Page:A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue, M.P. on the state of Ireland.djvu/15

 English Parliament vied with one another in cruelty, injustice, and all the refinements of tyranny, it is impossible to deny. Burnet and Edmund Burke have made this melancholy history so clear that no one can doubt the facts.

Yet we cannot wonder that, as Elizabeth would have been murdered if Mary Queen of Scots and Philip the Second had succeeded in their designs, and as William the Third would have lost his life had James the Second prospered in his purpose of assassination, neither Elizabeth nor William felt any inclination to make the Roman Catholic Church the Established Church in Ireland.

What we have to lament, and the Irish to resent, is not so much a victory which was essential to England, as a proscription that was unwise, tyrannical, and destructive to Ireland.

But for what purpose should we now revive those horrible proofs that the cry of Vœ victis! animated the conquerors of the reigns of Elizabeth and of William?

In Scotland just laws and impartial government have erased from the mind 'the written troubles of the brain.' The perfidy of the Plantagenets, the tyranny of the Tudors, the oppression and duplicity of the Stuarts, and even the Massacre of Glencoe, have all been effaced. Instead of recalling the past woes of Ireland, ought we not to use the example of William and of Somers in their conduct to Scotland as a guide in our conduct towards Ireland?

In pursuing the inquiry which I wish to make, I