of the wretched articles of Limerick, by keeping up a perpetual terrour and persecution over that parcel of miserable, unarmed peasantry, and dastard gentry we have left at home, without any other apology or pretence for it, but her wanton fears and jealousies; what could have been expected by the men of true vigour and spirit, if they had remained in their country, but a cruel war, under greater disadvantages, or such a universal massacre as our fathers have often been threatened with by the confederate rebels of Great Britain ?”—Ad quod non fuit responsum.-Yet their liberty and glory abroad is but the price of their blood; and, even at that expense, they have only purchased a more honourable Haseldama *.

It was impossible for a people to thrive, after having been driven by their too warrantable distrust of their enemies, into the snares laid for them by their false friends. France, upon their arrival, gave them a cruel reform of their officers and of their pay for a welcome, by a scandalous breach of faith; sacrificed them to her wars; made their zeal and spirit the dupes of her idle pretences; and, at last, inhumanly disbanded great numbers of them to the wide world, after the peace of Ryswick. Had they been kept together in one body from the beginning, to the number of 30000 men, according to the promise that tempted them partly to quit their country, they had made a much better figure in the world. Richelieu's politicks were against it. He was a great master, particularly in the judgment he had formed of the valour of his countrymen; since he has left it on record, that bodies of foreign troops must be

Field of blood.

mixed with French, in order to give them emulation. Upon this account the Irish were parcelled by brigades among the many armies entertained by the French king. Although this repartition was very mortifying to them, they ever behaved in their several bands apart with particular distinction. They never found themselves in any engagement, where they did not pierce the opposite enemy. Not one regiment of them ever fled, till it was in a manner left alone; and during all the late wars, in which their principals were generally worsted, they cannot be said to have lost two pair of colours. The French never gained a victory, to which those handfuls of Irish were not known to have contributed in a singular manner; nor lost a battle, in which they did not preserve, or rather augment their reputation, by carrying off colours and standards from the victorious enemy. From this we may conclude, without any great vanity, that they had been an impenetrable phalanx, if they had been allowed to continue in one body; and that, instead of acquiring glory by retail, they had gained complete victories; as one single brigade of them did at Mellazo, having driven the whole German army into the town or the sea, after they had been deserted by the Spanish troops and generals to a man. Yet their principal officers, who have signalized themselves equally upon all occasions, have been advanced to no higher preferment than that of lieutenant general; whereas Scots, Germans, Livonians, Italians, have been promoted to the dignity of marêchals of France. But as the valour of the Irish is already taken for granted abroad, and their zeal turned into a sort of ridicule, on account

of the unprecedented usage it has met with at home,

it is modestly presumed all over the world, that they scarce need any reward for their virtue, but their virtue alone.

I have often been at a loss for the cause of this odd destiny, that attends the Irish catholicks in all foreign courts and countries. They are the first called upon for any service that requires fidelity and resolution; the last distinguished with any eminent marks of honour or advantage. Let them behave ever so well, if it be thought fit to give them any recompense, it is always inferiour to what might be judged sufficient for men of any other country in the like case. Whatever others might be entitled to grumble at as a reward, must be received by them as a gift. Whatever is taken from them, either at home or abroad, is lawful prize. Their zeal, in regard of loyalty and religion, has been so cruelly misrepresented, and their unparallelled sufferings so involved in shades, or clad with an air of justice, that they are become a by-word in all countries alike; which are perfectly agreed to keep them low, after the example of their own princes, upon a presumption that they could not have been used so extremely ill, if they had not in some measure deserved it. A long and perpetual train of misfortunes has a strange tendency toward putting a people in the wrong; or, at best, making them the objects of ridicule. The Irish, for having been steady to their principles, and. not as cunning knaves as the two neighbouring nations, have groaned, during the two last centuries, under all the weight of injustice, calumny, and tyranny, of which there is no example, in equal circumstances, to be shown in any history of the universe. All this calumny has been sounded into the

ears

ears of all Europe by their enemies, both foreign and domestick; and thereby gained credit, more or less, on account of not having been sufficiently controverted or refuted in time. Their constant misfortunes have given a sort of sanction to all this imposture and iniquity. They could not defend themselves, in the midst of so much division at home, from so many powerful and confederated enemies, who had alienated the hearts of their very sovereigns from them, in order to make him the first, and them the last victims of the tragedy. In the mean time they were involved in too much war, or in too much misery, to be the relaters of their own story with any advantage; or found the English language as backward as the English nation and government, to do them common justice. Their enemies have spared them the labour with a vengeance.

The mongrel historians of the birth of Ireland, from Stanihurst and Dr. King down to the most wretched scribbler, cannot afford them a good word, in order to curry favour with England. Our callow bards of the drama, with the same view, draw their first pens against their country, and force their way into the world through their mother's womb. The English writers take the hints from them with pleasure; and delight in grafting the flattest nonsense, and most silly artifices, upon teigueism, to divert that honest generation of numskulls, the mobs of England, from the Land's End to Berwick upon Tweed, In regard of improprieties in the turn of a foreign speech or accent, totus mundus egit histrionem; but the genuine characters of a nation ought to be as sacred, even upon the stage, as in history. In the days of king Charles the second, the Irish bravery

and

and fidelity had the applause of whole theatres; but now nothing but Irish stupidity, and wretched small craft, will go down, even upon that of Dublin.

As all the honour the protestant Irish have acquired by their pen or their swords, passes generally for English; so the English, and their adherents in Ireland, have been in a long confederacy, before Clarendon appeared, to suppress or tarnish all the renown accruing to that unhappy country, from the worth and gallant actions of the catholicks. Their pens are ever dipped in bitterness and detraction; as if whatever could be reckoned valuable in that unfortunate people, were a lessening to the honour of the English nation, to which all their incense is addressed. However, though they have done horrible outrages to justice and veracity, by propagating lies, more or less, all over the world, they must be allowed to have acted with great sagacity, in favour of themselves. For if the Irish had not been represented, with uncommon industry, and in full cry, as a barbarous and stupid people, breakers of publick faith, cowards, murderers of the innocent, without any provocation, in every corner of their country; rebels. to their lawful sovereigns, in whose defence they have ruined and annihilated themselves; all these attributes (except that of folly) had necessarily fallen to the share of England; and she must have been looked upon, by the whole universe, as the most lawless and inhuman tyrant upon the face of the earth. Yet all this villany ought not, in strict justice, to be imputed to her. She had not gone all those lengths of cruelty and iniquity, if she had not been under the force of Cromwell, and the influence of a Clarendon.

In