THIRD LECTURE.

DELIVERED IN THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 19, 1872.

ADIES AND GENTLEMEN, -I now approach, in answering Mr. Froude, some of the most awful periods of our history, and I confess that I approach this terrible ground with hesitancy, and with an extreme regret that Mr. Froude should have opened up questions which oblige an Irishman to undergo the pain of heart and anguish of spirit which a revision of those periods of our history must occasion. The learned gentleman began his third lecture by reminding his audience that he had closed his second lecture with a reference to the rise, progress, and collapse of a great rebellion which took place in Ireland in 1641 - that is to say, somewhat more than two hundred years ago. He made but a passing allusion to that great event in our history, and in that allusion - if he has been reported correctly-he said simply that the Irish rebelled in 1641. This was his first statement, that it was a rebellion; secondly, that this rebellion began in massacre and ended in ruin; thirdly, that for nine years the Irish leaders had the destinies of their country in their hands; and, fourthly, that those nine years were years of anarchy and mutual slaughter. Nothing, therefore, can be imagined more melancholy than the picture drawn by that learned gentleman of these ume sad years. And yet I will venture to say, and I hope I shall be able to prove, that each of these four statements is without sufficient historical foundation. My first position is that the movement of 1641 was not a rebellion; second, that it did not begin with massacre, although it ended in ruin; thirdly, that the Irish leaders had not the destiny of their country in their

hands during these years; and, fourth, whether they had or not, that these years were not a period of anarchy and mutual slaughter. They were but the opening to a far more terrific period. We must discuss these questions, my friends, calmly and historically. We must look upon them rather like the antiquarian prying into the past than with the living, warm feelings of men whose blood boils up with the burnings of so much injustice and so much bloodshed.

In order to understand this question fully and fairly, it is necessary for us to go back to the historical events of the time. I find, then, that James I., the man who planted Ulster that is to say, confiscated utterly and entirely six of the finest counties in Ireland, an entire province, rooting out the aboriginal Irish and Catholic inhabitants, even to a man, giving the whole country to Scotch and English settlers of the Protestant religion, under the condition that they were not to employ even as much as an Irish laborer on their grounds, that they were to banish them all this man died in 1625 and was succeeded by his unfortunate son, Charles I. When Charles came to the throne, bred up as he was in the traditions of a monarchy which Henry VIII. had rendered almost absolute, as we know --whose absolute power was still continued in Elizabeth under forms the most tyrannical, whose absolute power was continued by his own father, James I. - Charles came to the throne with the most exaggerated ideas of royal privileges and supremacy. But during the days of his father a new spirit had grown up in Scotland and in England. The form which Protestantism took in Scotland was the hard, uncompromising, and highly cruel form of Calvinism in its most repellant aspect. The men who rose in Scotland in defence of their Presbyterian religion rose not against Catholic people, but against the Episcopalian Protestants of England. They defended what they called the kirk or covenant. They fought bravely, I acknowledge, for it, and they ended in establishing it as the religion of Scotland.

Now, Charles I. was an Episcopalian Protestant of the most sincere and devoted kind. The Parliament of England, in the very first years of Charles, admitted persons who were strongly tinged with Scottish Calvinism. The king demanded of them certain subsidies and they refused him; he asserted certain sovereign rights and they denied them. While this was going on in England from 1630 to

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Charles I. was

1641, what was the condition of affairs in Ireland? vince of the land had been confiscated by James I. in need of money for his own purposes, and his Parliament refused to grant any. Then the poor, oppressed, and down-trodden Catholics of Ireland imagined, naturally enough, that the king, being in difficulties, would turn to them and extend a little countenance and favor if they proclaimed their loyalty and stood by him. Accordingly, the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Falkland, desiring sincerely to aid his royal master, hinted to the Catholics, who had been enduring the most terrible penal laws from the days of Elizabeth and James I., that perhaps, if they should now petition the king, certain graces of concessions might be granted them. These concessions simply involved permission of riding over English land and to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. They sought for nothing more, and nothing more was promised them. When their petition was laid before the king, his royal majesty issued a prociamation in which he declared that it was his intention, and that he had plighted his word, to grant to the Catholics and people of Ireland certain concessions and indulgences, which he named "graces.' No sooner does the newly-founded Puritan element in England and the Parliament that were in rebellion against their king-no sooner did they hear that the slightest relaxation of the penal law was to be granted to the Catholics of Ireland than they instantly rose and protested that it should not be; and Charles, to his eternal disgrace, broke his word with the Catholics of Ireland after they had sent him £120,000 in acknowledgment of his promise. More than that, it was suspected that Lord Falkland was too mild a man, too just a man, to be allowed to remain as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and he was recalled, and after a short lapse Wentworth, who was Earl of Strafford, was sent there as Lord Lieutenant. Wentworth on his arrival summoned a Parliament, and they met in the year 1634. He told them the difficulties that the king was in; he told them how the Parliament in England was rebelling against him, and how he looked to his Irish subjects as loyal. He perhaps told them that amongst Catholics loyalty was not a mere sentiment, that it was an unshaken principle, resting on conscience and religion. And then he assured them that Charles, the King of England, still intended to keep his word, and to grant them their concessions. Next came the usua

demand for money, and the Irish Parliament granted six subsidies of £50,000 each. Strafford wrote to the king congratulating his majesty that he had got so much money out of the Irish, for he said: "You and I remember that your majesty expected only £30,000, and they have granted £50,000." More than this, the Irish Parliament voted the king 8,000 infantry and 1,000 horse to fight his rebellious enemies. The Parliament met the following year, 1635, and what do you think was the fulfilment of the royal promise to the Catholics of Ireland? Strafford had got the money. He did not wish to compromise his master the king, and he took upon himself to fix upon his memory the indelible shame and disgrace of breaking his word, which he had plighted, and disappoint the Catholics of Ireland. Then, in 1635, the real character of this man came out, and what do you think was the measure he proposed? He instituted a commission for the express purpose of confiscating, in addition to Ulsterthat was already gone the whole province of Connaught, so as not to leave an Irishman or Catholic one square inch of ground in that land. This he called the Commission of Defective Titles. The members of the commission were to enquire into the title of property, and to find a flaw in it if they could, in order that the land might be confiscated to the Crown of England. Remember how much of Ireland had already been seized, my friends. The whole of Ulster had been confiscated by James I. The same king had taken the County of Longford from the O'Farrels, who had owned it from time immemorial; Wexford from the O'Tooles, and several other counties from the Irish families who were the rightful proprietors of the soil. And now, with the whole of Ulster and the better part of Leinster in his hand, this minister instituted a commission for the purpose of obtaining the whole of the province of Connaught and of rooting out the native Irish! He expelled every man that owned a rod of land in the province and reduced them to beggary, starvation, and to death. Here is the description of his plan as given by Leland, a historian who was hostile to Ireland's faith and Ireland's nationality. Leland thus describes this project: "It was nothing less than to set aside the title of every estate in every part of Connaught, a project which when proposed in the late reign was received with horror and amazement, and which suited the undismayed and enterprising genius of Lord Wentworth.

Accordingly he began in the County of Roscommon." He passed thence to Sligo, thence to Mayo, and then to Galway. The only way in which a title could be upset was to have a jury of twelve men, and according to their verdict the title was valid or not. Strafford began by picking his jury and packing them, the old policy that has been continued down to our own time the policy of packing and the prejudging of a jury. He told the jury before the trials began that he expected them to find a verdict for the king, and finally, by bribing and overawing, he got juries to go for him, until he came into my own county, Galway. And, to the honor of old Galway be it said, as soon as the commission arrived in that county they could not find twelve jurors there base enough or wicked enough to confiscate the lands of their fellow-subjects. What was the result? The County Galway jurors were called to Dublin before the Castle Chamber. Every man of them was fined £4,000, and put in prison to be kept until the fine was paid. Every square inch of their property was taken from them, and the high sheriff of Galway, being a man of moderate means, and having been fined £1,000, died in jail because he was not able to pay the unjust imposition. More than this, not content with threatening the juries and coercing them, my Lord Strafford went to the justices and told them that they were to get four shillings on the pound for the value of every single piece of property that they confiscated, and he boasted publicly that he had made the chief baron and the judges attend to this business as if it were their own private concern! This is the kind of rule the English historian comes to America to ask the honest and upright citizens of this free country to endorse by their verdict, and thereby to make themselves accomplices of English robbery. In the same way this Strafford instituted another tribunal in Ireland which he called the Court of Wards, and do you know what this was? It was found that the Irish people, gentle and simple, failed to become Protestants. I have not a harsh word to say to any of the Protestants, but I do say that every high-minded Protestant in the world must admire the strength and fidelity with which Ireland, because of her conscience, clings to her ancient faith, believing it true. This tribunal was instituted in order to get the heirs of Catholic gentry and to bring them up in the Protestant religion, and it was to this court of awards that was owing the sig