commons, and, without any or much inquiry, it was inserted in the bill.
To make the separation of England and Ireland complete, and to set up the most effectual barrier against his own authority, should he again regain the throne of England, James permitted his rabble of a parliament to pass an act declaring that the parliament of England had no power or authority over Ireland, and that contrary to the provisions of Poyning's act, which gave the initiative power to the English council, and made every Irish act invalid unless first submitted to the king and council of England.
Having transferred the property of the laity back to the Irish, another act made as sweeping a conveyance of that of the church from the protestant to the catholic clergy. Little regard had been had to catholic rights in piling property on the protestant hierarchy, and as little was shown in plucking it back again. The Anglican clergy were left in a condition of utter destitution; and, more than this, they were not safe if they appeared in public. They were hooted, pelted, and sometimes tired at. All colleges and schools from which the protestants had excluded the catholics were now seized and employed as popish seminaries or monasteries. The college of Dublin was turned into a barrack and a prison. No protestants were allowed to appear together in numbers more than three, on pain of death. That was James notion of the liberty of conscience and a tender regard for "every man's rights and liberties."
It was a fine lesson, too, for the clergy and gentry who had welcomed him to Ireland as the friends of passive obedience. They had now enough of that doctrine, and went over pretty rapidly to a different notion. The protestants everywhere were overrun by soldiers and rapparees. Their estates were seized, their houses plundered, their persons insulted and abused, and a more fearful state of things never existed in any country at any time. The officers of the army sold the protestants protections, which were no longer regarded, when fresh marauders wanted more money.
This model parliament voted twenty thousand pounds a year to Tyrconnel for bringing this state of things about, and twenty thousand pounds a month to the king. But the country was so completely desolated, and its trade so completely destroyed by this reign of terror and of licence, that James did not find the taxes come in very copiously; and he resorted to a means of making money plentiful worthy of himself. He collected all the old pots, pans, brass knockers, old cannon, and metal in almost any shape, and coined clumsy money out of them, on which he put about a hundred times their intrinsic value. The consequence was that shopkeepers refused to receive this base coin. All men to whom debts were due, or who had mortgages on other men's property, were opposed to having this discharged by a heap of metal which in a few weeks might be worth only a few pence a pound. Those who refused such payment were arrested, and menaced with being hung up at their own doors. Many wore thrown into prison, and all trade and intercourse were plunged into a condition of the wildest anarchy. The whole of Ireland was one frightful scene of violence, robbery, confusion, and distress. Such was the liberty and right which James conferred upon it in a few months and which he had before designed to confer on England. It was as by a special providence that he was permitted thus to exhibit his talents for rendering a people free and happy after he had been expelled from England; for this specimen of his rule completely satisfied those who expelled him, that they had done right, and it completely silenced all the complaints of his partisans of the hardship and injustice with which he had been treated. His victims were continually escaping over into England with their stories of horrors, and his own courtiers were in a condition of mutual discord and hatred which made his court as complete a Pandemonium as the country was. Melfort and Avaux detested each other. Melfort and Tyrconnel were just as violent against each other. The French appeared to have no notion of anything but securing Ireland for their own king; they despised the Irish, and the Irish cursed them. James was compelled to dismiss Melfort, and send him on a mission to the pope, to take him out of the way of Tyrconnel. But this did not restore peace to his court, where every element of envy, hatred, rapacity, and incapacity were in full and direful activity. James saw the scene continually darkening, and was at a loss what course to pursue. At one time he thought of going over into Scotland and uniting with Dundee; the death of Dundee put an end to that scheme. At another he was urged by his evil counsellors to throw himself into England, where, they assured him, he had plenty of adherents, already tired of the Dutch king, who would fly to his standard, and quickly reinstate him. But Avaux, who not only wished to keep him in Ireland, but was also well assured that James was more unpopular in England than ever, exerted all his power to detain him where he was. James himself was restless and miserable; surrounded by perpetual quarrels, and with nothing but disaster to his arms, he grew petulant and morose. When the parliament thwarted him in some measure, he declared angrily that "all parliaments were alike;" and when his Irish friends compelled him to dismiss Melfort, he protested that, if he could have foreseen their unkindness to him, he would never have come amongst them. Such was the state of Ireland and of James's court when Schomberg landed with his army at Carrickfergus on the 23rd of August, and routed both James, his court, and the whole country to a sense of their danger, and of the necessity for one great and universal effort. The Irish felt that the time was come when they must rise as a man to repel the hated Saxons, or that a few months would see them again laid at their feet. All that they had just wrested from them would be resumed with a fierce and retributive arm, and their brief triumph would be succeeded by a deeper and more intolerable slavery. The priests from the pulpits over the whole island painted to them the horrors of their subjection if they failed to expel the foe; and the people flew to arms with a wonderful enthusiasm. They flocked to the standard of James by thousands. A spirit of new life seemed to animate them, and James, receiving fresh hope from the sight, marched from Dublin at the head of his troops to encounter Schomberg.
During the summer the court of William had not been an enviable place. In the spring the parliament had proceeded to reverse the judgments which had been passed in the last reign against lord Russell, Algernon Sidney, the earl of
