their vanquished enemy during his short tenure of power."[1]
And just as, in spite of the apparent ferocity of the first clause of the Cromwellian Act of Settlement, the death penalty was in no case inflicted, so there is no proof that the Jacobite Act would have taken more than the estates of the rebels.[2]
Much also has been said of the impolicy of these two Acts. King James and his English advisers were against them, as they involved a definite breach with the whole Protestant interest. This they undoubtedly did, and it has also been said that if these Acts had not been passed the treatment of the Jacobites in their hour of defeat would have been more lenient. It would certainly have been more prudent if the Irish had abstained from measures of retaliation until they had made sure of ultimate victory. But the Irish had before them the example of the English Act of 1642; they had been kept for nearly forty years out of their own, and they would have been more than human if they had now refrained from taking it back. And there is not the smallest reason to believe that, if the Jacobites had not passed these Acts, the Williamites in their turn would have refrained from confiscation.
However this may be, as soon as the partisans of William had gained the upper hand, they pro-
- ↑ Chap. XII.
- ↑ Much has been made by Macaulay and others of the fact that the power of pardon was taken away from James if not exercised before Nov. 1st, 1689. But there had been precisely similar enactments preventing Charles I. from pardoning the Irish rebels, and preventing Charles II. from exercising the royal prerogative after the passing of the Act of Explanation. The Act to Hinder the Reversal of Outlawries of 1697 took away the King's power of pardon after July 27th, 1697, except as regards the death penalty.
