James II
upon the educational institutions of the country were, no doubt, arbitrary and unconstitutional in the extreme. But, when we consider the absurdity and the injustice of maintaining a Protestant establishment and a Protestant educational system among a nation almost exclusively Catholic, they can scarcely be very strongly condemned. And it says much for the moderation of the Irish people that they made no attempt, now that the power was in their own hands, to retaliate the injustice which they had suffered.
The disarming of the Protestants and the reorganisation of the army may at first sight seem measures more open to censure. But a moment's reflection will show that they were an essential part of the policy of the government. If Catholic disabilities were to be removed, if forfeited estates were to be restored, if the whole system of exclusion and monopoly was to be broken up, considerations of prudence and of humanity alike rendered it impossible to leave a great military power in the hands of men who would unquestionably have resisted those changes by force.
I have left it to abler pens than mine to tell of the disastrous war that followed—of the long agony of Derry, of the vain heroism of Sarsfield, of the violated pledges of Limerick. But the history of Tyrconnell's administration would be
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