historiographer fills no unimportant station in

society. His first and last duty is a sacred adherence to truth; and until it please the Divine Ruler to suspend or alter that system, by which he has hitherto given action and protection to the physical and moral world, profane and irreverend would be the attempt to attain the truth of human events otherwise than by the light and rules of that reason, which for this very end he has indiscriminately infused into every human being.

The author, conscious of his eagerness to investigate, and his stern determination to disclose the truth, did not heretofore feel himself called upon to make any avowal to the public of his intention and endeavours to fulfil this indispensable duty of the historian. The case is now altered; and be does feel himself called upon to submit to the public several facts, which affect the credit of his History, and which most intimately touch the interests of Ireland, and therefore involve the firmness and prosperity of the British empire.

Consistently with the views, motives, and principles, which led the author to undertake the arduous and important (and to some, invidious) task of bringing down the Irish history to the present day, he cannot pass wholly unnoticed

the

MAL

the invectives upon the Historical Review in the British Critic for November and December 1803. The work appears to have set afloat all the gall of the reverend writers of that periodical publication. In p. 465, vol. xxii. they assure their readers, that "the publication is considered by a

cr

great part of the Irish as a libel upon the loy

alty of Ireland; and his (the author's) object "in publishing such a work at such a time is "best known to himself." It is now become necessary to make that object known also to the public. They add (p. 483), "As this Historical "Review of the State of Ireland by Mr. Plowden "has very imprudently provoked investigation, "it is alone answerable for whatever contention arise from the discussion." Such responsibility is common to all publications; more especially to such as deal in invective. These considerate censors are, doubtless, therefore prepared for similar responsibility. But the influence,

66

may

under which the British Critic is well known to be directed and circulated, gives no opening to individual controversy or personal reflection.

The author repels with scorn the false charges of writing his History to serve the interests of a party, and to mislead the people of England. He avers, that it contains no wilful historical misrepresentation; he believes it contains no actual histori

cal

cal misrepresentation. It contains no undeserved panegyric upon any set of individuals; it contains some sensure, but no unfounded calumnies against the living and the dead of any sect. Such general charges can only be met by general denial; and in support of such denial, beyond the authorities adduced in the Historical Review (not to be taken on the credit of the gross mistatements of the British Critic), the author forewarns his reader, that the first overflow of their acrimonious humour for the month of November does not contain one specific charge, much less a proof, that the author has falsified one single historical fact.

If from these first workings of the British Critic it be allowable to analyze the dose administered (however gilded the pill), it will be found to have been composed of the following ingredients three-fourths of antipathy against the professors of the Roman Catholic religion, not ineptly termed, Papaphobia; and the remaining fourth of a powerful compound of the drug called Miserinia, or hatred of the Irish nation; an equal portion of a higher sublimate of this compound, lately prepared by Sir Richard Musgrave, Bart. and forced by the puffs of the British Critic into general circulation amongst their customers; and a discretional infusion of the common drug Doulodynamy, never known for ages to have failed

in

in producing in the patient a blind unqualified submission even to the most nauseous, painful, and humiliating recipe of the physician. Whether the administration of such a pill have been judicious under the existing circumstances, may be doubted by many; that it has operated powerfully, must be allowed by all, who have examined its effects.

Under the operation of this dose, so keenly ferocious are the patients' animosity and hatred to the Irish nation, or to their religion, or to both, that they take offence at what the author has very compendiously inferred from the indefatigable researches and unanswerable disquisiti ons of the late Charles O'Connor of Ballynagare, the learned and ingenious Vallancey, and several other respectable Irish authors, concerning some facts, which preceded Christianity by nearly one thousand years; others that happened before the Reformation by as long a period; and many that pre-existed by several centuries the invasion of Ireland by Henry II. the epoch, from which the author commences his Historical Review. These facts are not the assertions of Mr. Plowden, as falsely advanced (p. 471); but the concurrent testimony of the ancient and modern historians. of Ireland, backed and illustrated by a body of evidence of moral and even physical certainty,

which

which baffles scepticism. Yet in the face of such incontrovertible proofs, the British Critic recommends to his devotees to rely rather upon the conjectures of DAVID HUME *. The unsupported audacity

As the conjectures of Mr. Hume are here brought forward to discredit the very foundation of Irish history, it will not be found invidious in the author to call his reader's attention to that gentleman's claim to historical veracity.-Amicus Plato: magis amica veritas. If these theological anathematisers of the Historical Review have read the work regularly, they must have seen (p. 114.) what was said by the Rev. Doctor Warner, (a protestant divine, perhaps as well qualified to know, and as well disposed to disclose, the truth of Irish history, as any writer for the British Critic), concerning Mr. Hume's historical fidelity to Ireland. "To such miserable shifts are able men re«duced, when they write to please a party, or to support a cha"racter without regard to truth.” While Mr. Hume was writing his History, a certain lord of session supplied him with several original documents concerning Elizabeth's conduct towards Mary Queen of Scots: they tended to render the character of Elizabeth less amiable in the eyes of the English, than it is generally represented. Mr. Hume worked them faithfully into his manuscript, which having been perused by or on behalf of Mr. Andrew Millar, his publisher, he was informed, that this new and less favoured portrait of that fovourite sovereign would be by 500l. less saleable than a highly finished copy of that, to whlch the British eye had been so long accustomed. Mr. Hume took back his manuscript, and complied with the prudential suggestions of his bookseller, observing, with philosophic pleasantry, that 500l. was a valuable consideration for settling differences between two old friends about two ws that had been dead nearly two hundred years. The abilities of Mr. Hume as a writer are allowed by all his religious doctrines have but few professed supporters; and his histo

rical