petual banishment and confiscation for these; but not without legal inquiry and due trial first had, for these, or for any one. Then certain others, who have been in arms at certain dates against the Parliament, but not concerned in the Massacre: these are declared to have forfeited their estates; but lands to the value of one-third of the same, as a modicum to live upon, shall be assigned them, where the Parliament thinks safest,-in the moorlands of Connaught, as it turned out. Then another class, who are open Papists and have not manifested their good affection to the Parliament: these are to forfeit one-third of their estates; and continue quiet at their peril. Such is the Document; which was regularly acted on; fulfilled with as much exactness as the case, now in the hands of very exact men, admitted of. The Catholic Aristocracy of Ireland have to undergo this fate, for their share in the late miseries; this and no other: and as for all 'ploughmen, husbandmen, artificers and people of the meaner sort,' they are to live quiet where they are, and have no questions asked. In this way, not in the way of 'extermination,' was Ireland settled by the Puritans. Five-and-forty thousand armed 'kurisees' are fighting, not without utility we hope, far off in foreign parts. Incurably turbulent ringleaders of revolt are sent to the moorlands of Connaught. Men of the Massacre, where they can be convicted, of which some instances occur, are hanged. The mass of the Irish Nation lives quiet under a new Land Aristocracy; new, and in several particulars very much improved indeed under these lives now the mass of the Irish Nation; ploughing, delving, hammering; with their wages punctually paid them; with the truth spoken to them, and the truth done to them, so as they had never before seen it since they were a Nation! Clarendon himself admits that Ireland flourished, to an unexampled extent, under this arrangement. One can very well believe it. What is to hinder poor Ireland from flourishing, if you will do the truth to it and speak the truth, instead of doing the falsity and speaking the falsity? : Ireland, under this arrangement, would have grown up gradually into a sober, diligent, drabcolored population; developing itself, most probably, in some form of Calvinistic Protestantism. For there was hereby a Protestant Church of Ireland, of the most irrefragable nature, preaching daily in all its actions and procedure a real Gospel of Veracity, of piety, of fair dealing and good order to all men; and certain other Protestant Churches of Ireland,' and unblessed real-imaginary Entities, of which the human soul is getting weary, had of a surety never found footing there! But the Ever-blessed Restoration came upon us. All that arrangement was torn up by the roots; and Ireland was appointed to develope itself as we have seen. Not in the drabcolored Puritan way;-in what other way is still a terrible dubiety, to itself and to us! It will be by some Gospel of Veracity, I think, when the Heavens are pleased to send such. This 'Curse of Cromwell,' so-called, is the only Gospel of that kind I can yet discover to have ever been fairly afoot there. |