No immunity was granted even
to men who had fought on the English side, even to men who had lined the
walls of Londonderry and rushed on the Irish guns at Newton Butler.

In some cases the Commons showed indulgence; but their indulgence was
not less unjustifiable, nor of less pernicious example, than their
severity. The ancient rule, a rule which is still strictly maintained,
and which cannot be relaxed without danger of boundless profusion and
shameless jobbery, is that whatever the Parliament grants shall be
granted to the Sovereign, and that no public bounty shall be bestowed on
any private person except by the Sovereign.

The Lower House now, contemptuously disregarding both principles and
precedents, took on itself to carve estates out of the forfeitures
for persons whom it was inclined to favour. To the Duke of Ormond
especially, who ranked among the Tories and was distinguished by his
dislike of the foreigners, marked partiality was shown. Some of his
friends, indeed, hoped that they should be able to insert in the bill
a clause bestowing on him all the confiscated estates in the county of
Tipperary. But they found that it would be prudent in them to content
themselves with conferring on him a boon smaller in amount, but equally
objectionable in principle. He had owed very large debts to persons who
had forfeited to the Crown all that belonged to them. Those debts were
therefore now due from him to the Crown. The House determined to make
him a present of the whole, that very House which would not consent
to leave a single acre to the general who had stormed Athlone, who had
gained the battle of Aghrim, who had entered Galway in triumph, and who
had received the submission of Limerick.

That a bill so violent, so unjust, and so unconstitutional would pass
the Lords without considerable alteration was hardly to be expected. The
ruling demagogues, therefore, resolved to join it with the bill which
granted to the Crown a land tax of two shillings in the pound for the
service of the next year, and thus to place the Upper House under the
necessity of either passing both bills together without the change of a
word, or rejecting both together, and leaving the public creditor unpaid
and the nation defenceless.

There was great indignation among the Peers. They were not indeed more
disposed than the Commons to approve of the manner in which the Irish
forfeitures had been granted away; for the antipathy to the foreigners