heir pontificates, should deviate from their
glorious career, to belie their principles,--the one, by granting out
of national prejudice and court sycophancy a license of spoliation to
a king of England,--and the other, by confirming it out of reasons
just as unworthy.

As it was, Providence did not see fit to allow the views either of
Adrian or Henry, to be carried out as originally intended. For the
expedition of the king against Ireland, was put off, on account of
various obstacles, for fourteen years, during which term, the papal
brief was consigned to the royal archives, and there forgotten. Nor
was it till six years after the actual invasion of Ireland by
Strongbow, that its existence was remembered by Henry; who, anxious to
consolidate his new conquest, had the authority of Adrian's brief
renewed, by procuring another in confirmation of it from Alexander,
and then caused both documents to be read up before the Irish bishops,
assembled in synod at Waterford; by whom his sovereignty had already,
without any reference to papal commands, been acknowledged.

That the English sway turned out so unjust and disastrous to Ireland,
reflects no blame on Adrian, than whom no one would have more deplored
the evil, and striven against its true causes, than he. Rather ought
he, from the spirit of his brief,--the only fair test to apply to
him,--to be regarded as the head of that small, unfortunately so very
small, band of Englishmen, who have ever meant well to the sister
isle; and who, to speak the sober truth, if their views might prevail,
would alone be likely to promote her true prosperity, by shielding her
not only against her outward, but her inward foes; to which
latter,--consisting in those elements of social discord so profusely, so
deeply rooted, as it would seem, in the nature of her people,---she owes
by far the worst portion of her calamities. No doubt Pope Adrian, a man
of the most shrewd practical intellect, and from the circumstances of
his life, of the deepest experience in human nature, saw clearly
enough then,--what continues to be seen so clearly by men of his stamp
now,--that Ireland could never truly prosper, so long as left to her
own management, by reason of the incurable defect mentioned above; and
that, therefore, to sanction her sisterly, not her slavish connection,
with a nation like the English, so eminent for those very qualities of
order and self maintenance, in which she is so wanting, would be