THE "Lives and Times of the United Irishmen" seems designed to serve as an apology for the insurrection of 1798. The work has little attraction for our taste, does not approve itself to our rustic morals, advocates principles to which we are not favourable; but yet we shall notice it, for the importance of its subject matter, with a serious attention, and, for our own sake, with what we are bold to call our accustomed and characteristic fairness.

He

If we have not altogether mistaken the author's argument, his purpose is to prove that the rebellion of 1798 was a natural, if not a necessary result from the oppressions by which the Irish people were afflicted. writes as if he were compiling the history of a conflict between two independent and hostile parties-one consisting of the legitimate government of the country, the other composed of conspirators; and while acknowledging, with a candour by no means unserviceable to his object, that the latter entertained some erroneous views, and were chargeable with some rash and intemperate proceedings, he spares no pains to make it appear that all the darker and more tragical iniquities the perfidy, the despotism, the cruelty-belonged, in a especial manner, to the former. Such is the conclusion to which the author has been conducted, and to which he invites his readers. The evidence which has satisfied him, he recommends by assurances, that it has been collected at much cost and labour, and has been very carefully examined. He omits, however, a circumstance which we hold worthy of notice, namely, that the testimony by which the insurgents are defended, has been gathered from the professions of their friends or of themselves; while enemies to the accused party have supplied the evidence by which the government is sought to be convicted. This may seem to denote a very daring spirit in our author, but we can safely

more

affirm, that the device, far from being novel, is a very ordinary offort of ingenuity on the part of many Irish historians. They know their readers and are bold.

Dr. Madden prefixes to his work a historical introduction, written, he informs us, by one, the most competent of all his acquaintances, to write a history of Ireland. We should not have been sorry had this unknown contributor of thirty-seven pages been more liberal of his assistance. Had he written the whole work, it would have been, very probably, we are ready to acknowledge, more mischievous; but, we are confident, it would have been more agreeable. It partakes of the vice "of all its tribe," but it is cleverly written, and written by one who could do better if he were able always to bear in mind, that a historian should not be the minister

of a party. The following passage, in which the writer explains the enmity of the house of Tudor to the chieftainry of Ireland, and the failure of efforts to effect a reformation in religion, contains some valuable truth, and expresses it well :

"The four first centuries after

Strongbow's invasion passed away without the conquest of Ireland being completed; the wars with France and Scotland, the insurrections of the barons, and the murderous wars of the Roses, prevented the English monarchs from establishing even a nominal supremacy over the entire island; instead of the Irish princes becoming feudal vassals, the Anglo-Norman barons who obtained fiefs in Ireland, adopted the usages of the native chieftains. The attention of Henry VII. was forcibly directed to this state of things, by the adherence of the Anglo-Norman barons and the Irish princes with whom they had formed an alliance or connection, to the cause of the Plantagenets. They supported Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck; when these adventurers were defeated, they showed the greatest reluctance to swear allegiance to the Tudors, and Henry could not but feel

that his crown was insecure, so long as the Irish lords had the power and will to support any adventurer who would dispute his title. From that time forward it became the fixed policy of the Tudors to break down the overgrown power of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, and to destroy the independence of the native chieftains. In England, the Tudors were enabled to create a new nobility; the progress of the reformation was accompanied by the elevation of several new families to the peerage, and the struggle between the Protestants and Catholics in that country, was, for a considerable time, identical with the contest between the old and new aristocracy. In Ireland it was impossible to adopt the same course of policy; there was not a gentry from which a new aristocracy could be formed, and the Tudors were forced to supply their place by grants of land to colonists and adventurers. The Irish and the Anglo-Norman barons looked upon these men as intruders, while the ruling powers regarded them with peculiar favour, as being the persons most likely to establish and promote an English interest in Ireland.' This political motive must not be confounded with the religious movement which took place about the same time; it was as much the object of Mary as it was of Elizabeth, to give Irish lands to English settlers, in order to obtain a hold over Ireland; it was under Mary that the lands of Leix and O'Fally were forfeited, and the lord deputy permitted to grant leases of them, at such rents as he might deem expedient.

"In the midst of this political convulsion, an attempt was made to bring Ireland to adopt the principles of the Reformation, which had been just established in England. There was a

vast difference between the situation of the two countries, which deserves to be more attentively considered than it usually has been. It was on a papal grant that the English monarchs, from the very beginning, had rested their claims to the allegiance of Ireland, and there was consequently something like an abandonment of these claims when they called upon the Irish to renounce the supremacy of the pope. But not only had the English kings described the pope as the source of their power, they had for centuries made it a principal object of their policy to maintain the power of the episcopacy and priesthood in Ireland, against the ambition or avarice of the Anglo-Norman barons. They had themselves armed the church with power and influence greater than they could overthrow.

"After the long night of the middle

ages, an intellectual revival had filled Christendom with discussions which weakened the strength of ancient institutions, and prepared men's minds for the reception of new opinions. Ireland had not shared in the general movement; whatever may have been the condition of the island before the English invasion, the four centuries of political chaos and constant war subsequent to that event, had rendered it one of the most distracted countries in Christendom; there had been no precursors to make way for a religious change; the Irish had never heard of Huss, or Wickliffe, or Luther, or Calvin. The only intelligible reason proposed to them for a change of creed, was the royal authority; and they were already engaged in a struggle against that authority, to prevent their lands being parcelled out to strangers. Add to this, that the reformed religion was preached by foreigners, ignorant of the very language of the country, and there will be little difficulty in perceiving that the attempt, under such circumstances, to establish Protestantism in Ireland, by the conversion of the Irish, was utterly impossible. In fact, the project of converting the natives was soon abandoned for the more feasible plan of colonizing Ireland with Protestants from England."

We have little doubt that the writer of this passage, if he would allow his reasoning faculties to exert themselves, and, to insure them free exercise, would cast prejudice aside, has it in his power to render much service to all who strive to understand the history of his country. It is true that England exalted and confirmed the power of a hierocracy in Ireland, in order that through it she might secure her own. It is true that, with a view to the same end, an English monarch broke down the authority and influence of the Irish chieftainry, and thus left each clan or tribe without a head through which it might be governed. And it is also true, that by thus separating the people from their natural chiefs, leaving them, at the same time, too ignorant to govern themselves, he prepared them to submit implicitly to sacerdotal authority. They must have leaders, and when England struck off leaders of one description, inasmuch as she did not and could not take from the people the inclination to be governed, she only left the authority of their church without a rival.

It is a remarkable fact, however little it may have been noticed, that the principle on which Henry II. applied himself to a reformation of the Irish church was the same which authorities in later times have been censured for adopting. The Norman conqueror (Fitz-Empress, as Irish historians soothed their pride by styling Henry II.) exerted himself that the Irish church, which he found independent, should be reduced into conformity with the Anglican, at that time the same with the Roman. The Tudor sovereign exerted himself to reform the Irish church, which he found in communion with the Roman, into a correspondence with the Anglican, which had, at that time, declared itself independent; the principle of change in each instance, if the writer of the introduction be correct, was the same-namely, an admission of the ascendancy of England. "The only intelligible reason proposed to them" (the Irish, thus writes Dr. Madden's friend,) "for a change of religion, was the royal authority." This was the reason assigned for the catholic reformation of more modern times-the reason assigned for the Romish reformation of the earlier period is the same. is avowed in the eighth article of the Synod of Cashel, A.D. 1172:

It

insurrection is to be acknowledged it was the consequence of injustice on the part of government, or unrighte ous severity in the law. If a massacre must be lamented-it was to be classed

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among those agrarian outrages"

which accuse the victims almost as forcibly as their murderers. Chief governors like Strafford are naturally, we are instructed, the authors or promoters of rebellion :-pillage and massacre are the inevitable consequence of offences perpetrated by the state against the rights of property. It is among the vices of our modern times, that representations to this effect may be made with impunity before one class of persons, and with a certainty of working mischief in another. Such names as Strafford, except in condemnation of it-such deeds as those which characterised the rebellion of 1641-can hardly be named to ears polite. The reproach of the French lady, in the days of the empire, when some prosing pedant referred to a historical event in the Bourbon dynasty :-" Ah, parlez moi d' Adam et d' Eve"-would be, perhaps the lightest severity for which we should hold ourselves prepared, were we to engage in an examination of incidents or characters which two centuries have separated from us; and, while it is the glory of England to indulge in brilliant retrospects of a thousand years, where the light of the past retains its splendour unabated, we, in Ireland, are condemned to feel that the liberty to look back is inhibited to us almost as straitly as if we were parting from a city about to perish, and were escaping with our lives.

All Ireland is not infected with this archaiophobia. On the contrary, the memorials on which one part of our population will scarcely condescend to look, furnish the materials for a Mythology of Irish grievances, in which the patriotism of the other part is mainly educated. They are taught to be lenient towards the atrocities of their countrymen, as towards the excesses of imperfect civilization; they are taught to pronounce judgment upon the ministers of English rule according to the standard of law and