The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 4, Thomas Babington Macaulay [early readers .txt] 📗

in a letter to Louis XIV., dated the 5/15th of August. This letter, written in a hand which it is not easy to decipher, is in the French War Office. Macariae Excidium; Light to the Blind.

FN 113 Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii. 461, 462.

FN 114 Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii. 459. 462.; London Gazette, Aug. 31 1691; Light to the Blind; D'Usson and Tesse to Barbesieux, Aug. 13/23.

FN 115 Story's Continuation; D'Usson and Tesse to Barbesieux Aug. 169r. An unpublished letter from Nagle to Lord Merion of Auk. 15. This letter is quoted by Mr. O'Callaghan in a note on Macariae Excidium.

FN 116 Macariae Excidium; Story's Continuation.

FN 117 Story's Continuation; London Gazette, Sept. 28. 1691; Life of James, ii. 463.; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick, 1692; Light to the Blind. In the account of the siege which is among the archives of the French War Office, it is said that the Irish cavalry behaved worse than the infantry.

FN 118 Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; R. Douglas to Sir A. Rawdon, Sept. 25. 1691, in the Rawdon Papers; London Gazette, October 8.; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick; Light to the Blind; Account of the Siege of Limerick in the archives of the French War Office.

The account of this affair in the Life of James, ii. 464., deserves to be noticed merely for its preeminent absurdity. The writer tells us that seven hundred of the Irish held out some time against a much larger force, and warmly praises their heroism. He did not know, or did not choose to mention, one fact which is essential to the right understanding of the story; namely, that these seven hundred men were in a fort. That a garrison should defend a fort during a few hours against superior numbers is surely not strange. Forts are built because they can be defended by few against many.

FN 119 Account of the Siege of Limerick in the archives of the French War Office; Story's Continuation.

FN 120 D'Usson to Barbesieux, Oct. 4/14. 1691.

FN 121 Macariae Excidium.

FN 122 Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick.

FN 123 London Gazette, Oct. S. 1691; Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick.

FN 124 Life of James, 464, 465.

FN 125 Story's Continuation.

FN 126 Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick; Burnet, ii. 81.; London Gazette, Oct. 12. 1691.

FN 127 Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick; London Gazette, Oct. 15. 1691.

FN 128 The articles of the civil treaty have often been reprinted.

FN 129 Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick.

FN 130 Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick.

FN 131 Story's Continuation. His narrative is confirmed by the testimony which an Irish Captain who was present has left us in bad Latin. "Hic apud sacrum omnes advertizantur a capellanis ire potius in Galliam."

FN 132 D'Usson and Tesse to Barbesieux, Oct. 17. 1691.

FN 133 That there was little sympathy between the Celts of Ulster and those of the Southern Provinces is evident from the curious memorial which the agent of Baldearg O'Donnel delivered to Avaux.

FN 134 Treasury Letter Book, June 19. 1696; Journals of the Irish House of Commons Nov. 7. 1717.

FN 135 This I relate on Mr. O'Callaghan's authority. History of the Irish Brigades Note 47.

FN 136 There is, Junius wrote eighty years after the capitulation of Limerick, "a certain family in this country on which nature seems to have entailed a hereditary baseness of disposition. As far as their history has been known, the son has regularly improved upon the vices of the father, and has taken care to transmit them pure and undiminished into the bosom of his successors." Elsewhere he says of the member for Middlesex, "He has degraded even the name of Luttrell." He exclaims, in allusion to the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland and Mrs. Horton who was born a Luttrell: "Let Parliament look to it. A Luttrell shall never succeed to the Crown of England." It is certain that very few Englishmen can have sympathized with Junius's abhorrence of the Luttrells, or can even have understood it. Why then did he use expressions which to the great majority of his readers must have been unintelligible? My answer is that Philip Francis was born, and passed the first ten years of his life, within a walk of Luttrellstown.

FN 137 Story's Continuation; London Gazette, Oct. 22. 1691; D'Usson and Tesse to Lewis, Oct. 4/14., and to Barbesieux, Oct. 7/17.; Light to the Blind.

FN 138 Story's Continuation; London Gazette Jan. 4. 1691/2

FN 139 Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium, and Mr. O'Callaghan's note; London Gazette, Jan. 4. 1691/2.

FN 140 Some interesting facts relating to Wall, who was minister of Ferdinand the Sixth and Charles the Third, will be found in the letters of Sir Benjamin Keene and Lord Bristol, published in Coxe's Memoirs of Spain.

FN 141 This is Swift's language, language held not once, but repeatedly and at long intervals. In the Letter on the Sacramental Test, written in 1708, he says: "If we (the clergy) were under any real fear of the Papists in this kingdom, it would be hard to think us so stupid as not to be equally apprehensive with others, since we are likely to be the greater and more immediate sufferers; but, on the contrary, we look upon them to be altogether as inconsiderable as the women and children . . . . The common people without leaders, without discipline, or natural courage, being little better than hewers of wood and drawers of water, are out of all capacity of doing any mischief, if they were ever so well inclined." In the Drapier's Sixth Letter, written in 1724, he says: "As to the people of this kingdom, they consist either of Irish Papists, who are as inconsiderable, in point of power, as the women and children, or of English Protestants." Again, in the Presbyterian's Plea of Merit written in 1731, he says

"The estates of Papists are very few, crumbling into small parcels, and daily diminishing; their common people are sunk in poverty, ignorance and cowardice, and of as little consequence as women and children. Their nobility and gentry are at least one half ruined, banished or converted. They all soundly feel the smart of what they suffered in the last Irish war. Some of them are already retired into foreign countries; others, as I am told, intend to follow them; and the rest, I believe to a man, who still possess any lands, are absolutely resolved never to hazard them again for the sake of establishing their superstition."

I may observe that, to the best of my belief, Swift never, in any thing that he wrote, used the word Irishman to denote a person of Anglosaxon race born in Ireland. He no more considered himself as an Irishman than an Englishman born at Calcutta considers himself as a Hindoo.

FN 142 In 1749 Lucas was the idol of the democracy of his own caste. It is curious to see what was thought of him by those who were not of his own caste. One of the chief Pariah, Charles O'Connor, wrote thus: "I am by no means interested, nor is any of our unfortunate population, in this affair of Lucas. A true patriot would not have betrayed such malice to such unfortunate slaves as we." He adds, with too much truth, that those boasters the Whigs wished to have liberty all to themselves.

FN 143 On this subject Johnson was the most liberal politician of his time. "The Irish," he said with great warmth, "are in a most unnatural state for we see there the minority prevailing over the majority." I suspect that Alderman Beckford and Alderman Sawbridge would have been far from sympathizing with him. Charles O'Connor, whose unfavourable opinion of the Whig Lucas I have quoted, pays, in the Preface to the Dissertations on Irish History, a high compliment to the liberality of the Tory Johnson.

FN 144 London Gazette, Oct. 22. 1691.

FN 145 Burnet, ii. 78, 79.; Burchett's Memoirs of Transactions at Sea; Journal of the English and Dutch fleet in a Letter from an Officer on board the Lennox, at Torbay, licensed August 21. 1691. The writer says: "We attribute our health, under God, to the extraordinary care taken in the well ordering of our provisions, both meat and drink."

FN 146 Lords' and Commons' Journals, Oct. 22. 1691.

FN 147 This appears from a letter written by Lowther, after he became Lord Lonsdale, to his son. A copy of this letter is among the Mackintosh MSS.

FN 148 See Commons' Journals, Dec. 3. 1691; and Grey's Debates. It is to be regretted that the Report of the Commissioners of Accounts has not been preserved. Lowther, in his letter to his son, alludes to the badgering of this day with great bitterness. "What man," he asks, "that hath bread to eat, can endure, after having served with all the diligence and application mankind is capable of, and after having given satisfaction to the King from whom all officers of State derive their authoritie, after acting rightly by all men, to be hated by men who do it to all people in authoritie?"

FN 149 Commons' Journals, Dec. 12. 1691.

FN 150 Commons' Journals, Feb. 15. 1690/1; Baden to the States General, Jan 26/Feb 5

FN 151 Stat. 3 W. & M. c. 2., Lords' Journals; Lords' Journals, 16 Nov. 1691; Commons' Journals, Dec. 1. 9. 5.

FN 152 The Irish Roman Catholics complained, and with but too much reason, that, at a later period, the Treaty of Limerick was violated; but those very complaints are admissions that the Statute 3 W. & M. c. 2. was not a violation of the Treaty. Thus the author of A Light to the Blind speaking of the first article, says: "This article, in seven years after, was broken by a Parliament in Ireland summoned by the Prince of Orange, wherein a law was passed for banishing the Catholic bishops, dignitaries, and regular clergy." Surely he never would have written thus, if the article really had, only two months after it was signed, been broken by the English Parliament. The Abbe Mac Geoghegan, too, complains that the Treaty was violated some years after it was made. But he does not pretend that it was violated by Stat. 3 W. & M. c. 2.

FN 153 Stat. 21 Jac. 1. c. 3.

FN 154 See particularly Two Letters by a Barrister concerning the East India Company (1676), and an Answer to the Two Letters published in the same year. See also the judgment of Lord Jeffreys concerning the Great Case of Monopolies. This judgment was published in 1689, after the downfall of Jeffreys. It was thought necessary to apologize in the preface for printing anything that bore so odious a name. "To commend this argument," says the editor, "I'll not undertake because of the author. But yet I may tell you what is told me, that it is worthy any gentleman's perusal." The language of Jeffreys is most offensive, sometimes scurrilous, sometimes basely adulatory; but his reasoning as to the mere point of law is certainly able, if not conclusive.

FN 155 Addison's Clarinda, in the week of which she kept a journal, read nothing but Aurengzebe; Spectator, 323. She dreamed that Mr. Froth lay at her feet, and called her Indamora. Her friend Miss Kitty repeated, without book, the eight best lines of the play; those, no doubt, which begin, "Trust on, and think to- morrow will repay." There are not