till the 20th July. The few acts (thirty-five),
passed in two months, received full and earnest discussion; committees
and counsel were heard on many of them (the Acts for repealing the
Settlement in particular), and this parliament refused even to adjourn
during any holiday.

We trust our readers will deal like searchers for truth, not like
polemics, with these documents, and with the history of these times.
But, above all, let them not approach the subject unless it be in a
spirit enlightened by philosophy and warmed by charity. Thus studied,
this time, which has been the armoury of faction, may become the temple
of reconciliation. The descendant of the Williamite ought to sympathise
with the urgent patriotism and loyalty of the parliament, rather than
dwell on its errors, or on the sufferings which civil war inflicted on
his forefathers. The heir of the Jacobite may well be proud of such
countrymen as the Inniskilliners and the 'Prentice Boys of Derry. Both
must deplore that the falsehoods, corruption, and forgeries of English
aristocrats, the imprudence of an English king, and the fickleness of
the English people placed the noble cavalry which slew Schomberg, and
all but beat William's immense masses at the Boyne, in opposition to
the stout men of Butler's-bridge and Cavan. What had not the defenders
of Derry and Limerick, the heroes of Athlone, Inniskillen, and Aughrim
done, had they cordially joined against the alien? Let the Roman
Catholics, crushed by the Penal Code, let the Protestants, impoverished
and insulted by England, till, musket in hand and with banners
displayed, they forced their rights from her in '82--let both look
narrowly at the causes of those intestine feuds, which have prostrated
both in turn before the stranger, and see whether much may not be said
for both sides, and whether half of what each calls crime in the other
is not his own distrust or his neighbour's ignorance. Knowledge,
Charity, and Patriotism are the only powers which can loose this
Prometheus-land. Let us seek them daily in our own hearts and
conversation.

The Acts and other official documents of James's Parliament were
ordered by William's Parliament to be burned, and became extremely
scarce. In 1740 they were printed in Dublin by Ebenezer Rider, and from
that collection we propose to reprint the most important of them, as
the best and most solid answer to misrepresentation.

The Parliament which passed those Acts was the f