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that the Cromwellians should not be disturbed, and then gravely proceeded to inquire into the case.'

After a great deal of very unhandsome and unkind evasion, the acts of Settlement and Explanation were at last passed, giving effect to this resolution,-a proceeding which draws from our author the following bitter, but just observations :

There is no doubt that to have restored the confederates to their estates would have required an exertion of vigour far beyond what Charles was capable of. The Cromwellians were determined not to resign them without battle: they were prepared to fight. They had their friends and fellow-soldiers scattered throughout England, with whom they maintained a constant correspondence. The army in Ireland was at their disposal. The king's position was still critical; and these men would undoubtedly have raised a storm that would have embarrassed so weak a man. It was some sign of grace that he anxiously cast about in search of some shadow of excuse for abandoning his old and burdensome friends, the confederates. The Cromwellians, observing the nature of his perplexity, set themselves to work to relieve him. By great exertion and industry they procured copies of the instructions sent by the supreme council of the confederates to their agents at Rome and the other continental courts. Those instructions authorized the Irish agents to make a tender of the kingdom to the Pope, or to France, Spain, or any country or government that would deliver them from the burden of their own affairs. These papers were read before the council; the king affected the utmost indignation and surprise, and ordered that in future no petitions should be received from the Catholics. The door was thus closed upon those mendicant loyalists. The indignation of Charles was but dissembled, for he was well acquainted with the instructions, and had been a concurring party to some of them. His anger would have been well warranted in any other man, and even in him, some contempt might be pardoned, if sincere, for those who could traverse Europe in search of a meaner servitude.'

On the death of Charles II., Mr O'Driscol makes the following strong and pointed observations :-and, though the influence of his religious persuasion is, perhaps, discernible in some of them, we must say that we know not where else to find so clear, concise, and original a view of that critical passage of our history.

Charles stood between his father and brother, a more agreeable and a worse man than either. Cold, cruel, profligate, false, he was yet instrumental, by his very faults, in laying the foundations of British liberty, and, by the only virtue he possessed, of preparing the ruin and overthrow of his family. If he had been a prince of any character or energy, those securities against arbitrary power, which were the fruit of his reign, would probably not have been sought for, or would not have been obtained. If he had not had some small regard for religion, and some slight degree of principle as connected with that subject, it would have been easy for him to have established, upon a Pro

testant foundation, the most grievous tyranny the country ever experienced. But his inclination towards the Catholic church made him disregard the prostrations of the universities, and turn a cold eye upon the long train of churchmen that crept in the dust at his feet, and courted even his most scornful regard. By this conscientious conduct the king fostered that discontent of the establishment, which, after renewing its vain submissions to his successor, at length took arms against the throne, and helped to overturn it.

The extreme anxiety of the church to preserve its connexion with the crown was not surprising. The established religion of England is the religion of the rich and the polite; but as these classes are rarely religious, the church has little hold upon society, whatever may be its importance as a parliamentary or state machine. Deprived of the countenance of government, the Episcopal church would lose almost all its sole support. The middle and lower orders of the people hang loosely upon it, or are scattered among the sectaries.

The church of England has never been able to attain what that of Rome has so perfectly accomplished, to be the religion of the rich and the poor. The secret, perhaps, is to be found in the grand spectacle of the sacrifice which the Roman church presents in her celibacy; which gives her ministry the semblance if not the reality of a vocation, while the British church has all the appearance, and in many cases the reality of a mere profession.

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The reformed church, too, had in the outset the taint of impure motive. The great men of the Reformation had little other object in view than the plunder of the old establishment. Nor, when the new church had accumulated wealth, was the contrast favourable, which she presented, with the old. The old establishment, like the new, had been greedy of wealth, but had used it differently. Notwithstanding many abuses, the poor were provided for: at her expense the sick and the stranger had provision made for their wants. Her Orders of Charity' were multiplied as the exigencies of the people increased. Mansions of 'hospitality' were erected for the way-farer in the desert. Her missions' extended over the globe, and were often zealous and devoted. At home, her tenants lived in ease and abundance on her domains, and hardly felt the light rents they paid, while she reared everywhere costly and beautiful churches at her own expense, and without charge to the people, for the worship of God and the ornament of the country.

All this was changed at the Reformation. With the purer doctrines of the reformed church came an increase of the burdens of the people. Charity and zeal (odd effect) seemed extinguished by the truth. The poor, and the sick, and the stranger, were left to the tender mercies of the parish officers; the missions ceased; the Orders of Mercy were no more; the expense of building churches was thrown upon the laity; and a new and meaner order of architecture showed the melancholy change which had taken place. The tithe was collected with severity; and the pastors and the flock exhausted their animosities in the courts of law.

The Reformation in England and Scotland, as on the Continent, VOL. XLVI. NO. 92.

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derived its chief support from the division of the church domains amongst the first reformers. Those who had got church and abbey lands contended strenuously for the truth of the Reformation, and the gospel purity of the new worship. In Ireland there was still a stronger interest combined with the cause of the Reformation. The entire Cromwellian interest rested upon it. The re-establishment of the Roman church would include the re-establishment of the Irish proprietors in their estates. The preservation of the Protestant worship was considered as a security for the possessions of the Cromwellian soldiers. Hence the zeal for the Protestant faith, and the struggles for the reformed religion which prevailed at this period, and long after in Ireland. A rare and happy union of the interests of this world and the next; though pronounced to be impossible.

James the Second was a professed Catholic in religion; in politics he entertained the high prerogative notions of his father and grandfather. He was a man of too little mind to discern that those notions were unsuited to the age and nation that he lived in. The storm which drove him from his throne had been felt even in his brother's reign; but James had not sense enough to be warned. He relied too much upon the support of France, and upon the apparent submission of the people of England. The easy defeat of Monmouth's rebellion was fatal to him; but what was more fatal still, was the general corruption which prevailed at his court, and of which he himself had set the first unhappy example.

Charles and James were humble pensioners of France; Lewis feared the power of England. He had seen what she could accomplish, when, for the short period of the Commonwealth, she put forth her strength and took her place, without question, the first and greatest of the nations of Europe. This place he had himself assumed, and was ambitious to preserve for the kingdom, whose glory and splendour were all concentrated in his own person. He had an idea of the magnificence of simple despotism; and was by no means disposed to suffer Charles to be invested with this high and enviable dignity. Lewis was too refined a politician, and frequently defeated his own schemes, by excess of artifice and finesse. If he had gone directly to his object, and chosen to make Charles, or at a later period, James, absolute in England, he might probably have accomplished it. But in attempting to keep up a balance of parties in the state, for the purpose of creating a general weakness and distraction of all, he left place for some strong and straight-forward power to pierce through the confusion, whenever, in the progress of events, such a power should appear.

Lewis pensioned the king, his family, his favourites, his mistresses, his ministers. A general system of foreign bribery was established. But it was not confined to the court; the French minister bribed all parties; the Catholic party and the Protestant party; the King's party and the Country party; the Episcopalians and the Dissenters; the Monarchy-men and the Republicans. All, or almost all, received stipendiary or occasional bribes from France, not to accomplish a common object, but that the general conflict and collision of parties

might be so sustained and kept up, that the result might be a general weakness and distraction of the nation.'

These extracts, we find, are gaining too fast upon us, and we must now hurry to a conclusion-briefly referring to Mr O'Driscol's second volume, for a most copious and interesting account of the final national struggle of Ireland, in her war for the ungrateful James, against the hero of our Revolution. His great object in that brilliant and important narrative, is, to show with what admirable courage and fidelity the Catholic party maintained itself against the disciplined and veteran forces of William and his generals-with what reluctance they sought the co-operation of France in that great struggle, and to what losses, mortifications, and insults they were exposed, by the leaders even of those scanty and inadequate auxiliaries, with which the ungenerous policy of Louis led him to foment, but not to decide the struggle-how easily, in consequence, they might at all times have been cordially reconciled to the British government, and to what accidents the ultimate success of the Protestants was actually owing. The author, we think, has a singular talent in the description of battles, sieges, and military operations; and though a little too anxious, perhaps, to exalt the valour and skill of the Irish, and to impute to the personal cruelty of their adversaries those excesses, which, we fear, are inseparable from such a system of warfare; we think the whole narrative is conducted with laudable impartiality, and interspersed with many original and most salutary reflections. There is something very striking, at all events, even if a little fanciful, in the following remark:

William had scarcely rested from the fatigues of the Boyne, when he received news of the defeat of the combined fleets of England and Holland by the French off Beachy Head. It is remarkable that this battle was fought the day before that of the Boyne; and as at the Boyne, so also upon the ocean, the Dutch maintained the fight with a bravery never surpassed, and the English hardly did their duty. Though overpowered by superior force, the Dutch sustained the high character which their nation then enjoyed in Europe by land and water. This, no doubt, was some consolation to William, for he was a true Dutchman and a true soldier.

The moral impulse of the Dutch Revolution was not yet worn out. The spirit which their resistance to Spain had given birth to, was still nourished and sustained by their arduous struggle against France, and gave the little republic of Holland that glorious eminence in arts, industry, and arms, which she then enjoyed. But the spirit of England, subdued by the failure of her Revolution under Cromwell, degraded by the restoration of the Stuarts, and polluted by the flood of political and moral profligacy which followed the footsteps of those weak princes, was now again bowed down under the weight

and disgrace of the Dutch yoke, which she had imposed upon herself. England was cowed. She felt that Holland was the true seat of empire, and that she acted but a second part to that little republic of the fens, and was no longer anything but an appendage to the States. This idea weighed upon the heart of the country; it ran like icy coldness through her fleets and armies, and they became spiritless and benumbed. The same cause which had for ages unstrung the nerves and sinews of the Irish military in their own country, and offered them up, bound and enfeebled, to every invader, was now acting with great power upon the British themselves.

The incessant squabbles and ill-humour of the Parliament with William, were not because that prince exceeded the limits of legitimate authority. It was nothing more than a peevish and fretful effort of the nation to vindicate its supremacy; a constant struggle against the notion of Dutch superiority, which yet they could not

shake off.

The Dutch were passionless; and such a people have never been great for a long period. They were also too commercial. Commerce is a great support and ornament to empire, but if it be made the main pillar of the state, it will be found a dangerous one, and liable to decay. The English had the courage and the calmness of the Dutch; but they had more; they had warmth, and genius, and fancy; qualities which are not the ornament only, but the vital principle of power. It is a great advantage in the triple empire of the British islands, that her people afford a variety of character, which supplies almost all that is desirable in the human mind; steadiness and thoughtfulness; energy and industry; vivacity and fancy.'

Mr O'Driscol has given a very full and distinct account of the negotiations which preceded the pacification of Limerick, and the objects which the celebrated articles then agreed to were intended to answer. We believe there are not many, even of the Orange faction, who will now maintain, what we have seen, however, confidently asserted in various pamphlets, not many years ago, that the stipulations then made were for the benefit of the garrison or inhabitants of Limerick alone, and not of the rest of the nation. The audacity of such an assertion may well excite our amazement, when the express tenor of these articles, which Mr O'Driscol has very properly printed at large, from the Letters Patent in which they were ratified by the Sovereign, under the Great Seal of England, are attended to. The very first article bears on the face of it, That the Roman Ca'tholics OF THIS KINGDOM shall enjoy such privileges in the 'exercise of their religion, as are consistent with the laws of 'Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the time of Charles II.; and 'that their Majesties shall endeavour, in Parliament, to procure THEM such further security in this particular, as may preserve them from any disturbance on account of their said religion.'

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