The catholic bishops then went through the lines, blessing the troops as they passed. They were received with military honours, rendered more imposing by the affectionate devotion which the native Irish have ever shown to their prelates. After this ceremony, refreshments were distributed to the troops, and a message sent to Ginckle and the Lords-justices that "all was ready." The Irish army, fifteen thousand strong, received the British cortège with presented arms. The Lords-justices and the generals rode slowly through their lines, and declared that they had never seen a finer body of men. Adjutant-general Withers then addressed them in an excellent speech, recommending the English service in very forcible terms; after which the army broke into column, and the word "march" was given.

The walls of the town were covered with citizens; the neighbouring hills were crowded with the peasantry of Clare and Limerick; the deputies of the three kings stood near the flag; but, when the decisive word was given, the deepest silence reigned through the vast and varied multitude, and not a sound was heard but the heavy tread of the advancing battalions. The column was headed by the Irish Guards, fourteen hundred strong, a regiment that had excited Ginckle's warmest admiration. They marched past the flag, and seven men only ranged themselves on the side of England. The next two regiments were the Ulster Irish, and they all filed to the left. Their example, however, was not generally followed; the greater part of the remainder declared in favour of France. A similar scene took place at the cavalry-camp; and, out of the whole, Ginckle only obtained about one thousand horse and fifteen hundred foot. So little pleased was he with this result, that he was inclined to pick a quarrel with the Irish leaders; and the treaty would have been broken almost as soon as signed, but for the presence of the French fleet, which forced the English authorities to suppress their resentment.

On the twelfth of October, the Irish cavalry that had chosen the service of France passed through Limerick, on their way to Cork from Clare. This gallant body had been the darling and the pride of the Irish during the eventful war, and their departure was viewed with deep and bitter regret. The citizens assembled to bid them a final farewell; but their hearts died within them; a few faint cheers, as faintly answered, spoke the sadness, as well as the depth, of their mutual affection. Tears and blessings accompanied them to the Water-gate; and when the last file had passed out, a deep groan burst from the citizens of Limerick, who felt that their national hope was now destroyed. The infantry followed in a few days; but their number was greatly thinned by desertion, before they reached the place of embarkation. There are no persons so strongly attached to their native soil as the Irish peasants. Those who have witnessed the administration of justice at the assizes, well know, that transportation is more dreaded than hang

ing, by the criminals who stand at an Irish bar. It is not wonderful therefore, that many, after the momentary excitement was over, should repent of their determination, and resolve to stay in the land of their affections. The reluctance to embark was greatly increased by the accounts which were received from France of the receptions given to the first divisions. Louis was enraged at the termination of a war which employed so large a portion of the forces of his great enemy; and, though his own niggardliness in sending supplies, and the long delay of reinforcements, was the chief cause of the evil, he unjustly vented his resentment on those who had voluntarily chosen his service. No quarter was assigned to the troops; the regiments were broken up, and the officers reduced to inferior ranks, and the generals excluded from the court. This disgraceful treatment was not, however, long continued. In a few years, the Irish brigades were deservedly esteemed the most valuable part of the French army."

Shortly after the treaty had been signed, the chief part of the British army was removed from Ireland; the resisting spirit of Ireland was now considered crushed; hostilities entirely ceased; and the war was ended.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Condition of Ireland at the close of the war-Measure of William-Confiscation of Estates-Penal laws against the Catholics.

THE Condition of the Irish people at the termination of the Civil War was most lamentable. All the pursuits of industry had been checked; there was no inducement to labour, for men knew not whether they or their enemies would reap that which they had sown; the tenure of property was most insecure, depending on the issue of the great struggle, on which the entire nation looked on in agonizing suspense; the most active labourers were drawn into the ranks of the Irish army; the country was overrun by rapparees, brutalized by oppression, and often desperate from want. In such a state of things, all civilizing influences were impossible. War, especially civil war, is utterly destructive of social progress. It degrades, prostrates, de-humanizes, and often brutalizes, an entire people.

And yet Ireland perhaps suffered less during the Civil War than at any other period during the century. The reason was, that the ordinary state of Ireland when at peace was invariably one of quiet oppression, a state as destructive of civilization, and as galling and degrading to a people, as the short and sharp struggle of actual insurrection and warfare. But, during the administration of Tyrconnel, the Irish people were governed somewhat after the manner that they wished to be. The popular wishes were at least

consulted. The popular religion was recognized and honoured, and the popular leaders were admitted to a share in the controul of the government. The people were also imbued with a new spirit during the present contest. They felt that they were now struggling for their existence as a nation,-one of the most ennobling and inspiriting of all ambitions. Besides, during the greater part of the war, the country was under the sway of the Catholic armies, by whom the people were efficiently protected in the enjoy ment of their industries and properties. Hence, we say that the sufferings of the great mass of the Irish people were perhaps less at this period, than during the ordinary state of peace in which the Irish lived under the English government.

We regret that there are so few records of the real state of the people at the period of which we write, that our statements on this head must be mainly grounded on inference. All the historians of the period are too busily occupied with the detail of parliamentary and military operations, to recollect that such a thing as a people was in existence. The history they write is merely that of a few of the more prominent individuals on the stage, while the great mass of the nation-unless in so far as they contributed to swell the ranks of the combatants on either side was passed over and forgotten. As far, however, as can be gathered from the accounts that have come down to us, the sufferings of the Irish people during the Civil War, especially in those districts which were the scene of military operations, must have been very great. The barbarities inflicted by William's army upon the defenceless peasantry, both catholic and protestant, were of the most horrible kind. No demons could have revelled in cruelty, and gloated over suffering more keenly than they did. The struggle was thus embittered, and excesses rendered more frequent on both sides, though, to the honour of the Irish, their army and generals were throughout actuated by the most chivalrous and honourable spirit towards

their enemies.

The pecuniary exactions, and imposts of various kinds, levied on the Irish people, for the maintenance of the war, must have been grievously felt by them; and would have been so even in the most flourishing condition of trade and industry; how much more so in a time of general embarrassment, of bank restrictions, of deranged currency, of interrupted industry, of civil war. The immense number of desperate rapparrees now roving idle and desperate about the country, gives some idea of the ruin that had been wrought upon the homes and industrial pursuits of the Irish people. All this could not fail to cause, for a long time to come, a feebleness and lethargy of all the powers of the social system, and a retrograde movement both of the wealth and population of the country. At the conclusion of the war, also, Ireland was drained of its best and bravest sons, who in crowds sought refuge in the armies of the continent, causing another source of weakness to the poor, distracted, and trodden-down country.

Nor was the conduct of William and his government, subsequent to the Peace of Limerick, calculated to raise Ireland from the deep mire of poverty into which oppression had sunk her. It is probable that William himself was not disposed to act with cruelty towards Ireland; indeed, there is good reason to suppose, that he would have treated her with comparative kindness and forbearance. But, unfortunately, he was in the hands of the "protestant ascendancy" party, both in England, Scotland, and Ireland, who compelled him to carry out their bigotted and tyrannical measures upon the now-subdued and crushed Irish catholic party. William could not do justice to Ireland, even had he wished it: he was completely at the mercy of a bigotted faction, who used him as an instrument for their own selfish and detestable purposes.

William, throughout, had a strange mixture of parties to deal with. In England, the episcopalians urged him to persecute the presbyterians in Scotland; the presbyterians called on him to put down the episcopalians; and in Ireland, a "protestant ascendancy" called on him to subject a whole nation of catholics to oppression. As opposed to all these parties, William was powerless; and though they compelled him to pass severe laws, yet it is to his honour, that he generally endeavoured to administer them in a spirit of mercy. In the course of his reign, he discovered symptoms of lenity towards the catholics, which seemed to show, that if he had not been king of England, he would not have been the oppressor of Ireland.

The lenity of William was, however, completely overborne by the insolent and domineering faction, to which the people of Ireland were now delivered over. They inveighed loudly against the fovourable terms granted to the Irish people by the treaty of Limerick; and determined to take the first opportunity of violating them. They were especially enraged at those articles of the treaty which secured civil rights to the catholics; and assailed General Ginckle with the utmost virulence, because of his liberal concession to his enemies. Those true inheritors of the old Cromwellian spirit, declared that they would be satisfied with nothing short of the extirpation of the catholics; and justified their demand, as their bigotted fathers had done, by quoting the most bloody example of religious extirpation from the books of the OLD TESTAMENT. The protestant clergy in general, of all sects, denounced the treaty in terms of unmeasured violence; and it was not long before the same hideous spirit was embodied in the acts of the protestant ascendancy in parliament.

One of the first points on which the spirit of the ascendancy was shown, after the success of William's army, was in reference to the properties of the Irish catholics. It was obvious, immediately after the battle of the Boyne, that the war, like all those which had preceded it, was to become one of confiscations and forfeitures. William was, no doubt, urged to this policy by the avaricious

harpies constituting the English ascendancy and "Old Castle" parties. They remembered the plunder that had been obtained in the days of Cromwell and James, and longed for a repetition of the same disgraceful system; nor did they wait long. For, it appears from a report presented to the English House of Commons, that the forfeitures made by the government of king William, amounted to no less than one million, sixty thousand and odd acres, stripping three thousand, nine hundred and twenty-one persons of lands, valued at that day, at £3,319,943 sterling.*

The most extensive forfeiture was that of the Earl of Clancarty, whose extensive estates in Cork, Limerick, and Kerry, were seized, and fraudulently sold by the commissioners at Chichester house. An attempt was made by William to preserve the family from destruction; but it was of no avail: the "protestant ascendancy "-some of the leading members of which, among others Sir Richard Cox, had already obtained grants of confiscated lands, -obtained a declaration from the county of Cork Grand Jury, that the restoration of the Earl's estates would be "prejudicial to the protestant interest,"-in other words, that it would be disagreeable for the holders of the property to disgorge the plunder they had obtained.

This extensive seizure of Irish Estates by the government of William, completed the confiscations of the seventeenth century,— a century of injury, exasperation, and revenge-of war, bloodshed, and spoliation. The forfeitures for "rebellion" during the century amounted to about eleven millions and a half acres,-the entire surface of Ireland amounting to only about twelve millions of acres ! "It is a subject of curious and important speculation," says Lord Clare, in his celebrated speech on the Union,+ "to look back to the forfeitures of Ireland incurred in the last century, The superficial contents of the island are calculated at eleven millions and forty-two thousand six hundred and eighty-two acres. Let us now examine the case of the forfeitures ::

Confiscated in the reign of James I. the whole of the province of Ulster, containing acres

...

...

...

6,837

2,836,837

Set out by the Court of Claims, at the Restoration, acres 7,800,000 Forfeitures of 1688, acres

...

...

1,060,792

*The mode in which the lord-justices and the "Castle party" proceeded, is an edifying example of the mode by which the forms of law have been so often prostituted, to sanction injustice to Ireland. They indicted the Irish gentlemen who possessed any estates, of high treason, in the several counties over which they had jurisdiction; and then removed them all by certiorari, to the Court of King's Bench in Dublin. By this ingenious contrivance, those who were to be robbed lost all opportunity of making their defence; indeed, in most cases, they were ignorant of their being accused; and the Irish government were saved the trouble of showing how the Irish people could be guilty of high treason, for supporting the cause of their rightful monarch against a foreign invader. They felt conscious, that this was not a matter to be proved easily; and we must give them due credit for the prudent modesty of their silence."

TAYLOR.

+ Delivered February 18th, 1800. Be it remembered that there was no man less likely than Lord Clare to exaggerate the above picture in its outline or colouring.