will be satisfied that there was as much difference between them, as between the court of Herod or Pontius Pilate, and that of Trajan or Antoninus. The proceedings of the court held on lord Mountnorris were of the most murderous character.

It is not extravagant to aver, that the aggregate crimes of hundreds of men, who have been offered up on gibbets, as victims to offended Justice, for depredations on property, would not equal the guilt of one single act of Wentworth,— the fine imposed on the sheriff and grand jury of Galway the naked fact of which case is, that the jurors, probably twenty in number, were each fined four thousand pounds, or eighty thousand pounds sterling, equal, according to the present value of money, to about two hundred thousand pounds, or nearly nine hundred thousand dollars, because they resisted the depredations of this modern Aristides, and refused to find a title in the crown, grounded on the invasion of Henry II. or on claims arising immediately from that source. The sheriff was fined a thousand pounds, for returning such a jury. More of this anon.

Here an apology is due to the reader. This statement is somewhat out of its place, in point of time. Let us return to the progress of Went

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