Charles II
thus raised should be devoted to the support of the Roman Catholic priesthood.80
Such a scheme, had it been adopted, might have profoundly modified the whole subsequent course of Irish history. But it was not to be. The colonists would not part with their autonomy, nor the mother-country with her commerce; and the Cromwellians were as little disposed to surrender their exclusive privileges as were the Catholics to acquiesce in the loss of their estates. Another bloody rebellion, another savage conquest, a long period of religious persecution, of commercial oppression, of corrupt and demoralising government, had yet to elapse before even a small part of the reforms which had suggested themselves to the imagination of the philosopher could be effected by the practical statesman.
For seven years Ormond governed Ireland with prudence, with humanity, and, if the great crime of the Act of Settlement can be condoned, with some approach to justice. Firmly attached by interest and by principle to the English connection and to the Protestant faith, he steadily upheld the new distribution of property and the political supremacy of the Anglican Church; but he never showed the smallest inclination towards those more rigorous measures against
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