Perhaps the preceding analysis of this miserable legend might supersede the necessity of adding any thing further on the subject. But its great importance, and the deep solicitude we feel to dispel the thick mists with which prejudice and fraud have overspread it, induce us to place it in a new form, and bring it more home to the mind of the reader. The reasons for adopting this measure will probably so far satisfy the reader, as to preclude the necessity of an apology.

QUERIES.

Is there a man in the world who can seriously believe :

I. That a Catholic COLONEL, engaged in a plot to murder the Protestants, would send fifty miles for a Protestant, SERVANT to a Protestant gentleman, an inveterate enemy to the Roman Catholics, as an accomplice ?

II. That a journey of a hundred and ten or a hundred and twenty miles could be performed in three days and a half, the sun rising at seven, and setting at five, at a season of the year when the rains, then usually prevalent, must have rendered the roads almost impassable; and by a man who knew nothing of the business which led to the summons he had received, and who, of course, had no temptation to make any extraordinary exertion?

III. That a stranger, arriving in the suburbs of a city an hour after sun-set, and fatigued with a long journey, should, without any aid from the moon, immediately find out the lodgings of another stranger, who had arrived the same afternoon?

IV. That Sir William Parsons, who had, at nine in the evening, received intelligence of a plot, to explode at ten the next morning, and the names of some of the principal conspirators, should be so misguided, as to send back the drunken informer, "to get out of Mac-Mahon as much certainty of the plot as he could," instead of immediately apprehending the conspirators?

V. That when the informer returned to the lords justices, he would be allowed to go to bed, before taking his examination?

VI. That when he had slept himself sober, and made circumstantial deposition of such alarming particulars, the privy council would have been such idiots as to take no other precaution than merely "to have a watch set privately upon the lodgings of Mac-Mahon, and also upon lord Macguire," as if they had been plotting to rob orchards or hen-roosts, to bar out a school-master, break lamps in a midnight frolic, or attack the watchmen, instead of plotting to seize the castle, subvert the government, and cut the throats of one or two hundred thousand people?

VII. That a privy or even a common council of the wise men of Gotham would not, under such

circumstances, have instantly apprehended the conspirators, instead of "sitting all night in council," upon one of the simplest points ever discussed, and which could have been decided in five minutes, as well as in five hours, five weeks, or five years; on which the most prompt and decisive measures were imperiously necessary; and at a moment when, if there were any truth in the statement of O'Conally, the salvation or destruction of the state might depend on a single hour?

VIII. That having taken the precaution, on Friday night, of "setting a watch privately upon the lodgings of lord Macguire," thereby establishing their belief that he was an accomplice in the plot, they would not have arrested him at the same time they arrested Mac-Mahon, but waited till conference with the latter and others, and calling to mind Sir William Cole's letter, which led them to "gather that the lord Macguire was to be an actor in surprizing the castle of Dublin?"

IX. That a conspiracy, which was to explode throughout the whole kingdom on the 23d of October, should be arrested in Leinster, Connaught, and Munster, by the detection of it, in Dublin, a few hours before the appointed time?

X. That if it had been intended to murder all the Protestants throughout the kingdom, who would not join the conspirators, there would have been no intelligence of a single murder on the 25th, or that, on the 29th, the lords justices

should explicitly declare, that the insurrection was "confined to the mere old Irish in the province of Ulster, and others who had joined them?"

XI. That though the lords justices had recourse to the execrable expedient of putting Mac-Mahon and others to the rack, they should not have extorted a word from any of them, to support the charge of murderous intentions, if any conspiracy had existed, for "cutting off all the Protestants and English throughout the kingdom?"

XII. That if there were a general conspiracy, and of course a large assemblage of people in Dublin, for the purpose of seizing the castle on the 23d, the lords justices would not have been able, on the morning of that day, to apprehend more than two of the leaders and a few common servants?

XIII. And finally, whether, the deposition of O'Conally being incontrovertibly established as false, and he of course perjured, in the two vital points,

I. The universality of the plot, and

II. The determination to massacre all who would not join in it,

There can be any credit whatever attached to the remainder of his testimony? And whether it does not necessarily follow, that the whole was a manifest fraud and imposture, designed to provoke insurrection, and lead to its usual and inevitable result,-confiscation ?

Before the reader decides on answers to these queries, it is hoped he will bear in mind the strong facts adduced in Chapter XIV. to prove that the seventeenth century was, in the fullest sense of the word, the age of perjury, forgery, and fabricated plots. He will there He will there see, that in London, at that period, the boasted courts of justice were, as we have said, mere slaughterhouses, where the depositions of men, stained and covered over with crimes of the most atrocious nature, as the leopard is covered with spots, were received, in cases where the lives of innocent men were at stake, and were finally immolated. He will likewise behold the horrible fact, that the testimony of a man whose perjury was detected in open court, and there confessed by himself, was afterwards received, and was the means of consigning innocent persons to the ignominious death of the gallows.

Let him also bear in mind, that forged plots, supported by perjury, and occasionally by the stupid and clumsy contrivance of letter-dropping,* had been one of the steady and uniform machines of the government of Ireland, from the invasion to that period; and had produced the forfeiture of millions of acres.

And further, let it not be forgotten, that all the writers, Clarendon, Carte, Warner, Leland, Gordon, &c. agree, that the grand object of the lords justices was, in the beginning, to extend the

* Supra, 168.