Second, to indulge his lust of empire, by laying violent hands upon the liberties of Ireland.

To that crafty, unprincipled, and restless monarch, already wielding the immense power bequeathed by William the Conqueror to his successors, the Pope, Adrian IV, the only Englishman who ever filled the chair of St. Peter, granted a bull, authorizing him to take possession of Ireland, as of right at the disposal of his holiness., 'As for Ireland,' said he, and all other islands where Christ is known, and the Christian religion received, it is out of all doubt, they do all appertain and belong to the right of St. Peter, and of the church of Rome. You have, (our well beloved son in Christ,) advertised and signified unto us, that you will enter into the land and realm of Ireland, to the end to bring them to obedience unto law, and under your subjection, to root out from among them their foul sins and wickedness, as also to yield and pay yearly out of every house, a yearly pension of one penny to St. Peter. We therefore do grant that you do enter to possess that land. And farther also we do strictly charge and require that all the people of that land do with all humbleness, dutifulness, and honour, receive and accept you as their liege lord and sovereign.'

Armed with such authority, then almost controlling, and invited by one of those 'faithless sons, who betrayed her,' a base chieftain of Ireland, the infamous Durmond Mac Morragh, Henry did, about 1170, secure military possession of a certain portion of the island.

The English force which first gained foothold for Henry on Irish soil, under Richard, Earl of Pembroke, known as Strongbow, was comparatively insignificant. Nor did the reinforcements from time to time supplied, even when Henry invaded in person, amount to more than a comparatively small army, not exceeding seven thousand men in all. And although they did not succeed in conquering the country, as in fact the British power has hardly done to this day, they did accomplish so effectual a settlement in the island as to defy dislodgement, and to become the basis of a claim to national control, and of harassing operations,

which have, during these seven hundred years, proved to the Irish people nothing short of an unmitigated curse.

The fact that so inconsiderable an invasion was permitted to achieve even partial success, instead of being hurled back in disaster upon the shores of Britain, must ever be a reproach to Irish character. Nor can it be easily explained, in view of the well-attested bravery of the race as well in their previous history as in modern times, and in connection with the numbers said to have engaged in repelling the invaders.

It was our lot to witness during the late vast contest, one of those exhibitions of courage in Irish troops, which rendered them especially distinguished in contrast with the self-securing talents of their New England associates. A body of soldiers from the Federal army was observed, in Burnside's arrogant attempt to storm the Confederate lines at Fredericksburg, Dec., 1862, to form under a fire already severe, for the purpose of charging the most advanced point of the Southern position, the celebrated projection of Marye's hill. Their advance was, of course, greeted with a destructive storm of cannon and musket shot. And as the nearly level space across which they moved, was of several hundred yards extent, they were mowed down with awful carnage. Of necessity the survivors had to give way, and seek protection in such hollows as they could find, and behind houses. But after an interval they reformed, and notwithstanding the murderous result of the previous attempt, proceeded to a second charge over the same ground. As was to be expected, this trial, with reduced force and shaken spirit, proved even less formidable than the first. Still, it was made, and with a like result, the mowing down of their ranks, and the recoil of their broken lines. The mad attempt, however, was again made, and again, six or seven times, until the brave victims of such unadvised tactics were nearly all stretched upon that bloody plain, and the command well-nigh annihilated. We afterwards learned that these were gallant misguided Irishmen, led by one, whose head British authority had, years ago, held forfeited for moving in favour

of Irish independence, and who might well blush thus to slaughter his countrymen in infamous aggression. It was the brigade of the notorious General Meagher. Wrong, however, as was the cause, such persistent gallantry elicited universal admiration.

The simple explanation of the phenomenon of feeble resistance to invasion on the part of such a race, offered by the historian of recent European events, Sir Archibald Alison, albeit a Scotchman, although true in part, is undoubtedly not an adequate account of the matter. "Without doubt,' he says, this conquest is to be traced to the instability of the Irish character; for why did they not keep out the English invaders, as the Scotch with half their number, and not a quarter of their material resources, effectually did?' That the Irish people are characterized by traits giving some just occasion for the epithet unstable, can hardly be denied. They are obviously less intense, dogged, and tenacious than their kinsmen in part, the Scotch; they are far more light-hearted, impulsive, and uncalculating. But unquestionably the successful contestants for their country during a hundred and fifty years, against the same powerful rovers from the North who wrested England from the Saxons, must have been influenced by something besides mere 'instability,' when they permitted a handful of Englishmen to establish lordship over their land. Nor is this charge sustained in the light of strenuous and persistent efforts of the Irish people to the present hour, with spirit unbroken by seven hundred years of oppression at the hands of one of the most powerful among nations, to recover some reasonable share of their lost liberties and ancient rights.

Unhappily for their independence, the people of Ireland were, at the time of the invasion, agitated by intestine. feuds, and were basely sold to Henry by one of their own recognized chiefs. The Irish nation cannot be said to have opposed this invasion,' says their very exact and painstaking historian.* 'Some Irish families, indeed, did oppose it; and because they opposed it separately, they

*Plowden. Vol. I. p. 25.

were defeated,' and he adds, 'I cannot refrain from attributing this ready submission to the secret influence of the clergy, who might wish by any means to prevent a rupture with the See of Rome.' In fact there is extant, a remarkable document conclusively proving that this was a most potent influence towards preventing a combined and effectual resistance to Henry's invasion by the Irish people. The nervous and bitter remonstrance addressed to Pope John XXII, early in the fourteenth century, and under the reign of Edward II, by the Irish chiefs, wherein they recite the original terms of submission, and set forth their cruel grievances. We have to inform your holiness,' they write, that Henry, king of England, and the four kings his successors, have violated the conditions of the pontifical bull, by which they were impowered to invade this kingdom. Among instances they recite,-'the English promised to introduce a better code of laws, and enforce better morals among the Irish people; but instead of this, they have so corrupted our morals, that the holy and dove-like simplicity of our nation, is, on account of the flagitious example of these reprobates, changed into the malicious cunning of the serpent.'* Thus were wrongfully wrested from Ireland her own independent government, and her ancient laws, and hereditary rights; and thus passed into the hands of an adverse foreign people, the control of the country, the disposal of its lands and other property, and the exercise of irrepressible, arbitrary power over the lives, liberties, and happiness of the population originally endowed by the Almighty with that fair heritage. Of the wrongs since perpetrated, and the miseries resulting, during, as we have said, the last seven hundred years, eloquent voices have from time to time told the tale in the ear of Christendom, through this extended period, and faithful history has recorded their story, yet how little has it been. heeded! Mitigations of special evils have, indeed, been occasionally forced from British imperialism by perils born of Irish agony; but wholly unrelieved remains the all-comprehending evil of foreign, unsympathizing, anti-Irish, *Plowden. Vol. I. pp. 233-8.

and iniquitous misrule, spoliation, and oppression. And conspicuous as is the terrible lesson, a course of wrong precisely parallel, though incalculably less justifiable and more pernicious, has just been inaugurated by the aggressive and now dominant section of this country, and the government it has consolidated, toward the Southern and injured section.

More distinctly to see the misery to ensue if remedy come not, we now look a few moments at Ireland under English misrule.

The remonstrance of Irish chiefs to Pope John XXII, already quoted, after experience of only one hundred and fifty years of harassment, tells a tale full of meaning. 'We had,' say they, a written code of laws, according to which our nation was governed hitherto: they have deprived us of those laws, and have established other iniquitous laws, by which injustice and inhumanity are combined for our destruction.' And they go on to show how English. adventurers are, by law and before the courts, sustained in all manner of outrages against the property and lives of Irishmen, while the latter are allowed no shadow of redress.

No wonder that they also announce to his Holiness, their purpose, if possible, to shake off entirely the detestable yoke;' declaring, 'all hope of peace between us is completely destroyed; for such is their pride, such their excessive lust of dominion, and such our ardent ambition to shake off this insupportable yoke, and recover the inheritance which they have so unjustly usurped, that as there never was, so there never will be, any sincere coalition between them and us; nor is it possible there should be in this life, for we entertain a certain natural enmity against each other, flowing from natural malignity, descending by inheritance from father to son, and spreading from generation to generation.'

This we know has been literally realized to the present hour. It culminated in a tremendous uprising of the nation, repressed for a season on the bloody field of Athunree, where, it is recorded, ten thousand of the sons of Erin yielded life in the endeavour to liberate their