tolerant and universally beloved. The unexpected death of the Duke of Glocester, the son of the Princess Anne, in his seventeenth year, and the death of the late King James about the same time, gave rise to the act, by which the crown was settled on the house of Hanover, which was the last act passed in this reign;* this and the subsequent act of abjuration secured the Protestant succession. William's health had for some time been on the decline, but his dissolution was immediately brought on from a fall from his horse, by which his collar bone was fractured. He died in the fifty-second year of his age, and the thirteenth year of his reign.

* This act passed on the 7th of June, 1701. 13 Gul. c. 6. It is entituled, An Act for the further Security of his Majesty's person and the succession of the Crown in the Protestant Line, and for extinguishing the hopes of the pretended Prince of Wales, and all other pretenders, and their open and secret abettors. This important event made little sensation in Ireland, as the whole body of Roman Catholics, from whom alone any opposition to it could have been expected, were excluded from the parliament and every interference with public affairs.

CHAPTER II.

OF THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE.

ANNE, the daughter of James II. who succeeded William, was the last of the line of Stuart that filled the British throne. The glory of the British arms under the Duke of Marlborough has thrown a glare over the historical pages of this sovereign's reign, that has almost obliterated the melancholy effects of the spirit of party, which infected it throughout. In the meridian heat of Whiggism and Toryism nothing was done in modera tion: and few of the transactions of that day have reached us in a form unwarped by the prejudices of the narrators. Throughout every part of the British empire, except Ireland, the constitutional rights of the subject ebbed and flowed with the alternate prevalence of these opposite parties. The Irish nation was doomed to suffer under every Stuart: and the ingratitude of this monarch to them may have contributed not slightly to prevent them from relapsing into their former attachment, when other parts of the British empire rose in rebellion in their support. It strongly marks the folly and unreasonableness of coupling the cause of Popery with that of the Pretender, that in the only part of the British empire, which generally submitted to the spiritual power of the Pope, namely Ireland, an arm has not been raised in aid of the Stuarts, since the accession of the House of Hanover to the British throne.

The queen was alternately led down the stream either by the Whigs or the Tories, as their respective parties gained the ascendency in parliament: the whole political system of her reign was a state of contest, in which the party in power opposed and thwarted their antagonists by measures of extreme violence. This nearly equal contest of the rival parties in England, kept not the same equilibrium in Ireland. The great mass of the people was forced or frightened out of any political interference with state affairs. The queen, who held her crown against the claims of her brother by the tenure of Protestantism, found herself forced to bury the attachments of natural affection under her zeal for the Church, and became forward in yielding to the cries of both parties in oppressing the great body of her Catholic subjects of Ireland. No crimes, no new offences, no attempts against the government were laid to their charge: and a new code of unparalleled rigour was imposed upon this suffering peo

ple. They had formerly been deprived of their inheritances, they were now prevented from ever again acquiring an inch of land in that kingdom: and they were subjected to further penalties and disabilities for professing the Roman Catholic religion. Nothing can more strongly display the abject and abandoned state of the body of the Irish Catholics at this period, than that no man in either house of parliament either dared or chose to stand up in their favour to oppose that act of refined and ingenious rigour for preventing the further growth of Popery. Some individuals of the house of commons, who could not altogether reconcile the act to their consciences, by the most disgraceful casuistry affected to clear themselves of responsibility, by resigning their seats to others of a more pliant disposition. Resignations on this score became so frequent, that the house came to a resolution," that the excusing of mem"bers at their own request, from the service of the house, and "thereupon issuing out new writs to elect other members to serve in their places, was of dangerous consequence, and "tended to the subversion of the constitution of parliament." And it was afterwards resolved unanimously, "that it might "be the standing order of the house, that no new writs for "electing members of parliament in place of members excusing "themselves from the service of the house, do issue at the "desire of such members, notwithstanding any former prece"dents to the contrary." So violent was the tide of prejudice against the Catholics at this time in Ireland, that the British cabinet themselves dared not oppose the very rigour and severity which they disapproved of. The passing of this bill affords the most notable instance of Ireland's suffering from the abject stratagem of attempting by sinister and secret means, what the honour and justice of the nation called upon the ministers to effect in an open and manly manner. The queen was at this

* Without entering into a nauseating detail of this new penal code, suffice it to remark with Mr. Burke, "That all the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression, which were made after that last event (the Revolution) were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon and were not at all afraid "to provoke." (Let. to Lang, p. 44.) And page 87, " You abhorred it, as I A did, for its vicious perfection. For I must do it justice. It was a complete "system full of coherence and consistency: well digested and well composed "in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; and as "well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, "and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.”

These members instead of opposing what they condemned, like Pilate washed their hands before the people, in proof of their innocence. This prevaricating system of debasement has been since too frequently followed by the temporizing or venal secession of members who wanted the effrontery to sup port a particular measure, which they left to be carried by the votes of their less punctilious substitutes.

time in alliance with the emperor, and upon the strength of it had interceded with him for certain indulgences on behalf of his Protestant subjects: it appeared therefore an ill-judged moment to throw such an oppressive load of persecution upon so large a body of men of his religious persuasion within her states. Her ministers feared the party who had proposed the measure, amongst whom were many Dissenters of great power and influ ence: they dared not openly to oppose it, but from the ungrate ful duplicity of Stuart policy devised the following expedient. They superadded to the bill, already surcharged with cruelty, a clause, by which all persons in Ireland were rendered incapable of any employment under the crown, or of being magistrates in any city, who should not, agreeably to the English Test Act, receive the sacrament according to the usage of the Church of Ireland. To this it was presumed the Dissenters would not have submitted: and so the bill would be lost. The base experiment failed, and this unintended severity fell upon the Protestant Dissenters and the Roman Catholics, not because they merited punishment, but because a timid and insincere ministry had resorted to duplicity and deceit to screen them from it.*

When this act came into the house of commons loaded with all the severity of intemperate if not factious zeal, and bending under such additional mass of rigour, as the British cabinet had heaped upon it for preventing its passing, no opposition what ever appears to have been raised against it in parliament: no division to have taken place on a single point in any stage of its progress through the houses. Inasmuch as it was conceived by all persons comprised in the articles of Limerick to be a direct violation of those articles, Lord Kingsland and Colonel Brown, with several other Roman Catholic gentlemen, petitioned to be heard by counsel against it, which was granted. After the arguments of Sir Theobald Butler, Mr. Malone, and Sir Stephen Rice of counsel for the petitioners both at the bar of the house of lords and commons had been heard and totally disregarded, the petitioners were tauntingly assured, that if they were deprived of the benefit of the articles of Limerick, it was their own faults, since by conforming to the established religion, they would be entitled to these and many other benefits: that therefore they ought not to blame any but themselves: that the passing of that bill into a law was needful for the security of the

* Burnett says, "It was hoped by those who got this clause added to the "bill, that those in Ireland who promoted it most, would now be the less "fond of it, when it had such a weight hung to it." History of his own Times, 2 vol. 214.

kingdom at that juncture, and in short, that there was nothing in the articles of Limerick, that should hinder them from passing it.*

Notwithstanding the generally prevailing execration of Popery, and the universal dread both amongst the Whigs and Tories of standing forward in defence or support of the Catholic body in public, it was not to be expected that the Protestant Dissen ters should silently submit to be involved in the severity, which substantially and formally was intended by the parliament of Ireland and the cabinet of England to fall upon the Catholics exclusively; they accordingly presented a petition to the commons on the occasion of the above-mentioned clause, which has been usually termed the Sacramental Test, complaining, that to their great surprise and disappointment they found a clause inserted in The Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery, which had not its rise in that honourable house; whereby they were disabled from executing any public trust for the service of her majesty, the Protestant religion or their country, unless contrary to their consciences, they should receive the Lord's Supper according to the rights and usages of the established church. This parliament was disposed to favour the Dissenters, inasmuch as they joined with them in the common cause against the body of Catholics; but their horror of Popery out. balanced their tenderness for Presbytery, and they prevailed by fair words with the Dissenters to withdraw their opposition to the bill, on a specious promise, that the clause obnoxious to them should be repealed in their favour. Cruelty and injustice generally go hand in hand. Not only the clause affecting the Dissenters, whose punishment could in no shape check the growth of Popery, was left unrepealed, but during this queen's reign it was frequently carried into the most rigorous execution. In October 1707, the commons came to the resolution, that by The Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery, the burgesses of Belfast were obliged to subscribe the declaration and receive the Sacrament according to the usage of the Church of Ireland:

Debates on the Popery Bill, 2 Anne. It has always been urged by the suf ferers under the penal laws passed against the Roman Catholics since the Revolution, that they were made in violation of the public faith as pledged by the articles of Limerick. For the satisfaction therefore of those, who may wish to investigate the question, the arguments of counsel before the commons on the 22d of February, and before the lords on the 28th of February 1703, are given in the Appendix, No. LII. Mr. Arthur Brown, in 1788, one of the representatives for the university of Dublin, published a very warm pamphlet to rebut this charge, which he conceived tended to bring odium on the Protestant interest. It is written in the extreme heat of party.

This was the clause inserted by the English cabinet, in order to prevent the bill's passing into a law: they foolishly supposing, that the Irish parliament would check their zealous hatred to Popery, on account of the injury they might thereby bring upon the Protestant Dissenters. See their petition in the Commons' Journ. 2 vol. 451.