resting on his own authority. Indeed, the very appellative, O'Driscol, sounds like that of a partial historian Per Mac et O tu veros cognoscis Hibernos. And the initial of his name is a kind of intimation that he cannot be a fair reporter in his own cause. One is disposed to class O'Driscol's Ireland with O'Flaherty's Ogygia, and to annex as much credit to the one, when he affirms, that the Irish Papists never retaliated on the Protestants, while they had the power, as to the other, when he traces their genealogy beyond the Flood. On examination, however, we find that he is borne out in his statements, not only by the writers of his own country, but, what is still more conclusive, by their adversaries; who admit such facts incidentally as to support the Irish historians, and Mr. O'Driscol among the number, in the melancholy details of the period to which he confines his history. These authorities are now easily referred to, and speedily examined. Dr. Curry, an eminent physician in Dublin, was passing through the Castle Yard in the year 1746, on the day of the anniversary of the Irish rebellion. He met two young ladies with a child, who, stepping out before them, extended her hands in an attitude of horror, and inquired whether there were any of those blood-thirsty Irish in Dublin. The party were coming from Christ's Church, and had heard the appropriate service and sermon appointed for this occasion. This circumstance induced him, he says, to inquire particularly into the facts, and to ascertain the truth of those details which were thus made, even in the house of God, the instruments of awaking horror and prejudice in the minds of the rising generation. He found sufficient in his researches to convince him, that the excesses attributed to the Irish, were either the fabrications or the exaggerations of writers whose personal interest it was to misrepresent; and that the unfortunate natives were themselves the victims of much more cruelty than they inflicted on that occasion; and this conviction arose, not from the suspected accounts of the Irish writers in their own cause, but from the admissions of their adversaries. The result of his researches, he afterwards published in two volumes, of which there has been more than one edition. They almost entirely consist of quotations from Cambrensis, Spencer, Campion, Morrison, Borlase, Temple, Carte, &c. &c.; English writers, generally living at the times, and amid the scenes they describe, and strongly imbued with the partialities of partizans. Yet, their admissions, connected together, detail a series of cruelties inflicted upon the natives of Ireland during nearly six centuries, that no other people ever underwent, except, perhaps, the Mexicans and Peruvians. By the unexceptionable testimony of this compilation, Mr. O'Driscol's work is supported, and it therefore rests upon evidence not to be disputed. It is not our wish to revive or to keep alive enmities, by recording the aggressions of either party, during those dismal times; it is better they should be for ever buried in oblivion, and not made, at this day, the instruments of resuscitating the embers of expiring animosities. But the review of such a work as that before us, imposes on us an unavoidable task, because it is our duty to ascertain what degree of credit should be given to its statements. We will merely advert to one period, and to the illustrations afforded to it by adverse writers, because it is the period which has been stigmatized, more than any other in Irish history, for the almost incredible and unprovoked atrocities committed by the natives on the unoffending English settlers, and which induced Hume to say: An universal massacre of the English commenced, when no age, no sex, no condition was spared; destruction was let loose, and met the hunted victim at every corner,' * &c. Now hear the evidence collected by Curry from the admissions of the English historians themselves, including the most prejudiced and interested, Temple and Borlase. In the year 1641, the Irish were driven to form a confederacy in their own defence, and to preserve themselves and their religion from utter extirpation, with which they were threatened.+ When they assembled at Kilkenny, they adopted for their seal, Pro Deo, pro Rege, et pro Patria • Hiberniæ;' and the oath they solemnly took was, to bear 'true allegiance to their sovereign lord King Charles, his heirs ' and successors, and to defend them with their life and estate against all persons who should attempt any thing against them, or the power and privilege of parliament, or the lawful rights of the subject.' They excepted from pardon all those of their own party who should commit any cruel excess; and it was the desire of the whole nation, that the perpetrators of cruelties should be made in the highest degree examples to all posterity §. They took into their possession, for the prevention of evils, and for his majesty's honour, use, and service, forts and other places of strength; and they declared, that they harboured not the least thought of disloyalty against him, or of purpose to hurt his subjects. To these declarations they strictly adhered in all their acts up to a certain time ¶. time was the beginning of November, when the Scotch landed *Hist. of Engl. Vol. IV. Borlase, p. 74. Remonstrance of the Co. Cavan. + Carte, Vol. I. p. Temple, p. 126. That 263. in Island Magee, near Belfast, and massacred in cold blood, 3000 innocent Irish families, who had taken refuge there, and were living with a feeling of security under protection *. Then it was, and not till then, that the first deviation from their humane resolutions displayed itself at the surrender of Lurgan +, just after the massacre, and in its immediate vicinity, by an exasperated people whom the confederates could not control. The cruelties of which the English were guilty in retaliation, are too horrible for description: they butchered old and decrepid people in their beds, women with child, and children eight days old, burning houses with all their inhabitants, and even warring with the dead, by digging up graves, scattering and trampling on the bones of the deceased, and burning their bodies. Among the foremost is said to have been Cromwell himself, who is charged with going beyond all the rest in cold-blooded perfidy and cruelty; exceeding even himself,' as Ormonde says, 'in breach of faith, and bloody inhumanity;'§ considering the Irish as Amalekites, whom he was, like Joshua, commanded to slay |, and actually sending a colony of Jews as appropriate auxiliaries to assist in extirpating them. The whole number of English destroyed, was-not 150,000, according to the fictions of Temple and Maxwel, on which Hume built his dismal statements, while he altogether forgot to mention the massacre perpetrated by his countrymen at Island Magee,-but was proved by an English clergyman, after the most accurate scrutiny of the documents, to amount to only 4,028 in the two first years, and, in the whole ten years of the war, not to exceed 6,062, exclusive of about 800 families who had disappeared from their abodes T. While, during the same period, nearly the whole Irish population was extirpated, and the country reduced to the savage wildness of a desert. The Irish ecclesiastics have been particularly stigmatized, and held up to the reprobation of mankind. They have been the victims of the most relentless persecutions; and it has been asserted, that the utmost severity has fallen short of their deserts. Yet, there are not to be found in the history of any country, more amiable examples of meekness, simplicity, and uprightness, than they have exhibited, according to the admis sions of those same historians. We shall mention a few instances. In the year 1170, a synod was held at Armagh, by the indefatigable primate Galerius. The object of their meeting was, to inquire into the cause of the invasion of their country by * Carte, Vol. I. † 15 Nov. Letter to Lord Byam. strangers, and what offence they had given to God, to draw down on them such a national visitation. On mature deliberation, they concluded, that it was to scourge the sins of the people in general, but, in particular, the sin of buying English children as slaves from the pirates and merchants who frequented their shores. The English on the opposite coast had been, it seems, in the practice of selling their children and kinsfolk, and the Irish of purchasing them; and this unchristian practice was deemed by the Irish ecclesiastics an offence of sufficient magnitude to draw down on them the just vengeance of God. They, therefore, by unanimous consent, decreed, that all those already in bondage should be liberated, and that the practice in future should be entirely prohibited*. A more illustrious instance of rectitude, both in religious sentiment and kindly feeling, is not to be found in history. This is, perhaps, the first example of the formal abolition of the slave-trade in any country, for which the world are indebted to the Catholic clergy of Ireland. It is not generally known, that the Quakers of that country were the first to set a similar example in modern times; their resolutions to that effect, at the General Meeting held in Dublin, in 1727, having preceded by thirty years a similar one in London +. In the midst of the tremendous scenes of blood and carnage which depopulated Ireland in the reign of Charles I., the ecclesiastics, though hunted like wild beasts by the Presbyterians, every where interposed their authority to restrain the excesses and retaliations of their own party. At a synod of archbishops, bishops, and inferior clergy, assembled at Kilkenny, in May 1642, excommunication was pronounced against any who should murder, dismember, or grievously strike;all unlawful spoilers or robbers of any goods, or such as 'favoured or received them;-all such as had invaded, or 'should invade, the possessions or goods, spiritual or temporal, of any Irish Protestant not against them. No clergy, regular or secular, were to hear the confessions of, or to give the sacrament to, any such person, under pain of excommunication himself, ipso facto. Notwithstanding this, all the excesses, and even the rebellion itself, were imputed to them by their bitter enemies, while they were acquitted even by the adverse historians. 'Although,' said the most respectable and unimpeachable witness, the conspiracy was imputed to them, ⚫ yet not above two or three of them seemed to know any thing * Cambrensis Hib. expugnat. lib. i. cap. 18.-Ware's Antiq. vol. i. p. 60. † Whitelaw and Walsh's History of Dublin, vol. ii. p. 834. "of it." The sufferings and persecutions they endured at this time, are unparalleled; not only in Ireland, but in England, whither they had fled for protection. Commissioners were appointed in 1652, who issued a proclamation+, declaring that any Romish priest found, was to be deemed guilty of rebellion, and sentenced to be hanged, his bowels drawn out and burned, and his head fixed on a pole in some public place. Those who entertained a priest, were to have their property confiscated, and be themselves hanged. Even the private exercise of the Catholic religion was made a capital crime. This edict was renewed in 1657; and those who knew where a priest was concealed, and did not. reveal it, were to suffer the same punishment. In England, eight Catholic priests who had escaped from the perils and persecutions of their own country, were arrested and condemned; and seven were executed for the mere act of saying mass. Which occasioned an historian to remark, that if a Turkish dervish had preached up Mahomet in England, he would have met with much better treatment than a popish priest.'§ Among the victims of this blind pre-· judice, was one deeply to be deplored. Oliver Plunket had been appointed titular primate by the pope, from the knowledge he had of his piety and learning, though many others had been proposed and supported by powerful interest. After passing ten years at his see in the practice of piety and universal charity, he was dragged to answer charges which his enemies had brought against him. For the purpose of his conviction, some profligate witnesses were suborned, who were of the lowest description. They came to England in rags and poverty, and returned afterwards with money and fine clothes.' They were lodged in the house of the noted Lord Shaftsbury, and were there instructed in what they were to say and do. On the evidence of these notoriously infamous men, whom nobody believed, the excellent primate was condemned and ignominiously hanged at Tyburn, dying with the meek fortitude which had distinguished his life, and solemnly denying every thing these suborned men had sworn. Every unprejudiced historian, even on the opposite side, has given him the highest character for wisdom, piety, and learning. He was wise and 'sober,' said a candid Protestant bishop, his contemporary, fond of living quietly, and in due subjection to the government.' Such was the conduct of Protestants to a Catholic bishop in Carte v. i. + Carte, Warner, &c. |