tract
those concessions hereafter in a manner which must bring on him
reproaches insupportable to a noble mind? His situation was doubtless
embarrassing. Yet in this case, as in other cases, it would be found
that the path of justice was the path of wisdom, [225]

Though James had, in his speech at the opening of the session, declared
against the Act of Settlement, he felt that these arguments were
unanswerable. He held several conferences with the leading members of
the House of Commons, and earnestly recommended moderation. But his
exhortations irritated the passions which he wished to allay. Many of
the native gentry held high and violent language. It was impudent, they
said, to talk about the rights of purchasers. How could right spring out
of wrong? People who chose to buy property acquired by injustice must
take the consequences of their folly and cupidity. It was clear that the
Lower House was altogether impracticable. James had, four years
before, refused to make the smallest concession to the most obsequious
parliament that has ever sat in England; and it might have been expected
that the obstinacy, which he had never wanted when it was a vice, would
not have failed him now when it would have been a virtue. During a short
time he seemed determined to act justly. He even talked of dissolving
the parliament. The chiefs of the old Celtic families, on the
other hand, said publicly that, if he did not give them back their
inheritance, they would not fight for his. His very soldiers railed on
him in the streets of Dublin. At length he determined to go down himself
to the House of Peers, not in his robes and crown, but in the garb in
which he had been used to attend debates at Westminster, and personally
to solicit the Lords to put some check on the violence of the Commons.
But just as he was getting into his coach for this purpose he was
stopped by Avaux. Avaux was as zealous as any Irishman for the bills
which the Commons were urging forward. It was enough for him that those
bills seemed likely to make the enmity between England and Ireland
irreconcileable. His remonstrances induced James to abstain from openly
opposing the repeal of the Act of Settlement. Still the unfortunate
prince continued to cherish some faint hope that the law for which the
Commons were so zealous would be rejected, or at least modified, by the
Peers. Lord Granard, one of the few Protestant noblemen who sate in that
parliament, exerted himsel