The King then seemed willing to cancel these new fangled corporations, which he admitted resembled by their poverty or want of population the ancient ruined towns of Ireland. Even Dungannon, the Deputy's property, contained in 1619 but nine stone and six timber houses built, and six stone and six timber houses ready to be roofed. When such was the state of a borough town, favoured by Vice-regal patronage and residence, the reader will easily perceive the prosperous position of rival or surrounding communities. Legal mischiefs, however, rise from trifling variations, but are extended by selfish malignity to collateral purposes, and thereby dispense incalculable mischief to remotest posterity. Little did James foresee that he created a weight of corporate corruption, equally hostile to royal prerogative or popular rights, and which malady, continuing for ages, has been in our time considered a grievance not demanding suppression but entitled to perpetuity or purchase.
It may well be imagined that the sheriffs, or similar corporate ministers returning themselves, exhibited such a contradiction to common sense and common law, as to meet general approbation in an immediate abolition of the singular presumption. Cabinet pride, however, supported the glaring wrong, and Doctor, afterwards Sir William Temple, (though Provost, and as such returning officer,) gravely returned himself and another civilian for the University of Dublin in the year 1613. Where such glaring variations from English established law were upheld by the hand of power, it requires neither feet nor illustration to presume that returning officers exercised a corrupt discretion according to the dictates of viceregal influence, or party prindples; by the preceding practices the House of Commons swarmed with hackneyed courtiers or hungry expectants.
An extensive expected attainder afforded anxious speculation, whilst threatened religious persecution prevented a further prospect for growing disloyalty. The nation, however, felt a Security from the latter unchristian system by James's timidity, which directed him rather to rely upon Elizabeth's statutes than
