whatever. The members of this Parliament were well aware of the injustice of their proceedings. At the time when these Acts passed, they were declaring in their proclamation meant for English and Scotch eyes, we have taken care that our subjects of the Church of England be not disturbed in the exercise of their religion and the possession of their benefices and properties." 2

An Act was passed in this Parliament for liberty of conscience. This was a continuation of James's policy in England, and was his work alone. Much thoughtless commendation has been given to this Act. It is forgotten by those who praise it that such a law would be regarded very differently in a Protestant and in a Roman Catholic country. In the former, the clergy would feel themselves bound to obey it; but the Roman Catholic clergy have always denied the right of a secular Government to interfere with the jurisdiction of their Church. This was settled for ever at the Council of Constance, where the safe conduct granted to Huss by the Emperor Sigismund was violated, and where it was decreed that nothing could

It is when justifying these measures that Mr. Lecky makes the remark, "the principle of compensation was as yet wholly unknown." Yet two pages later he argues that compensation was given by the Act of Repeal. The principle of compensation is as old as man. It was the foundation of all early criminal law, as the weregild in Highland and the eric in Ireland show. It is and always has been the foundation of civil law. The principle had been put into practice long before the time of this Parliament both in England and Ireland. In England, when the religious houses were dissolved, compensation was granted to the monks and nuns, which, Fuller tells us, was paid regularly. So also when the Church of England clergy were ejected in the time of the Long Parliament. In Ireland, compensation was granted to the members of suppressed houses: in the time of Henry VIII. After the rebellion of 1641, a proportionate compensation was given to the transplanted proprietors. The Act of Explanation in the reign of Charles II. was based on compensation. Even this Parliament recognised compensation under the word reprisal.

2 Proclamation issued at Dublin, 18th of May, 1689, and sent to England without the King's knowledge. Clarke, Life of James II., ii., p. 362. VOL. I. 12

be allowed to prejudice the authority of an ecclesiastical judge to examine and punish heretical pravity. In addition, the Bull In Cana Domini excommunicated all those who impeded, directly or indirectly, ecclesiastical judges in the exercise of their judicial functions according to the Canons, Papal constitutions, or the decrees of General Councils.1 If Ireland had been able to maintain her independence of England under the protection of Louis XIV., who attempted to exterminate the Reformed Faith in his own dominions, it is certain that this Act would have been waste paper. From the first it was a dead letter; it neither prevented the seizure of the Protestant schools and churches throughout the country in direct opposition to its provisions, nor the issue of a proclamation forbidding the Protestants to assemble in churches or elsewhere under pain of death. James himself tells us that he published a declaration" for surrendering all the Protestant churches which had been seized upon by the Catholics, and took great care to have all grievances of that nature redressed"3. But when he gave a positive order that the churches at Waterford and Wexford should be restored to the Protestants, the order was disobeyed.*

2

While the Irish were taking possession of the forfeited estates or preparing for war, the condition of the kingdom was lamentable. This statement does not rest on onesided testimony. Speaking of the incapacity of the country to maintain his army, the King says "the great

1 Cherubini's Bullarium Magnum, iv.,

p. 117.

2 Dalrymple, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, Part II., book ii., p. 69.

3 Clarke, Life of James II., ii., p. 369.

Archbishop King says that nine churches out of ten were taken throughout the country, twenty-six in the diocese of Dublin alone. Leslie says that only one was taken by the order or connivance of the King. These statements are consistent with each other.

stocks of cattle, sheep etc., being in the hands of the Protestants, and many of them flying into England, they had been emboyled,' and those that stayed were ruined in great measure by the rapparees; this brought such a scarcity that there was neither corn nor meal to feed the army for any considerable time, etc. "2. A letter from Ireland, dated the 12th of June, 1689, tells us "the miserable usage in the country is unspeakable, and every day like to be worse and worse. Many alledge that the rapparees have secret orders to fall anew on the Protestants that have anything left; the ground of this may be their pretending such an order, for they commonly pretend an order for any mischief they have a mind to "". Six months later, on the 2nd of January, 1690, James issued, by the hand of his Secretary of State, instructions to the judges on circuit, accusing them of "having strangely neglected the execution of their commissions," and stating that this neglect was "the chiefest cause of the general desolation of the country". The King draws their attention to "the many robberies, oppressions and outrages committed through all parts of the country" and exhorts them to do their duty. "Let the present general cries of the people for justice, and the present general oppression under which the country groans, move you to have a compassion of it and to raise in you such a public spirit as may save it from this inundation of miseries that breaks upon it by a neglect of his Majesty's orders, and by a general relaxation of all civil and military laws. Consider that our enemies, leaving us to ourselves as they do, conclude we shall prove greater enemies to one another than they can

1 Probably "embezzled ".

2 Clarke, Life of James II., ii., p. 386.

3 Letter attached to the Journal of the Proceedings in the Irish Parliament (Somers Tracts, xi., p. 411).

be to us; and that we will destroy the country and enslave ourselves more than they are able to do. What inhumanities are daily committed against one another gives but too much ground to the truth of what our enemies conclude of us 1."

1 Albaville's instructions to the Commissioners of Oyer and Terminer (Appendix to King).

CHAPTER X.

PENAL LAWS IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND.

THE chief glory of man consists in his sympathy with the past and in his hopes of the future. If the present only engaged his attention, he would differ but little from the beasts of the field. History therefore has for him a perennial interest. But history may be written in two very different ways. The first is, to consider each stage of society in a nation, or in the European community of nations, as a development or necessary evolution from those which preceded it, and to regard the future as ever extant, though unseen, in the present. This is the true method, and alone deserves the name of history. Such a mode of treatment excludes all passion, all party feeling, or personal affection. Events rather than individuals, the spirit of the times, the secret tendencies which, though hidden from the immediate actors, direct the growth of thought, the mutual influence of nations upon each other, and the religious impulse, are the principal subjects of its consideration. The other method is, to write it with a purpose, either to exalt a party with which the author is connected, to advance a policy, or to award praise or blame to statesmen or governments. This latter mode is well exemplified by two works which all of us have in our hands, namely, Hallam's Constitutional History, and Macaulay's account of the revolution of 1688. Hallam's book is a very imperfect attempt to explain the growth of our Constitu