Page:Irish minstrelsy, vol 2 - Hardiman.djvu/145

Rh "It is impossible," says he, "to defend the acts of settlement and explanation. Seven millions, eight hundred thousand acres of land were set out under the authority of this Act, to a motley crew of English adventurers, civil and military, nearly to the total exclusion of the old inhabitants of the Island; many of whom, who were innocent of the rebellion, lost their inheritance. A new colony of new settlers, composed of all the various sects which then infested England, Independents, Anabaptists, Seceders, Brownists, Socinians, Millenarians, and Dissenters of every description, many of them infected with the leaven of democracy, poured into Ireland, and were put into possession of the ancient inheritance of its inhabitants: and I speak with great personal respect of the men, when I state that a very considerable portion of the opulence and power of the Kingdom of Ireland, centers at this day in the descendants of this motley collection of English adventurers. The whole island has been confiscated, with the exception of the estates of five or six old families of English blood. No inconsiderable portion has been confiscated twice, or perhaps thrice, in the course of a century. The situation therefore of the Irish nation at the Revolution stands unparalleled in the history of the inhabited world." Such were the novel statements made by this noble Earl, in the Irish House of Lords, on the 10th Feb. 1800, to induce a Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland. They are here introduced as forming a tolerable comment on our Jacobite Relics. After