It is our desire in these chapters to look at Irish affairs with strict impartiality. That is, to take neither a British nor an Irish view of them. We want to contemplate them from a more elevated platform, as they contribute ingredients towards the history of the empire at large. A reference to this object will account for the freedom with which we intermingle praise and blame, and explain much which might otherwise seem inconsistent in our occasional estimate of individuals and parties. That it trenches somewhat upon the picturesque effect of the page, we are forced to admit; for partisanship is the colouring matter of history: but the demands of truth ought to be paramount to those of popularity, and we are content to exclude the excitement which can only be secured at the sacrifice of fidelity. Ireland, though still nominally a kingdom, and possessed of a parliament, claimed to be considered, at the time we treat of, no less than now, as an integral part of the British dominions; and, as such, her proper and exclusive interests, so far as they militated against the general welfare of the empire at large, would necessarily have to give place, and this, not from any arbitrary policy pursued towards her, so much as from a natural tendency, which has always caused, and will ever cause, the greater of unequal parts to maintain its central place, and the lesser to revolve, as it were, about the primary towards which it gravitates, describing an orbit inexplicable unless with reference to the forces which govern its motions. But Ireland had local interests antagonistic to imperial ones. She has so still. These interests naturally take the first place in the minds of Irishmen. England, on the other hand, had and has her exclusive views as to Irish affairs. Ireland should have been made to assist the greater country, while she was an inferior, though an independent kingdom. She ought now to bear the heaviest of the burdens which afflict England, for she has been solemnly incorporated with her in that political wedlock which

gives each to the other "for better for worse." Such would be the language of England. Now, in these hostile or rival-principles, amidst something which is wrong, there is much that is wholesome and beneficial. It has worked for the general good, this constantly encroaching tendency on the one side, and jealousy of encroachment, on the other. Occasionally inconvenient, and almost disastrous, the spirit of rival nationality has nevertheless preserved, in its action, the due equilibrium, or rather the standard of preponderance, sought to be elevated by the one, and as unduly depressed by the other. Ireland would have been degraded had she not made the struggles, in overcoming which England proved herself able and worthy to hold the supremacy she had acquired.

He who undertakes to sketch, however slightly, the history of a country circumstanced as was Ireland during the period when her political status was less accurately defined than it is now, must accordingly be very careful not to lose sight of these peculiarities in her condition. He must school himself, by rigid self-discipline, into a philosophical comprehensiveness of view, and be ready to extricate himself on every occasion from the network of party influences, which would bind him to one side or the other of a cause in which he is not advocate but judge. There is one advantage gained by such a rule, independent of that highest one of its being the true principle, which is this that it enables him to do justice to both parties. Hitherto Irish history has been intensely English, or intensely Irish. Why should it be either? Why not recognise a neutral ground whereon honest investigators of all parties might meet, and excavate the past? Our present experiment is in this domain. We are not afraid to venture upon the hitherto untrodden ground, conscious as we are that we carry forward our humble labours in no grovelling spirit. Let those who think differently test what we have exhumed. Acknowledging that the yield

is scanty, and admitting our inability to do full justice to the subject in the form we are restricted to, we yet present what we have found as genuine, and moreover, claim the merit of being the first-or among the first-in the field.

It has been seen* that immediately after Lord Chancellor Porter's refusal to ratify the appointment of the selfconstituted Lords Justices, Capel, the Lord Deputy, died. This event caused a complete alteration in the face of affairs. The Council was called together by writ, as is usual in such an event; but as soon as the question came to be discussed, as to who should have the chief authority until his Majesty's pleasure should be known, it was shewn how completely the Lord Deputy's death had annihilated the interest his intrigues had built up about him. Lord Chancellor Porter was unhesitatingly chosen sole Lord Justice, and left the Council Chamber invested with the full authority of Chief Governor of Irelandt. The change was not the less acceptable for being expected. Rejoicings took place everywhere. The populace seemed lost in a transport of pleasurable excitement. The city wore the aspect of jubilee ; and the House of Commons - that House of Commons that had not many months before approached the dead Lord Deputy in the attitude of affectionate adulation-now thought it no act of inconsistency to attend his Excellency the Lord Justice, with their Speaker, to congratulate him, in equally cordial terms, on his accession to the government of the kingdom.‡

The new Governor could not but feel these public demonstrations. But what was most gratifying to him was the sensible effect which the change of things had produced upon the health and spirits of his friend Cox.

He ral

lied at once; and Porter looked to the great satisfaction of having his energetic intellect at his service in the arduous and responsible office he had been called upon to fill.

The whole nation was pleased at the new appointment. The Protestants had by no means realised the benefits they had once anticipated from

the policy of the late government; and an offensive system of official reserve had been carried on, to their exclusion, as well as that of others. The Catholics saw in the defender of what they considered their rights under the treaties of Limerick and Galway, the commencement of impartial government, and hailed the advent of a new state of things with hope and exultation. Porter exhibited true magnanimity in his elevation; by no act, word, or deed, did he suffer it to be seen that he remembered the injuries he had suffered, or the unworthiness of those under whose persecution he had so long smarted.

Parliament had met on the 27th of June. In the House of Lords, the King's commission had been read, appointing Lord Chief Justice Hely their Speaker, "in regard the Chancellor being Lord Deputy was disabled from executing that office." The Houses were then adjourned to the 4th of August.

In the meantime, the King had sig nified his approbation of the choice of the Privy Council; but he now associated two noblemen with the Chancellor in his office, thereby dividing the power and responsibility, conformably to usage, but leaving in effect the chief authority where it was. Charles, Earl of Mountrath, and Henry, Earl of Drogheda, were named with Sir Charles Porter as Lord Justices, in a patent bearing date the 10th of June, 1696; and a commission was directed to them to continue the Parliament§.

All seemed to promise well for the future. It was confidently anticipated that the fair adjustment of the rights of the parties involved in the events of the war might, under the wise administration of one who had sacrificed so much already to the principle of impartiality, complete the settlement of the country, restore confidence to the public mind, and lay a foundation for such further legislation, in the branches of trade, manufactures, and domestic polity, as would be best calculated to develop the great natural resources of Ireland, now beginning to be widely recognised. In the midst of these hopes Providence again

interposed, and baffled human speculation. On the 8th of December, about four o'clock in the afternoon, Lord Justice Porter, who had been slightly indisposed some days previously, suddenly dropped down dead. All sanguine anticipations were at an end. The government was continued in the hands of his associate justices until the ensuing February, when Henry Earl of Galway was appointed sole Lord Justice. But no act of vigour marked his rule. It was the shadow of a shade. From Capel's death until the year 1701, the government of Ireland was administered wholly in this manner; whence it would seem as if William found it easier to manage that kingdom by the divided and inferior agency of justices, than by viceregal authority. This absence of a formal Court necessarily disables the Irish historian from forming his narrative round any fixed nucleus, and emphatically points to the final extinction of his country's history, should that absence ever become permanent. He is constrained to pass, almost without a glance, over the years which intervene until a personage is placed at the head of affairs sufficiently distinguished to be found noted in the annals of the parent country. We therefore hurry past the period in question, during which the seals, after having been entrusted, ad interim, to the hands of three keepers -Sir John Jefferyson, Mr. Justice Coote, and Baron Donelan-were at length committed to John Methuen, afterwards better known as Ambassador to Portugal, and negociator of the celebrated Treaty of Commerce which goes by his name.

But during this period, so featureless at a first glance, the general mind had been agitated to depths before unreached, by free thoughts and fearless reasonings upon topics affecting not merely the casual claims or grievances of the moment, but the permanenţ rights of the Irish nation.

Tranquilly pursuing the secluded paths of philosophical research, William Molyneux had lived, up to the period we have arrived at, rather shunning than courting the notice his great talents and conspicuous merits gradually drawing upon him. Of fair

were

descent, easy fortune, and brilliant acquirements, he saw himself chosen to the Parliament of 1692 as member for the city of Dublin, and in 1695, for its University, without displaying any symptoms of ambition corresponding either to his pretensions, or to the public recognition of them. It is possible that the vicissitudes of a troublous period, during which he had fled, an exile, from his country, may have shaken his faith in the stability of political honours; or that the greatest of family bereavements may have removed the main incentive to earthly ambition; or, what is most probable, that both of these causes may have combined with a natural predilection for certain studies to produce a love of that retirement in which they are most genially nursed; but certain it is, that Molyneux, though a conscientious performer of the duties he had taken upon himself in Parliament, stood by and watched the struggles of faction, rather as a spectator than an actor, and even refused a post of trust under govern ment, which might have brought him more prominently forward than he de

sired.*

But although he avoided the squabbles of faction, he by no means held aloof from the encounter of constitutional polemics. Enjoying as he did the friendship of John Locke, his mind had become imbued with the principles that daring genius had advocated in his "Treatise on Government;" and, an occasion occurring in which the long-vexed question of the authority of England to bind Ireland by Acts of Parliament arose once more, Molyneux brought the whole powers of his intellect to bear upon it, and, fortified by the encouragement and approval of the great English philosopher, put forth that brief but comprehensive tract, called "The Case of Ireland Stated," which, to the last day of the century, furnishes the staple arguments of the friends of Irish independence.

This treatise we may the more briefly discuss at this time of day, from the circumstance that the Union between the two kingdoms has disengaged the argument from any possible reference to present affairs. The question is no longer a party question,

but an historical one. The interest is now not practical, but speculative ; for the author has himself bounded the discussion by the precise limits reached at the commencement of this century—namely, the incorporation of the two Parliaments, that of England (or, as it became in the meantime, Great Britain) and of Ireland.

Without stopping to enter systematically into Mr. Molyneux's arguments, we may however point to some of those leading doctrines which, like the body of Patroclus, have been the longest and most fiercely battled over in later times.

But first it may be necessary to explain, that the Irish Parliament had, up to this period, found increasing difficulty in staving off the encroachments of that of England, which asserted its supremacy in precise proportion to the independent tone assumed by its younger sister. There were two distinct claims set up by Ireland. One was, the right of originating moneybills in the lower House. In ordinary cases, it was not disputed that under the stat. 10 Hen. VII. ch 4, being one of Poynings' Laws, all bills to be brought under the consideration of Parliament should first be certified by the Lord Lieutenant and Council of Ireland to the King in council, who was to sanction or reject these, as the case might be, and send back those he approved of, under the broad seal of England, to be brought in that session, verbatim et literatim, and no others. But an exception had been taken to this rule in the case of the supplies, on no better foundation than the right enjoyed by the English House of Commons to originate bills of that nature, which were not to be in any manner interfered with by the Lords, beyond the passing or rejection of them. The King having nothing to do with bills in the English Parliament until they had passed the two Houses, it is plain that where this independence of the Crown did not exist, a privilege peculiar to England, as against the House of Lords, which if adopted in Ireland would interfere with the Royal prerogative, could not be introduced by a mere inference or fancied analogy. The assertion of this right had broken

up Lord Sydney's Parliament in 1692; but the claim was now tacitly abandoned; Lord Capel, as we have seen, having succeeded in inducing the Commons to vote the supplies as certified from England.

The

This, however, was not the groundwork of Mr. Molyneux's case. question was one of larger scope, for it involved the whole authority of Parlia ment, which he maintained possessed an inherent and indefeasible independence of its own. The claim he advocated was that of complete exemption from subordination to the English Parliament, which, as he argued, could not constitutionally legislate for the Irish people, quia non mittunt milites ad Parliamentum. His argument grew naturally out of Mr. Locke's great position, that a people are not bound by laws made without their consent. But his mode of proof was not derived from the ethics but the history of the case. "Seeing," he says, "that the right which England may pretend to, for binding us by their Acts of Parliament, can be founded only on the imaginary title of conquest, or purchase, or on precedent and matters of record; we shall inquire into the following particulars," &c.* With a

a free and nervous pen he runs over the history of the conquest of Ireland, and its subsequent occupation by the English, showing how it was constituted a separate kingdom by the gift of Henry II. to his son John, which condition he maintains it did not lose when the two crowns united on the one head, on the death of John's elder brother, Richard, without issue. He details the origin of parliaments in this country, and, to fortify his case, sup. ports the genuineness of a certain ancient record, called Modus tenendi Parliamentum, by Selden, Pryn, and others supposed to be spurious, and which purports to have been transmitted to Ireland by Henry II., "as a direction to hold Parliaments there." He points to the uniform tenor of the Acts, both of the English and Irish Parliament, up to Charles II.'s time, in which no instance can be discovered of a direct assertion of controlling power by the English, or of a clear recognition of it by the Irish Houses; but, on the contrary, proofs