santly of the Irish battle-axes. Never were greater pains taken
to keep a community pure than within the sacred precincts of the
Derry walls; and never was Protestantism more tenderly fostered by
the state--so far as secular advantages could do it. The natives
were treated as 'foreigners.' No trade was permitted except by the
chartered British. They were free of tolls all over the land, and for
their sake restrictions were placed on everybody that could in any way
interfere with their worldly interests. So complete was the system
of exclusion kept up by the English Government and the London
corporation, in this grand experiment for planting religion and
civility among a barbarous people, that, so late as the year 1708,
the Derry corporation considered itself nothing more or less than _a
branch of the City of London_! In that year they sent an address to
the Irish Society, to be presented through them to the queen. 'In this
address they stated themselves to be a branch of the City of London.
The secretary was ordered to wait upon the lord lieutenant of Ireland
with the address and entreat the favour of his lordship's advice
concerning the presenting of the same to her majesty.' A few days
after it was announced that the address had been graciously received,
and published in the _Gazette_.

The Irish were kept out of the enclosed part of the city till a late
period. In the memory of the present generation there was no Catholic
house within the walls, and I believe it is not much longer since
the Catholic servants within the sacred enclosure were obliged to go
outside at night to sleep among their kinsfolk. The English garrison
did not multiply very fast. In 1626 there were only 109 families
in the city, of which five were families of soldiers liable to
be removed. Archbishop King stated that in 1690 the whole of the
population of the parish, including the Donegal part, was about 700.

But the irrepressible Irish increased and multiplied around the walls
with alarming rapidity. The tide of native population rose steadily
against the ramparts of exclusion, and could no more be kept back than
the tide in the Foyle. In the general census of 1800 there were no
returns from Derry. But in 1814 it was stated in a report by the
deputation from the Irish Society, that the population amounted at
that time to 14,087 persons. This must have included the suburbs. In
the census of 1821 the city was found to have 9,313 inhabitants. The