increasing ratio from year to year. Even though catholic industry was crushed, and catholic property broken up, and the entire catholic population condemned to poverty and ignominy, their religion flourished and extended,-while protestantism stood still and even retrogaded in point of numbers. At the commencement of the century, the catholics were only about a million and a half: at the close of the century they were five millions strong. Thus "captive Israel multiplied in chains."

It is to be remarked that all such attempts to crush opinion by means of penal laws and the instruments of physical force, are certain to fail in the end. Thought refuses to obey the material laws, and invariably rises above them. The public mind is always exceedingly stubborn, in its resistance to the attempts made to coerce it into particular forms of thought and action. A religious creed especially, cannot be put down by force, unless the people professing it can be wholly exterminated. And it wonld have been both laborious and dangerous in the extreme, to have now made such an attempt with the Irish Catholics-though a "massacre" was more than once generally spoken of. Besides, they were still needed as a kind of serfs, to cultivate the soil and give it value. They were therefore allowed to exist, shorn of every vestige of privilege, and reduced to the very lowest condition in which it was possible for human beings to live.

CHAPTER XXX.

Ireland in the reign of George II.-Ignorance of the English people on the condition of Ireland-The Irish Parliaments-The PATRIOTS-Abolition of tithe of Agistment-Dreadful sufferings of the Irish people-Famine of 1740-Protestant horror of the Catholics-Projected massacre-Rebellion of 1745-The Earl of Chesterfield-Ireland remains tranquil-More sanguinary statutes-Foreign service of the Irish-Recruiting for France Irish families in foreign serviceMeans taken by the English to withdraw them from the army of France-Farther odious measures contemplated by Lord Chesterfield—Is recalled-Revival of the penal cruelties against the Catholics-Stone, the Irish primate-The opposition to government-Charles Lucas-Collision between Government and ParliamentThe "scrambling committee"-French invasion-Catholics express their Loyalty -Union projected-Protestant mob-Singular proceedings-Death of George II. Condition of Society in Ireland in the reign of George II.

WHILE the Irish people were thus reduced to the last state of misery, the managers of Ireland appointed by the English government, persevered in the same undeviating policy of coercion and injustice. All lords-lieutenant were alike, whether appointed by the Whig or the Tory factions.* They came to Ireland, not to govern its

Of the two parties the Whigs were the most implacable enemics of the Catholics; the enmity of the Irish whigs proceeded from a consciousness of injustice and a dread of retaliation; that of the English was the result of a spirit of freedom and ill-judged patriotism. They cherished liberty as the first of blessings and the exaltation and glory of England, as paramount to

people, so that they might prosper, or accumulate wealth, or become contented and useful citizens, but rather to prevent their prospering, to keep the population poor, to break their spirits, and above all, to prevent them competing with the trade and manufacture of England. The English governor, for the time being, was not allowed to consult the wishes of the Irish people he was only a tool in the hands of the dominant faction, to serve their own selfish purposes. He had also the English government to consult, which generally knew little of the Irish people, and never studied their interests, unless with the view of obstructing them.

As for the English people, they at this time knew little more of Ireland than they did of Cochin-China,-further than it was a country subject to the king of England, full of bogs, inhabited by wild Irish papists, who were kept in awe only by means of English troops; and the general opinion was, that it would be better for England if Ireland were sunk into the depths of the sea,-the tradition prevailing, that there must every forty years be a rebellion in Ireland. There was not the slightest inducement, therefore, for any English manager to govern Ireland in a liberal spirit,seeing that there was no encouragement in the Irish parliament, no support from the English people, and no movement of any kind among the Irish catholics themselves. He would have been deemed a mad knight-errant, who in those days, would have proposed a measure of justice, no matter how small, for the Irish people.

The Irish parliaments of the time were the mere instruments of maintaining the tyrannical ascendancy of the protestant faction. It is true, that under the administration of the duke of Dorset, (1731) the opposition party, self-styled the PATRIOTS, became a strong body in the House of Commons. But their PATRIOTISM was generally confined to serving themselves, for they took care never to pass any laws whose object was to benefit the mass of the people. Shortly after the duke of Dorset assumed the lord-lientenancy, the English government, eager to escape from the control of the Irish parliament, endeavoured to obtain a grant of the supplies for twenty-one years. The "patriots," however, mustered strong against the government, and rejected the government proposition by a majority of one.

the laws of nations, to all moral or religious obligations. They abhorred popery as the parent of servile and passive obedience, and viewed Ireland as the rival and competitor of England. To extirpate the one and keep down the other became a principal object of the policy of the whig administration under George I. The annals of this reign are stained by frequent persecutions of the catholic gentry and clergy, by disgraceful additions to the code, by iniquitous decisions of the courts of law, by unconstitutional encroachments on the charter of Irish independence. and by the frequent recurrence of famine.-O'CONOR's History of the Irish Catholics, p. 188.

"I have seen," says Swift, "the grossest suppositions passed upon them: that the wild Irish were taken in toils; but that in some time, they would grow so tame as to eat out of your hands. I have been asked by hundreds, and particularly by your neighbours, your tenants at Pepper-harrow, whether I had come from Ireland by sca?' and upon the arrival of an Irishman to a country-town, I have known crowds coming about him, and wondering to see him look so much better than themselves."-SWIFT'S WORKS, vol. vii., p. 12.

These 'patriots' shortly afterwards proceeded to increase the burden of the established church upon the Irish people, by abolishing the tithe of agistment or tithe of pasturage. This tithe fell principally upon the class of occupiers of land, who were certainly the best able to pay for the religion which they had themselves established. It was also by far the most profitable tithe which the elergy enjoyed, and was collected without difficulty or causing popular commotion or resistance. But the Irish legislature, which of course consisted principally of Irish landed proprietors, resolved to get rid of the burden and place it upon other shoulders,-even though they should thereby rob the church which they had so zealously endeavoured to serve by means of the penal laws. They passed a series of resolutions abolishing the tithe of agistment, under the pretence of serving the "protestant interest" (meaning we suppose, their own),-and thus relieved themselves from the burden of supporting the state church-handing the clergy over from the wealthy protestant landholders to the poor catholic peasantry, on whom the burden of supporting them has ever since chiefly lain.

The oppressive exactions which followed this shameful measure, caused fearful suffering throughout the land. As only about one fortieth part of the lands of Ireland was at this time under tillage,* and those under pasturage were entirely exempted from the payment of tithe by the resolutions of the Irish Commons, the new burden must have been severely felt. Every article the catholic peasant possessed was now taxed to pay a clergy which he hated. Though he himself famished, and his children were in absolute want, he must still pay the clergyman his tithe while an atom of property remained; and all the while, that the rich protestant landowner, who had relieved himself of the burden, was rolling in affluence, and swaggering over the ruin of his country and the degradation of its people. The scourge of tithe-proctors commenced,-for the rectors needed some such class to stand between them and the universal odium of the people,-and now the peasantry were given up to all the goadings of injustice and all the cruelties of clerical exaction.

Agriculture having received a great blow by these and other measures, and a season of drought having occurred, the consequence was a desolating famine, in the year 1740, one of the most destructive in the memory of man, in which four hundred thou

See PRIMATE BOULTER'S Correspondence.

+ Famine had been making periodical visits to Ireland before this period; sparing neither the protestants of the North nor the Catholics of the South. In 1727, Primate Boulter made a journey into the North, which was chiefly inhabited by protestants, and " met all the roads full of whole families, who had left their homes to beg bread, since their neighbours had nothing to relieve them with," accordingly many hundreds of them perished from famine. (See BOULTER'S LETTERS, vol. I, p. 123.) The pious Boulter," says Mr. O'Conor, "exerted himself to check this evil. He applied the public money to the purchase of provisions in the districts inhabited by catholics, to be transmitted to those parts peopled by protestants. This inhuman policy provoked resistance; the civil and military powers were exerted in vain to remove the

sand persons are supposed to have perished. "The progress of starvation in besieged cities," says Mr. O'Conor, "can present but a faint image of the calamities of the Irish people in 1741. During the siege of Rome, by Totila, the citizens were reduced to the most loathsome and disgusting food. During the siege of Paris, by Henry IV., the churchyards were despoiled of their dead, and the bones ground into powder for sustenance for the living. The sufferings of the Irish surpass all that history has recorded and imagination can represent; after having consumed their whole stock of provisions, they had recourse to cats, dogs, mice, carrion and such other putrid and nauseous food as famine usually seeks, and when this wretched sustenance failed, these miserable beings endeavoured to prolong the remains of life, by feeding on dockings and nettles. Their countenances exhibited the colour of the weeds on which they fed. They crawled from the cabins into the fields in quest of nettles, their exhausted strength disabled many from returning. The companions of their misfortunes were unable to help them back, and they waited with calm resignation for the stroke of death, the last refuge of misfortune! The streets, the highways, the fields were covered with dead bodies, where they remained unburied, a prey to kites and vultures, infecting the air with their putrid exhalations; fluxes and malignant fevers invaded every house, whole villages were laid waste, and 400,000 persons are computed to have perished by famine and pestilence! mortality fell chiefly on the catholics, being the poorest class who had not means to purchase provisions, and whose filthy and wretched cabins were more accessible to the ravages of pestilence, than the comfortable dwellings of their task-masters. This was the fifth or sixth famine, that in the course of 20 years, desolated a country gifted with the most luxuriant soil, indented with innumerable bays and harbours, presenting unrivalled advantages for trade and manufactures, and capable of maintaining treble the number of its people under any tolerable system of government."

The

This thinning of the nation by death did not increase the means of subsistence for those who remained. They were only plunged still deeper in poverty. All trade was interrupted; the wealth of the country was drained away by absentees; and when any signs of returning plenty appeared, they proved only the stimulants to new excesses by the protestants. By means of inflammatory sermons from the pulpit, inflammatory pamphlets from the press, and inflammatory resolutions from the houses of legislature, a spirit of fierce hostility and rancour against the catholics was kept up in

provisions. The sense of all other dangers vanished in the dread of immediate starvation. The government stores were plundered of the provisions, and carried off in triumph by the populace." Boulter also endeavoured to check the evils resulting from the discouragement of tillage, by a bill (passed in 1727) requiring all persons who kept in actual occupation one hundred acres of land, to till five acres at the least under a penalty of 40s. per acre. This act did nothing whatever to check the evil, and years of scarcity and distress continued to follow each other without intermission.

the minds of the protestant population. This was raised to a high pitch of excitement in the year 1743, about which time England was threatened by a French invasion under Marshal Saxe; and a rebellion was at the same time anticipated among the disaffected and exasperated Irish. The protestants seized the opportunity of raking up the old stories of the Irish insurrection in 1641, and the gunpowder plot of 1605, exaggerated into the wildest and most extravagant fictions, but highly calculated to effect the objects for which they were devised, and to excite the abhorrence of the protestant population against their catholic fellow countrymen.

The go

To such a pitch did this excitement rise, that a general massacre of the catholics was actually spoken of. One nobleman and privycouncillor, of great power and influence, was so enthusiastically excited against them, that he openly declared in the Council, "that as the papists had begun the massacre on them, about an hundred years before, so he thought it both reasonable and lawful, on their parts, to prevent them, at that dangerous juncture, by first falling upon them." This barbarous suggestion was overruled in that assembly, though it was not altogether lost upon the country; for, in the course of the same year in which the proposal was made, a conspiracy was actually formed among the protestant inhabitants of Lurgan, to rise in the night time and destroy all their catholic neighbours in their beds.+ Fortunately, the conspiracy was discovered in time to put a stop to the intended massacre. vernment, however, did not let slip the opportunity afforded by the public odium excited against the catholics, of devising other severe measures against them. A general disarmment of them took place; the government fearing that they might rise in aid of the anticipated invasion of the Pretender. Their priests were mercilessly hunted down, the sanctity of domestic life being outrageously violated in the search for the chosen religious teachers of the Irish people. All Roman catholic chapels were closed, and religious service put an end to. Monastic institutions were suppressed by government proclamation (1744). The foulest sluices of political rancour were thrown open and deluged society with their nuisance; terror and persecution reigned on all sides; and the miserable nation again felt itself delivered over to a faction whose very tender mercies were cruel.

In one of his letters, Primate Boulter states the number of priests at 3,000," a number," observes Mr. O'CONOR, "incredible, considering the violence of the persecution against them. Many of them indeed had returned from exile and displayed that invincible courage and persesevering constancy which religion inspires. The spirit which invited them to the ministry lightened their chains and bolts, illumined their dungeons, supported them in exile, and prompted them to return under fictitious names at the risk of their lives. These were mostly the sons of reduced gentlemen, had tasted of case and affluence in their younger years, and were accustomed to refinement of manners and the graces of education; they were now confined to the association of poverty and ignorance, were exposed to the merciless pursuit of priest-catchers and to the cold and damps and starvation of bogs and caverns. When the rage of persecution abated, they issued from their hiding places bare-headed, bare-footed, half-naked, and half famished, proceeded from cabin to cabin, instructing the ignorant, consoling the unfortunate, infusing the balm of religion into the wounds of the wretched. Against these men the iron hand of power was raised to crush them as the last of malefactors." -History of the Irish Catholics, p. 211.