uer against them, and employing all the
niceties of a confused law to quash them, we have before condemned. In
doing so, he had the precedents of the reigns called most constitutional
by English historians, and those not old, but during his brother's
reign; nor can anyone who has looked into Brady's treatise on Boroughs
doubt that there was plenty of "law" in favour of James's conduct.[26]
But still public policy and public opinion in England were against
these _quo warrantos_, and in Ireland they were only approved of by
those who were to be benefited by them.

But the means being thus improper, the use made by James of this power
can hardly be complained of. The Roman Catholics were then about
900,000, the Protestants, over 300,000. James, it is confessed, allowed
one-third of the corporations to be Protestant, though they were
little, if at all, more than one-fourth of the population. This will
appear no great injustice in our times, although some of these
Protestants may, as it has been alleged, have been "Quakers."

It must also be remembered that those proceedings were begun not by
James but by Charles; that the corporations were, with some show of
law, conceived to have been forfeited during the Irish war, or the
Cromwellian rule; and that being offered renewals on terms, they
refused; whereupon the _quo warrantos_ were brought and decided before
the regular tribunals during the earlier and middle part of James's
reign. On the 24th September, 1687, James issued his Royal Letter (to
be found in Harris's Appendix, pp. 4 to 6), commanding the renewal of
the charters. By these renewals, the first members of the corporations
were to be named by the lord lieutenant, but they were afterwards to
be elected by the corporations themselves. There certainly are
_non-obstante_ and non-resistance clauses ordered to be inserted, in
the prerogative spirit of that day, which were justly complained of.

With reference to the number of burgesses, King's statement that the
number of electors was usually twelve or thirteen, and in the greatest
cities but twenty-four, is untrue. Most of the Irish boroughs were
certainly reduced to these numbers under the liberal Hanoverian
government, but not so under James. The members' names are given in
full in Harris's Appendix, and from those it appears that no
corporation had so few as twelve electors. Only five, viz.--Dungannon,
Ennis, St. Johnstown (in Longford), Belturbet, and Athboy, were