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CHAP. by the people of Folkstone in Kent, and Aldborough

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Resumption of Irish for

1700.

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in Suffolk, stating a grievance which they sustained from Ireland, by the Irish catching herrings at Waterford and Wexford, and sending them to the Streights, and thereby forestalling and ruining petitioners' markets." To impute blame to William, who complied with the request of the English commons for the suppression of the woollen trade of Ireland, would be unjust. Charles the second, though an unprincipled man, had seen, and for some time ineffectually opposed, the injustice of the English parliament in the prohibition of Irish cattle. So wise and just a monarch as William must have perceived, and inwardly condemned, an impolicy far more deleterious: but he was obliged to give way to the caprices of the commons, whose factious and ungrateful demeanour proved irksome on several occasions. A remarkable case of this kind had place in the affairs of Ireland.

To reward the services of his dependants, this feitures. monarch, who, from the insufficiency of parliamentary supplies, was not otherwise enabled, had made seventy-six grants of the forfeited estates in Ireland. Offended at this act of prerogative, the English commons unjustly charged the king with breach of promise in not having left the forfeitures to the dispo sal of parliament for the discharge of public debts, and passed a bill for the sending of seven commissioners to enquire into the value of the confiscated lands, and the reasons of their alienation from the public. Of these commissioners three were disposed

to

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to act with moderation; the rest with a partiality CHA P. pleasing to the commons; who accordingly voted that the report of them only was worthy of credit, and that the advising and conferring of these grants was highly derogatory to the king's honour. A bill for the resumption of the granted lands, as public property, passed the lower house; afterwards, not without much disputation, the upper; and at length received the royal assent, in the giving of which the king expressed extreme dissatisfaction. As the properties of great numbers, beside the grantees, were involved in these grants, trustees were vested with uncontroulable authority for the determining of claims, and disposal of lands to purchasers. Although, aware of the violence of the act of resumption, the commons had voted, contrary to the constitutional rights of the subjects, that no petition should be received against it, petitions were sent in multitudes against the act, and against the conduct of the trustees, who were charged with injustice and venality. These representations were pronounced false and scandalous by the lower house of English parliament, though the value of the granted lands, which had been estimated by the commissioners at fifteen hundred thousand pounds, proved in the hands of the trustees hardly more than a third of that sum.

In the reign of queen Anne, who succeeded on. Proceedings

ment.

the death of William in 1701, we find little of im-of parlia portance beside the complaints of national poverty, 1703. the violence of party spirit, and a rigorous augmen tation of penal statutes against catholics. By a par

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CHAP. liament convened in 1703, by the duke of Ormond, successor, as lord lieutenant, to Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, a supply not exceeding a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, was granted for this and the following year: an unavailing representation of grievances was made to her Majesty, among which were the invasion of their constitutional rights by a foreign judicature, the corrupt and oppressive con→ duct of the trustees of the forfeited estates, the misery arising from the restrictions of commerce, and, beside some other causes of complaint, the infrequency of a parliamentary convention, which had not been held since the year 1698; useless pensions to the annual amount of sixteen thousand pounds, were abolished, a laudable example seldom since fol lowed: an act was passed for settling the succession to the crown in the same line in which it had alrea dy been settled by an act in England: and in a bill to prevent the further growth of popery, new severities were enacted against the catholics. As the queen, who was then in close alliance, with the emperor of Germany, had requested some indulgence for the protestant subjects of that monarch, the English cabinet, wishing to prevent the passing of a perse→ cuting law at such a time, and, on the other hand, fearing to disoblige the powerful party who favoured the measure, had recourse to a subterfuge. Hoping thereby to raise an effectual opposition from the in→ terest of the dissenting protestants, they added to the bill a clause, by which all persons in Ireland were rendered incapable of any employment under the

crown,

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crown, or of being magistrates in any city, who CHAP. should not receive, agreeably to the English test act, the sacrament as prescribed by the established church. In this hope the queen's ministers were disappointed, for the dissenters, cajoled with the expectation of the speedy repeal of this clause, made no opposition, and the bill passed into a law, notwithstanding the pleadings against it, at the bars of both houses, by Sir Theobald Butler, Sir Stephen Rice, and Mr. Malone, as council for the catholics, who regarded it as a breach of the articles of Limerick. The dissenters also were grievously disappointed, for the clause, so obnoxious to them, called the sacramental test, remained unrepealed, notwithstanding their repeated applications to government.

tutes.

Resentment against the bigotry, the intolerent spirit Penal sta of the catholics, the dreadful abuse of power to which they had too forcibly shewn themselves inclined, was doubtless the chief cause of incitement to the Irish parliament in the reign of Anne, for the enaction in this and other sessions, of those penal statutes, which are so disgraceful to a protestant legislature. But those laws which seemed intended for its punishment or suppression, were most powerfully fitted for the strengthening and confirming of bigotry, since their immediate effects were hatred to the ruling party, and debasement of the intellect. William, though educated in the principles of the calvinists, a sect most adverse to the church of Rome, and though the only momentous opposition to the establishment of his government in the British islands

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CHAP. had arisen from the Irish catholics, would yet, if

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his parliament had been similarly disposed, have treated this people with so ample a toleration as might in course of time have mollified their intolerance, rendered them worthy of being placed in the same political situation with protestants, and finally attached them as much as any to the English connexion. To particularize is unnecessary the articles of the penal code, by which the Romanists of Ireland were, for the greater part of a century, reduced to a political blank, and by which, if the generosity of protestants had not mostly frustrated the execution, they would have been degraded still more to a condition hardly conceivable. But how much soever we must condemn any system of oppression, we are not to consider all those laws as wantonly decreed without an object. To break the influence of catholics by subdivision of their landed property, their estates were ordered to descend in the manner of gavel-kind in equal shares to all the children, notwithstanding any settlements to the contrary, unless the persons, who should otherwise inherit, would take the prescribed oaths, and conform to protestantism: but the system was carried to unnecessary harshness in prohibiting catholics from realizing their money in lands, and from enjoying a leasehold interest for more than thirty-one years, beside some other instances of severity, If the son of a catholic should become a protestant, he was vested with a power over the inheritance of his father, who in that case became tenant for life under mortifying restrictions,

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