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CHAPTER II.

"Who should be trusted, when one's own right hand Is perjured to the bosom?"-Shakspeare. Subject continued. Sir John Temple.

The age of miracles revived. Bodies, after being six weeks drowned, rising en masse from the bed of a river. A man cut and hacked, and his entrails taken out, without bleeding. Watery ghosts screaming for revenge for three months.

IN such cases of discrepancy as that of the President and Little Belt, (and similar ones are to be found on almost every topic of importance) how can even a cotemporary historian, with very considerable advantages, decide between them? He can have been an eye-witness of few of the events he narrates. For all the rest, he must necessarily depend on the accounts of others. He must either rely on one side or the other, or blend the two accounts together. In either case, error appears, as already observed, absolutely inevitable. And even of those events in which the writer has himself been a party, he must derive much of his information from others. An officer, who has been engaged in a battle, can have had but a limited view of the passing events. Armies sometimes occupy miles square; and therefore small is the portion that can be accurately surveyed by any individual.

If this view be correct, as I think can hardly be disputed, even so far as respects history written with a sincere regard to truth, and a fixed and unalterable determination not to swerve, intentionally, from her luminous path, how deplorable must be the case with histories, of which the original authors were under the influence of all the hideous passions that deform and degrade human nature, and assimilate men to demonsbigotry, dire insatiable rancour, national hostility, a ravenous thirst for the blood and estates of the natives, and where the modern authors are servile copyists, who implicitly follow in the beaten and foul path of their predecessors !

Almost all the writers of Irish history, down to Sir John Temple, were precisely in this situation, under the influence often of the whole, but never free from the goadings of some, of those dire passions. They were the historians of their own exploits, and pursued the horrible system of policy which led Rome to the establishment of her grinding tyranny over the greater part of the then known world,—and which has laid the populous and once mighty empire of Hindostan prostrate at the feet of a small body of merchants in Leadenhall street. The unfortunate natives of Ireland, as well the descendants of the Strongbows, the Butlers, the Courcys, the Fitzstephenses, the Fitzgeralds, the Raymonds, and the Lacys, as the aboriginals of the country, were, under the most absurd pretexts, almost constant

ly goaded into insurrection: every spark of discord between rival chieftains was fanned into a flame, to afford the government a pretext for interfering between them,-crushing both, sacrificing their lives, and enriching the governors with their lordly possessions; and when, thus goaded, they recurred to arms, in defence of themselves, their wives, their children, and their estates, they were pursued with the most ruthless and remorseless cruelty; and, to palliate the tyranny, the rapine, and the barbarities of their oppressors, they were overwhelmed with the foulest abuse, and portraits drawn of them, which would have better suited incarnate demons than human beings.

F

I have already hinted, that one of the principal objects of this work is to investigate the insurrection of 1641, strip it of the fraudulent misrepresentations by which it has been disfigured, and lay it before the world in the garb of truth.

In order, therefore, to induce the reader to bring to the subject a large portion of candour,to evince on how "sandy a foundation" this story rests, to expose the blind credulity, or the sinister policy, of the great body of historians, who have given full faith and confidence to the narrative of Sir John Temple, I shall submit a fair specimen of the documents on which his history depends for support. Fortunately for the holy cause of truth, but unfortunately for his character and his history, he has quoted his authorities at

full length. They are taken from the "thirty-two thick folio volumes of depositions" mentioned by Warner, which exhibit such a mass of fraud, falsehood, absurdity, and let me add impossibility, as I may venture to assert never was exhibited before, and, for the honour of human nature, it is to be hoped, never will be again. These depositions demand a much more detailed exposition than I can give them in the present chapter. It is a melancholy truth, that they form the basis of all the horrible narratives on this subject, of all the authors who have treated on it, from Temple to Clarendon, from Clarendon to Borlase, from Borlase to Hume, and from Hume down to Russell's Modern Europe. Temple embellished them with all the hideous colouring that could excite terror and abhorrence: and, I repeat, nearly all the succeeding historians have laid Temple under heavy contributions, and, without adverting to the fabulous evidence on which he relies, and which carries its own condemnation with it, have borrowed not merely his facts, but his very phraseology. The overwhelming decision of Dr. Warner, which I have quoted in page 20, ought to have set the question at rest, above fifty years ago.

I shall therefore devote several chapters to this particular subject, and give such copious extracts from the depositions, as will convince any

Warner, 146.

431899

man whose heart is not steeled, and whose conscience is not seared, against doing justice to the Irish, of the superlative wickedness of the tribunals which received such depositions, the equally superlative folly of the writer who filled his book with them, and the never-to-be-forgiven carelessness (to use the most favourable terms) of those writers who relied on such a deceptious, fraudulent guide.

To relieve the sombre hue of this long chapter, I shall give anticipatory extracts from a few of those wonderful tales, from which, as I have said, Temple and his copyists have drawn their highly-coloured pictures of the massacre.

"Arthur Culm, of Cloughwater, in the county of Cavan, esquire, deposeth, That he was credibly informed, by some that were present there, that there were thirty women and young children, and seven men, flung into the river of Belturbert; and when some of them offered to swim for their lives, they were, by the rebels, followed in boats, and knocked on the head with poles; the same day they hanged two women at Turbert; and this deponent doth verily believe, that Mulmore O'Rely, the then sheriff, had a hand in the commanding the murder of those said persons, for that he saw him write two notes, which he sent to Turbert, by Brien O'Rely, upon whose coming these murders were committed: and those persons who were present, also affirmed, that the bodies of those thirty persons drowned did not appear upon the water till about six weeks after, past; as the said O'Rely came to the town, all the bodies came floating up to the very bridge; those persons were all formerly stayed in the town by his protection, when the rest of their neighbours in the town went away."

9 Temple, 122.

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