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ascertain from it, as near as may be, the number of British and protestants that were destroyed out of war, by the Irish in this rebellion." And although he owns it " to be impossible, even from that authentic evidence of the murders, to come to any certainty or exactness as to their numbers, from the uncertainty itself of some of the accounts that are given in; yet," he says, "it is easy enough, from thence, to demonstrate the falsehood of the relation of every protestant historian." Upon the whole he assures us" that, setting aside all opinions and calculations in this affair, the evidence from the manuscript in his possession stands thus:*

"The number of people killed upon positive evidence, collected in two years after the insurrection broke out, amounts only to two thousand one hundred and nine: on the report of other protestants, one thousand six hundred and nineteen more; and on the report of some of the rebels themselves, a further number of three hundred; the whole, both by positive evidence and by report, making four thousand and twenty-eight.

"Besides these murders," adds he, " there is in the same collection, evidence on the report of others, of eight thousand killed

• Many of the select original examinations, which Temple and Borlase have inserted in their histories of this rebellion, have only the marks, not the names of the deponents set to them; many of those deponents were weak women, and illiterate men, not capable of reading their own depositions, and therefore apt to be imposed upon, and deceived by those who read them to them. A great number of them swore on mere hearsay; and some of these afterwards, touched by remorse, solemnly declared the contrary of what they had sworn; and they were all, at the time of swearing these depositions, either interested or incensed enemies to those against whom they swore. Hence we are told, that “ at the trial of qualifications at Athlone (a court held by the regicides), where the book, called the Black Book, being a collection of these examinations, being produced, the same was so falsified in most particulars thereof, as well by the witnesses pretended to be sworn, as also by some of the persons then and now (1662) living, who were in the said book sworn to be murdered, that the same was for shame laid aside as no evidence; and several other persons who have taken examinations touching murders, have many times since acknowledged the falsity of the matters published by them, as being had by the wrong information of others, who in the hurry of these times, and their own frights, were so transported, that they swore all their neighbors, whom they left behind them, were murdered, when all or most of them were afterwards found to be living.”—Collection of Massacres and Murders of the Irish, Pref.

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by ill usage; and if we should allow that the cruelties of the Irish, out of war, extended to these numbers, which, considering the nature of the several depositions, I think in my conscience we cannot; yet to be impartial, we must allow that there is no pretence for laying a greater number to their charge."

"This account," continues the doctor," is corroborated by a letter, which I copied out of the council books at Dublin, written on the 5th of May, 1652, ten years after the beginning of the rebellion, from the parliament-commissioners in Ireland, to the English parliament. After exciting," says he, “the parliament to further severity against the Irish, as being afraid their behavior towards that people, might never sufficiently avenge their murders and massacres; and lest the parliament might shortly be, in pursuance of a speedy settlement of that kingdom, and thereby some tender concessions might be concluded," these commissioners tell then," that it then appeared, that besides eight hundred and forty-eight families, there were killed, hanged, and burnt, six thousand and sixty-two.”

After seeing this, in comparison, exceedingly moderate charge made even by the prejudiced commissioners of the rebel Eng. lish parliament, what are we to think of the accounts of those massacres and murders which have been left us by our most seemingly impartial and approved adverse writers on this subject? What, I say, of sir William Petty's* cool calculation,

2 Hist. of the Irish Rebellion.

"Petty was secretary to Ireton the regicide, and made an estate of five or six thousand pounds a-year by the Irish forfeitures."—Harris's Writers of Ireland, fol. 357.

"If sir William Petty (says a modern impartial protestant writer) had prejudices, it is evident they could not be in favor of the Irish, for he was one of the great gainers by their supposed guilt and consequent forfeitures. Yet after demonstrating that the number of protestants destroyed in the whole war by the papists, was not one-fourth of what it was reported to be, he goes on to shew, that before the war there were in the whole realm, but three thousand landed papists, of whom, as appears by eight hundred judgments of the court of claims, which sat anno 1663, upon the innocence and effects of the Irish, there were not above a seventh part guilty of the rebellion. And after assigning some motives for the Irish entering into this war, he concludes his chapter with these most remarkable words; “but upon the playing of this game or match, upon so great odds, the English won; and have among and

that upwards of thirty thousand British were killed, out of war, in the first year of this insurrection? Or, of lord Clarendon's pathetic lamentation, that in the first two or three days of it, forty or fifty thousand of them were destroyed? Or, of sir John Temple's horrible affirmation, "that one hundred and fifty thousand protestants were massacred in cold blood, in the two first months of the rebellion ?"

There is no question but that the desire of revenge, and the fear of tender concessions upon a settlement, caused the commissioners to heighten and aggravate, as much as possible, this charge against the insurgents; and yet we see, that even their account of these cruelties during the whole time of this ten years war, falls infinitely short of that which has been given us, I will not say by Temple or Petty, but by Clarendon himself, during the first two or three days of it only. What shame for the noble historian, thus to have exceeded the very regicides, in calumny and misrepresentation!

CHAP. VII.

The humanity of the chiefs of the insurgents.

MR. HUME, strangely misled by Temple's stupid legend, (for I will not suspect him of conscious misrepresentation,) asserts, in a style better suited to romance than history, that" an universal massacre of the English commenced with this insurrection;' that no age, no sex, no condition was spared; that destruction was every where let loose, and met the hunted victims at every turn; that all connections were dissolved, and that death was dealt by that hand from which protection was implored and expected." In short, "that without provocation, without opposition,* the astonished English were massacred by

Hist. of England, Dublin edition, vol. iv.

besides other pretences, a gamester's right at least to their estates; but as for the blood shed in the contest, God best knows who did occasion it."- Philosophic Survey of the South of Ireland, p.226.

This demonstrates a strange unacquaintedness in this writer, even with those historians, some of whose prejudices he has all along adopted in this part of his history. For to omit other instances, Borlase has given us a

thair nearest neighbours, with whom they had long upheld a continued intercourse of kindness and good offices." Not content with imputing these and many other, if possible, greater barbarities to the first insurgents, he confidently affirms, on the same exploded authority," that the English catholics of the pale, joining these old Irish,* rivalled them in every act of cru. elty towards the English protestants." Thus the grossest and most palpable fictions, which, when stupidly retailed by a noteed and malicious libeller, have little or no chance to be believed by any, may yet be afterwards dressed out by a more artful writer in such plausible colors, and with such semblance of truth, as will render them credible and affecting even to some readers of a moderate share of understanding. What pity it is that in all this historian's fine declamation on this tragical event, there is so very little of its true history to be found.f

journal of sir William Cole's services against the insurgents wherein it is boastingly asserted, "that from the 23d of October, 1641, to some time in 1642, the said sir William killed with his regiment of five hundred foot and and one troop of horse, two thousand four hundred and seventeen swordsmen of the rebels; and starved and famished of the vulgar sort (whose goods were seized on by the regiment), seven thousand. And that he rescued and relieved five thousand four hundred and sixty-seven Scotch and English protestants." Borlase adds, "after this rate the English in all parts fought." Hist. of the Irish Rebel. fol. 112.-Colonel Gibson having taken the strong castle of Carric-main, belonging to the Walshes, near Dub lin, in which several hundreds of the Irish had taken refuge, 66 put them all to the sword, sparing neither man, woman, nor child." Id. ib. fol. 97. Numbers of such instances of barbarous and indiscriminate opposition and revenge, are to be met with in all the adverse writers on this subject.

* Lord Clanrickard, in a letter to the earl of Essex, 22d of May, 1642, says, “I conceive it is the desire of the whole nation, that the actors of those crying sins (outrages committed by the rabble), should in the highest degree, be made examples to all posterity: yet God forbid that fire, sword and famine, which move apace here, and might be easily prevented, should run on to destroy all mankind, and put the innocent and the guilty into one miserable condition: or if some young unsettled spirits have been misled, that therefore their friends and antient families should be utterly destroyed, or the king's mercy totally bound up.”—Carte's Ormond, yol. iii. ƒ.

77.

In the year 1764, a copy of the Historical Memoirs of the Irish rebellion, wherein all these calumnies are clearly refuted by unquestionable authority, was sent to Mr. Hume, when secretary of the embassy at Paris, under lord Hertford, in hopes of inducing him to correct these flagrant

In truth, the Irish engaged in this war, did not suffer more in their persons, by the swords of their enemies, while it was carrying on, than they have since done in their characters, by the pens of some of those historians, who have either carelessly or maliciously commented upon it. The best, the noblest, and most loyal men* in the kingdom, who, after having patiently endured numberless galling injuries and oppressions, were, at last, driven to the fatal necessity of taking arms in their de fence, are confounded by these libellers with the meanest of the Irish rabble, who followed them merely for plunder. But I will now, from a motive of mere justice, produce a few sig nal instances, out of many, of the humane and christian behavior of some of the chiefs of these insurgents, towards such of the English and protestants as happened to fall under their power. And this I shall do, not from writers of their own

and injurious mistakes, in a subsequent edition of his history. But the expected effect has not since appeared. He, indeed, returned a polite but evasive answer, on that occasion, in which he says, "I am here at such a distance from my authorities, that I cannot produce all the arguments which determined me to give the account you complain of, with regard to the Irish massacre. I only remember I sought truth, and thought I found it. The insurrection might be excused, as having liberty for its object. The violence also of the puritanical parliament, struck a just terror into all the catholics. But the method of conducting the rebellion, if we must call by that name, was certainly such (and you seem to own it) as deserved the highest blame, and was one of the most violent efforts of barbarism and bigotry united." The authorities sent him in the memoirs abovementioned, demonstrating his mistakes, are by both parties confessed to be undeniable. And indeed, it appears from the softer style of this letter, that since the writing of his history, he has abated somewhat of his declamatory virulence with respect to those insurgents, probably from the pe rusal of these authorities.

Lord Clanrickard, in a letter from Kilkenny to the earl of Ormond, June 4th, 1645, after assuring him, that if the impediments to the peace were removed, i. e. a promise given that the penal laws against their religion should be repealed, "such was the real earnest desire of the confederates to be employed in his majesty's service, that the difficulty would be rather to keep back the multitude of forward spirits that would press into that expedition (against the English rebels):” adds, " and truly, my lord, I should hardly have believed the kingdom could have afforded so many proper, able gentlemen as I find here; though many others of quality be in the Munster army."-Curte's Ormond, vol. iii. p. 413.

† Lord Clarendon, however, though shamefully partial in many other respects, seems to have distinguished himself on this and some other occa

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