further security in that particular, as many a parent's grey hairs with sorrow might preserve them from any disturb- to the grave. ance on account of their said religion." Whereupon these noblemen and gentlemen laid down their arms, and immediately submitted to their majesties' government; at the same time that they had offers of powerful assistance from France, which might, if accepted, have greatly obstructed the success of their majesties' arms in the war then carrying on abroad against that kingdom.

And although very few estates at present remain in the hands of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and therefore little or no matter appears to be left for these laws to operate upon, nevertheless, we are so far from being secure in the possession of personal property, so far from being preserved from any disturbance on account of our religion, even in that respect, that new and forced constructions have And although these articles were duly been of late years put upon these laws ratified and confirmed, first by the com- (for we cannot think that such construcmander-in-chief of their majesties' forces tions were ever originally intended), by in Ireland, in conjunction with the then which, on the sole account of our religion, lords justices thereof, and afterwards by we are, in many cases, stripped of that an Act of the Irish parliament, in the personal property by discoverers and inninth year of his majesty King Wil-formers; a set of men, most gracious liam's reign, by which they became sovereign, once generally and justly desthe public faith of the nation, plighted and engaged to these people in as full, firm, and solemn manner, as ever public faith was plighted to any people; yet so far were the Roman These and many other cruel restrictions Catholics of Ireland from receiving the (such as no Christian people under heaven just benefits thereof; so far from seeing but ourselves are made liable to) are, and any steps taken, or means used in the Irish have long been, greatly detrimental, not parliament, to procure them such promised only to us in particular, but also to the security, as might preserve them from any commerce, culture, and every other imdisturbance on account of their religion, provement of this kingdom in general; that, on the contrary, several laws have and what is surely a melancholy conbeen since enacted in that parliament, by sideration, are chiefly beneficial to the which the exercise of their religion is discoverers and informers before menmade penal, and themselves and their tioned; who, under colour of these laws, heirs forever have forfeited those rights plunder indiscriminately, parents, brethand immunities, and titles to their estates ren, kinsmen, and friends, in despite of and properties, which in the reign of all the ties of blood, of affection and conKing Charles II. they were by law en-fidence, in breach of the divine laws, of titled to, and enjoyed in common with the rest of their fellow-subjects.

pised amongst us, but of late grown into some repute, by the increase of their numbers, and by the frequency, encouragement, and success of their practices.

all former human laws, enacted in this or perhaps in any other kingdom, for the security of property, since the creation of the world.

And such is the evil tendency of these laws to create jealousy and disgust between parents and their children, and The necessity of continuing laws in especially to stifle in the breasts of the their full force for so great a number of latter those pious sentiments of filial duty years, which are attended with such and obedience which reason dictates, good shameful and pernicious consequences, policy requires, and which the Almighty ought, we humbly conceive, to be exso strictly enjoins, that in virtue of them, tremely manifest, pressing, and permana son, however undutiful or profligate in ent; but so far is this from being the case other respects, shall merely by the merit with respect to these disqualifying laws, of conforming to the established religion, that even the pretended grounds for those not only deprive the Roman Catholic jealousies and mistrusts, which are said father of that free and full possession of to have given birth to them, have long his estate, that power to mortgage or since disappeared; it being a well-known otherwise dispose of it, as the exigencies and undeniable truth, that your majesty's of his affairs may require, but also shall distressed, but faithful subjects, the Rohimself have full liberty to mortgage, man Catholics of Ireland, have neither the sell, or otherwise alienate that estate from inclination nor the power to disturb your his family for ever; a liberty, most gra- majesty's government; nor can (we cious sovereign, the frequent use of humbly presume) that only pretext now which has entailed poverty and despair left for continuing them in force, viz. their on some of the most ancient and opulent tendency to make proselytes to the estab families in this kingdom, and brought lished religion, in any degree justify the

manifold severities and injuries occasioned by them. For, alas! most gracious sovereign, there is but too much reason to believe, that proselytes so made are, for the most part, such in appearance only in order to become in reality, what all sincere Christians condemn and detest, undutiful children, unnatural brethren, or perfidious friends; and we submit it to your majesty's great wisdom and goodness, whether motives so repugnant to the public interest, and to all social, moral, and religious duties, are fit to be confided in or longer encouraged.

means and agent of perpetuating British domination.

As for the condition of the country people, it continued to be very miserable. A few of the queries contained in Bishop Berkeley's "Querist' will sufficiently describe their case. He asks:

cated, says Dr. Curry, "to the Right Reverend Dr. Stone, and was approved of by his Grace, and by as many of his discerning and confidential friends as he thought proper to show it to, as he himself assured Lord Taaffe." But in this case, also, the Catholics themselves did not agree as to the proper steps to be taken; and the death of the Primate, shortly after, seems to have put an end to all proceedings upon it. This odious Primate in the last years of his life, became quite friendly to the Catholics. Tae English interests" in Ireland needed And because we are sensible, most gra- some support against the "Patriots," who cious sovereign, that our professions of set up the dangerous pretension to vindiloyalty have been often cruelly misrepre- cate the national independence of the sented, even by those who were thoroughly colony; and the Government already beacquainted with the candour and upright- gan to rely upon the Catholics as a ness of our dealings in all other respects, we must humbly offer it to your princely and generous consideration, that we rest not the proof of our sincerity ir such professions or words, but on things known and attested by all the world, on our dutiful, peaceable, and submissive behaviour under such pressures, for "Whether there be upon earth any more than half a century; a conduct, Christian or civilized people so beggarly, may it please your majesty, that clearly wretched, and destitute, as the common evinces the reality of that religious prin- Irish?"-" Whether, nevertheless, there ciple, which withholds us from sacrificing is any other people whose wants may be conscience or honour to any worldly in- more easily supplied from home?"— terest whatever; since rather than violate Whether, if there was a wall of brass a either by hypocritical professions, we thousand cubits high round this kingdom, have all our lives, patiently suffered so our natives might not, nevertheless, live many restrictions and losses in our tem-cleanly and comfortably, till the land, and poral concerns; and we most submissively reap the fruits of it?"-"Whether a beseech your majesty to look down on foreigner could imagine that one-half of such trials of our integrity, not only as the people were starving, in a country a proof of our sincerity in this declaration, which sent out such plenty of provisions?" but also as an earnest and surety for our future good behaviour; and to give us leave to indulge the pleasing hope, that the continuance of that behaviour, enforced by our religious principles, and of your majesty's great and inherent goodness towards us, which it will be the business of our lives to endeavour to merit, may at length be the happy means of our deliverance from some part of that burden, which we have so long and so patiently endured.

13

Whether it is possible the country should be well improved while our beef is exported and our labourers live upon potatoes ?"-" Whether trade be not then on a right foot when foreign commodities are imported only in exchange for domestic superfluities ?"-"Whether the quantities of beef, butter, wool, and leather exported from this island can be reckoned the superfluities of a country, where there are so many natives naked and famished?" From these queries it is That this act of truly royal commiser-evident enough that the good and justation, beneficence and justice, may be minded bishop traced the wretchedness of added to your majesty's many other his countrymen to its true cause, namely, heroic virtues, and that such our de- the settled determination of England to liverance may be one of those distin-regulate all the industry of Ireland for guished blessings of your reign, which her own use and profit: which, indeed, has shall transmit its memory to the love, continued to be the one great plague of gratitude, and veneration of our latest the country from that day to this. posterity, is the humble prayer of, &c.

This very humble petition was never presented to the king. It was communi

CHAPTER XIII.

1760-1762.

all the corruption and cant of Whiggery with whatever is most coarsely tyrannical, dogged, blind, and imperious in Toryism.

When he came to the throne and met Parliament for the first time, Mr Pitt was still prime minister; and we accordingly find the Whiggish element to prevail in

George III-Speech from the Throne.-"Toleration.-France and England in India. Lally's Campaign there.-State of Ireland.-The Revenue. Distress of trade.-Distress in the country.-Oppression of the Farmers.-Whiteboys.-Riots. the famous royal speech delivered on that A Popish Conspiracy."-Steel-Boys and OakBoys.-Emigration from Ulster.-Halifax, Viceroy-Flood and the Patriots.-Extravagance and Corruption.-Agitation for Septennial Parlia

ments.

KING GEORGE THE THIRD mounted the throne of England in October, 1760, at twenty-two years of age. He was grandson to the late king, being the son of the Prince of Wales, Frederick Louis, whom the old king very cordially hated. The mother of George III. was a German princess of the House of Saxe Gotha-a family which has since cost dear to the three kingdoms; and a year after his accession, he married another German princess, of the House of MecklenburgStrelitz. But the new king himself was born in England; a circumstance which greatly rejoiced the English of that day. He had been educated for a time in the choicest Whig principles by his father; and, as an English historian informs us, "great and incessant pains were taken to infuse into the mind of the Second Hope of Britain' just and elevated sentiments of government and of civil and religious liberty." But after the death of Prince Frederick Louis, his mother, the Princess Dowager of Wales, gave quite a new direction to the education of her son; and under the guidance of the afterwards celebrated Lord Bute, brought him up in the highest and choicest doctrines of Toryism and Prerogative. He certainly profited by both those systems of tuition, and united in his conduct upon the throne

In an occasional Address, or Prologue, spoken by Prince George, on acting a part in the tragedy of Cato, perforined at Leicester House about the year 1749, he was instructed thus to express himself,

"The poet's labours elevate the mind,
Teach our young hearts with generous fire to burn,

And feel the virtuous sentiments we learn.
T'attain those glorious ends, what play so fit
As that where all the powers of human wit
Combine to dignify great Cato's name,
To deck his tomb and consecrate his fame?
Where LIBERTY-O name for ever dear!
Breathes forth in every line, and bids us fear
Nor pains nor death to guard our sacred laws,
But bravely perist in our country's cause.
Should this superior to my years be thought,
Know 'tis the first great lesson I was taught."

Liberty, in the language of that day, meant the
Protestant interest, and Protestant ascendency in
Church and State.

the

occasion. His first words took the heart of the nation by storm:-"Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton." But one can well through the mind of an educated Irish imagine what bitter reflections passed Catholic, like Charles O'Conor, or Curry, as he read the remaining sentences of the discourse. "The civil and religious rights" said the king, "of my loving subjects are equally dear to me with the most valuable prerogatives of the crown." It was his inviolable resolution, he said, "to adhere to and strengthen this excellent Constitution in Church and State." "It was his fixed purpose" he declared, "to countenance and encourage practice of true religion and virtue "which fixed purpose of course bound him to discourage and to punish all false re ligions. Finally, he exclaimed to his Parliament: "The eyes of all Europe are upon you. From you the Protestant Interest hopes for protection, as well as all our friends for the preservation of their independency. tion I am the more encouraged by a In this expectapleasing circumstance which I look upon as one of the most auspicious omens of my reign-that happy extinction of divisions, and that union and good harmony which continue to prevail amongst my subjects afford me the most agreeable prospect." His Majesty also was pleased to say

** * *

"that he would maintain the toleration inviolable."

The "toleration" here spoken of, in so far as it included Irish Papists, meant simple connivance at Catholic worship, so long as that was practised very quietly, in obscure places. It did not mean exemption or relief from any one of the disabilities or penalties which had abolished the civil existence of Catholics; it did not mean that they could be educated, either at home or abroad; nor that they could possess arms, or horses, or farms on a longer lease than thirty-one years; nor that they could sit in Parliament, or municipal councils, or parish vestries, or in any way participate in the voting away of their own money. It did not mean Ireland, or go abroad to receive them withthat their clergy could receive orders in out incurring the penalty of transportation,

and, if they returned, death:-nor that Catholics could practise law or medicine, or sit on juries, or be guardians to their own children, or lend money on mortgage (if they earned any money), or go to a foreign country, or have any of the rights of human beings in their own. By the connivance of the government, they were permitted to breathe, and to go to mass, and to do almost nothing else, except live by their labour and pay taxes and penal fines. Such is the precise limitation of that "toleration," which King George said would be inviolably maintained: and it was inviolably maintained during the first thirty-three years of this reign with certain trifling alleviations which are to be mentioned in their proper place.

Nothing can exceed the passionate outbursts of his grief and indignation in some of these letters. "Hell," he says, "has vomited me out upon this land of iniquity; and I am only awaiting, like Jonah, for the whale that is to swallow me." Among his other troubles, the troops mutined, and the revolt was appeased with much trouble. Then continues Voltaire, "the General led them into the province of Arcot, to recover the fortress of Vandavachi, of which the English had possessed themselves after two ineffectual attempts; in one of which they had been completely defeated by the Chevalier Geoghegan. Lally ventured to attack them with inferior forces, and would have conquered them if he had been duly seconded. As it was, he only gained in that expedition the honour of having given a new proof of the determined courage which formed his leading characteristic." This is the battle known to the English by the name of "Wandewash."

The accession of King George III. took place at an auspicious and properous time, for England, though not for Ireland. The war was proceeding favourably to Great Britain in all parts of the earth and sea; and it was in this year, 1760, and the following year that the great struggle between France and England for the colonial em- At length Lally was obliged to collect pire of India came to a crisis and was de- all his troops in Pondicherry, resolved to cided against France, and therefore dis- defend it to the last extremity; it was astrously for Ireland. The war in India blockaded at once by land and sea. Here, would not here much concern us but for again, everything seemed to irritate his its connection with the sad fate of Count impetuous temper; he insulted the goverLally. He was now a lieutenant-general nor and all the council, and threatened in the French armies, and M. de Voltaire to harness them to his provision waggons, informs us that it was his well-known if they did not provide horses. I had hatred of the English which caused him rather," he exclaims in one letter, "go to be selected for the honour of command- and command Caffres, than stay in this ing the force which was to encounter them Sodom, which it is impossible but the fire on coast of the Coromandel. His regi- of the English must destroy sooner or ment, that had fought at Fontenoy, was later, from want of fire from heaven." with him; and one of the officers who The siege was long and the defence desheld high command under him was the perate. Just at the moment that King Chevalier Geoghegan.* He found every- George III. ascended the throne, this thing in disarray at Pondicherry, the gallant and impetuous Count Lally was capital of the French possessions; very holding his post with obstinate valour insufficient forces, but little provisions, against an English fleet and army. But and no money at all. Voitaire says: the people in Pondicherry were dying in "Nothwitstanding the gloomy views he the streets of hunger, and the council of took of everything, he had at first some the city was crying out to Lally to surhappy success. He took from the Eng-render. lish the fort St. David, some leagues he was unhapily obliged to yield; and so from Pondicherry and razed its walls n April, 1758." The same year he besieged Madras, took the "black town," but failed before the fortress. His own correspondence, which is in part given to us by Voltaire, attributes this failure to monstrous peculation and waste in the department for supplying the army. Indeed, he seems to have very soon come to the conclusion that nothing effectual could be done; that he was abandoned to his fate, and that the French power in Hindostan was doomed. Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XV.

On the 16th of January, 1761,

the French lost India in the east a nost on the same day that they lost Cana a in the west, by the surrender of Montreal. There was a delerium of joy in England, and the heart of the Irish nation sank low.*

*Unfortunate Lally had made many enem.es, chiefly by his furious temper. They were powerful in France, while he was comparatively a stranger, misconduct, tyranny, exactions, betraying the interthough born in the country. They accused him of ests of the king. At length the outery against him became so strong, that he was arrested, confined in the Bastile, kept there for fifteen months without any specific charge, then brought to trial and kept on trial two years; finally, condemned and executed

ing banks in Dublin discounted no paper, and in fact did no business. Public and private credit that had been drooping since the year 1754, had now fallen prostrate. At a general meeting of the merchants of Dublin in April, 1760, with several members of the House of Commons, the inability of the former to carry on business was universally acknowledged," &c.

Even the English colony in Ireland, of time." From all these causes the though it sympathized with British suc-author states that the payment out of the cesses, to which, indeed, it contributed treasury in little more than one year was more than its share both in men and £703.957. The effects." he continues, in money (meaning the earnings of the "of these exactions were immediately and subject nation as well as its own), yet severely felt by the kingdom. These had no reason, on the accession of this loans could not be supplied by a poor king, to congratulate itself on its happy country without draining the bankers of and prosperous condition. In truth the their cash; three of the principal houses island had been well drained of its reven-(Clements, Dawsons, and Mitchell) among ues to meet the increased military ex- them, stopped payment; the three remainpenses of Great Britain; and it had become necessary within the past year (1759) to raise a loan of £150,000, on debentures at four per cent. transferable, in order to pay the increasing arrears on the public establishments. Certain duties were granted to provide for the payment of the interest; and this may be considered as the beginning of the funded debt of Ireland. But in the beginning of 1760, the king having again considerably augmented his military forces, Ireland was required to raise another loan of £300,000, and a vote of credit passed the Commons for this object. but at five per cent. Then, as it was found that the first loan of £150,000 was not coming in at four per cent, an additional one per cent. was offered for that. Thus, when George III, came to the throne, the revenues of Ireland were considerably embarrassed and oppressed. Mr. Hely Hutchinson, a good authority on this point, in his work on the "commercial restrictions of Ireland," states, indeed, that "all Irishmen" felt they ought to sustain the efforts of Great Britain in that crisis, but that the statesmen of the latter country always expected too much; and while they looked upon the great prosperity and wealth of their own country, had not sufficient consideration for the poverty of Ireland. Two or three sentences taken from this book (the Commercial Restrictions) give a clear idea of the financial condition of the island. "The revenue had decreased in 1755, fell lower in 1756, and still lower in 1757. In the last year the vaunted prosperity of Ireland was changed into misery and distress, the lower classes of the people wanted food." Again-"The public expenses were greatly increased; the pensions on the civil-list, at Lady-day, 1759, amounted to £55,497; there was at the same time a great augmentation of military expense. Six new regiments and a troop were raised in a very short space Voltaire, who has uniformly praised Lally, defends him in his Louis XV.; and afterwards generously vindicated his memory, and aided his son to procure the decree of the parliament rehabilitating the

name of this brave and murdered" man Louis

XV. himself, after the death of Lally, exclaimed:

"They Lave assassinated him."

The scarcity of money now employed in trade or improvements, together with the laws which made it impossible for Catholics to exercise any lucrative industry in corporate towns, caused more and more of the people to be dependent upon agriculture and sheep-farming alone. But the lot of these poor agriculturists was hard, for the landed proprietors under whom they had to live, were an alien and hostile race, having no sympathy with the humble people around them. This lamentable circumstance is peculiar to Ireland. Neither in England nor in Scotland was the case of the peasantry ever rendered bitterer than poverty makes it at any rate, by differences of race and of religion. In Ireland they found themselves face to face, not two classes, but two nations; of which the one had substantially the power of life and death over the other. When we add to this that one of these two nations had despoiled the other of those very lands which the plundered race were now glad to cultivate as rackrented tenants; and also that the dominant nation felt bound to hate the other, both as "rebels" who needed only the opportunity to rise and cut their masters' throats, and as Papists who clung to the "damnable idolatry" of the mass, we can easily understand the difficulty of the "landlord and tenant question" in Ireland. We have now, in fact, arrived at the era of the " Whiteboy" organization, which was itself the legitimate offspring of the Rapparees, and which in its turn has given birth to "Ribbonism," to the "Terry "Fenians." Alts," and finally to the The principle and meaning of all these various forms of secret Irish organization has been the same at all times, namely, the instinct of resistance to legal oppression by illegal combinations among the