[1] This is not quite correct. The penalty in the Bill, as it
passed the Irish House of Commons, was branding on the cheek.
In sending the Bill on to England the Irish Privy Council
substituted castration. The English Government restored the
original penalty. The Bill ultimately fell through, but not, it
would seem, on this point. See Lecky, "History of England,"
Vol. I., ch. ii.--T. W. R.

CHAPTER VII.

CONCLUSION.

Let us now run our eyes ever the deeds of the Feis or parliament of
1689. It came into power at the end of a half century of which the
beginning was a civil and religious, social and proprietal persecution,
combining all the atrocities to which Ireland had been alternatively
subject for four centuries and a half. Of this, the next stage was a
partial insurrection, rendered universal by a bloody and rapacious
government. The next stage was a war, in which civil and religious
quarrels were so fiendishly combined that it could not end while there
was any one to fight with; in which the royalist dignitaries were the
cruelest foes of the royalist armies and people, and in which the
services done by cool and patriot soldiers were rendered useless by
factious theologians. The next stage was conquest, slaughter, exile,
confiscation, and the repose of solitude or of slavery. The next was a
Restoration which gave back its worst prerogatives to the crown, but
gave the restorers and royalists only a skirt of their properties. Then
came a struggle for proprietal justice and religious toleration, met by
an infamous conspiracy of the deceptious aristocracy and the fanatic
people of England, to blast the characters of the Irish, and decimate
the men; and lastly, a king, who strained his prerogative to do them
justice, is driven from England by a Dutchman, supported by blue
guards, black guards, and flaming lies, and is forced to throw himself
on the generosity and prudence of Ireland.

A faction existed who raised a civil war in every province; and in
every province, save one, it was suppressed; but in that one it
continued, and the sails of an invading fleet already flap in the
Channel breeze when this parliament is summoned.

How difficult was their position! How could they act as freemen,
without appearing ungenerous to a refugee and benefactor king? How
guard their nationality, without quarrelling with him or alienating
England from him? How could they d