by the flames of tyranny and oppreffion. The firft is abfurd; the fecond unnatural.

Firft, As to our obligations to this inaufpicious family. Hiftory can inform you, that James the first fignalized his generosity in our favour, by giving, under the fineffe of laws, fix counties in Ulfter to Scotch planters. Hume attempts to justify his countryman by the folfowing fhift: "He gave them arts and manu"factures in exchange." The cruel Ahab was more generous: he offered real money for Naboth's vineyard. Grateful fouls! bless your benefactor he improved your minds at the expence of your bodies; and, like your preachers in Lent, famished your flesh to fatten your spirit.

Charles the first ran the fame course with his father. No end of feizures, inquifitions, and regal plunder. Shamed at last into defistance by the Irish parliament, an artful ftratagem is devifed, equally calculated to answer the ends of rapacity, and exculpate the monarch. You have read in Suetonius, how Tiberius eluded the law that prohibited virgins to be put to death. A young lady is arraigned and condemned: the emperor permits the hangman to violate her, and throws the blame on her executioner. Remove the scene of action from Rome to Ireland, and in a diffimilar plot, the characters are much the fame. The earl of Strafford is named

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vicegerent, and takes the blame upon himself : the king thanks him for his seasonable advice; and Ireland fees Tiberius and Sejanus revived in the perfons of Charles and his favourite. In these two reigns purfuits were not extended to goods and chattels alone. The fword of tyranny reached to confcience itself. Spiritual fupremacy, and religious uniformity, were inforced with fuch rigour, that according to Borlafe, fome of the clergy used to hang themselves. A farcaftic remark! the falfity whereof, was more owing to their conftancy, than to the lenity of the Stuarts. Charles the Second, who according to lord Lyttleton, could have be come as defpotic a prince as any in Europe, fets up a fham court of claims to fave the appearance of juftice. He confirms Cromwel's grants to the adventurers, who followed the banners of this regicide, tinctured with the blood of the royal martyr, obliges his enemies by the facrifice of his defenders, confents to the special exception of Irish Catholics from the general act of indemnity, refufes the leaft affiftance to Lord Rochfort, who fold his eftate to support him during his exile, and gives his fanction to a ridiculous law, declaring it high treason to call the king a Papift. Of all the tranfgreffors of this law, he himself was the moft fignal, whereas he was confeffed and anointed by a Benedictine monk: and the ma

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giftrates must have been very remiss that did not hang him for contravening fuch an important decree, prohibiting to fufpect for religion, a king who practifed none.

"Nec lex æquior ulla eft,

However, the Irish Catholics can never fufficiently thank him, for not punishing with halter, gibbet, and exenteration, a requiefcat in pace.

To this long train of Stuart hoftilities James the Second is the only exception. As Diffenters and Roman Catholics were equally difqualified, he removed all penal restraints. Religion influenced him, doubtlefs. But did not his favours and indulgence, extend to Scotch Diffenters, as well as to Irish Catholics? Did not the good of the ftate, ftrengthened by the affections and power of its fubjects, ever and always weakened by their tepidity and indigence, require then, as it does now, a relaxation of preffive laws? And was it not the king's intereft to endeavour to render all his fubjects profperous and happy? Did he but proceed on a legal plan with the confent of his parliament, without arrogating to himself a difpenf ing power, which the nation vefts in the aggregate

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gregate body of king, lords, and commons ? But can the conduct of James the Second ftand the teft? Or muft not an Irishman be blind in not perceiving the partiality of this cherished twig of the Stuart stem?

Ambition, or love for their fubjects, induces kings to exchange the gaieties of a palace for the fatigues of the field, and to fly into the arms of death, from the bofom of fenfuality and voluptuousness. But more especially in those critical junctures, when the crown is at stake, and the majesty of the monarch, on the point of finking into the fubject, the fprings of nature play with an extraordinary elafticity; the radiancy of the throne, gliftening in the monarch's eyes, abforbs and eclipfes the perception of danger pride fupplies the place of valour, and defpair metamorphofes the coward into the hero.

In the vicinity of an army of thirty thousand men, mafter of the ftrong holds and garrifons of his realms, at the first report of the Prince of Orange's arrival in England, James the Second, with the apathy of a Stoic, or the timidity of an old woman, throws the royal feals into the Thames, difappears, leaves three kingdoms in the utmost anarchy and confufion, the reigns of government without a hand to manage

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nage them, and his fubjects uncertain to whom they are to transfer their alegiance.

Inftances of the kind are scarce to be met with in the chronicles of kings; a hand that would not unfheath a sword in defence of three realms is better calculated for a muff than a fceptre. Queen Elizabeth almoft in fight of ar army of fifty thoufand Spaniards, reviews her troops, rides through the ranks, animates, incites, encourages her men: "Behold your

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queen! Victorious, I fhall reward you: de"feated, I will die with you." But Buchanan's contraft of James the First to queen Eli→ zabeth, is applicable to James the Second.

Rex fuit Elizabeth, nunc vero regina Jacobus. Error naturæ par in utroque fuit.

In English: "Nature was miftaken in those "two extraordinary productions: Elizabeth "was a man: James a woman."

Recalled by Tyrconnel from France to Ire land, our Alexander lays fiege to Londonderry, from whence he is repelled by a Proteftant minifter, at the head of a handful of men half famifhed. This was a glorious conteft between a king and a prieft: the fword and the gown. Cedant arma togæ.

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