Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/380

  in favour of the commercial object recommended to their fostering care. The first was an Act to continue for ten years longer, and with additional privileges, the Act of 1692, for naturalizing Foreign Protestants, and for securing to them the free exercise of their religion, and liberty of meeting together for the worship of God, and of hearing Divine Service and performing other religious duties in their own several rites used in their own countries. The second was, a resolution (which was acted upon) praying the Lords-Justices that a Foreign Protestant minister might be appointed at a reasonable salary, in every parish where fifty of such Protestant strangers might be settled.

That Colonel Upton might not have occasion to say that Irish Presbyterians received nothing but courtiers’ promises, a resolution was passed with regard to the penalties incurred by those who did not attend their parish churches. The House of Commons resolved that the penalties should not in future be enforced against any one who should subscribe the declaration required in the room of the Oath of Supremacy. This was also in 1697.

It was because the king knew that the French refugees and their regiments were unpopular in England, that he planned their establishment in Ireland under the wing of Lord Galway. It was politic to hint that as regimental keepers of the peace they might be dispensed with in course of time. Luttrell mentions, under date 2d Nov. 1697, that the French refugees living on charity in England were ordered to go to Ireland, where they would be encouraged to follow their several trades; also, that the French refugee regiments were to be ordered there, perhaps to be gradually disbanded, and settled upon grants of land.

The parliamentary session ended on the 3d of December. Before the intelligence could reach England, the king had written to Lord Galway:—

“, (Nov. 26) Dec. 6, 1697.

“I refer you to what Lord Portland will write to you about the forces, by which you will learn my intentions. I assure you that I am very much troubled to find things here run so high against the poor refugees. This has struck me; but you know these sorts of things pass here very easily. Be ever assured of my esteem.

“P.S. — I hope you’ll be able to put an end very soon to the parliament of Ireland.”

The next session was important as following in the wake of the parliament of England. There was a feeling among some parties in Ireland that England kept their country too much in subjection. And it found expression in a pamphlet or book of 174 pages, dedicated to the king by the author, William Molyneux, of Dub-lin, Esquire, who is known to the admirers of Locke as one of his most intimate correspondents. The title of the tractate was, “The Case of Ireland being bound by Acts of Parliament in England stated.” Its doctrine was that an English Act was not in force in the sister country, unless re-enacted by the Irish Parliament. The treatise was purely argumentative and free from personalities. Mr. Molyneux says in his Preface, “I have not any concern in wooll or the wooll-trade. . . . I think I am as free from any personal prejudice in this cause as ‘tis possible to expect any man should be that has an estate and property in this kingdom, and who is a Member of Parliament therein.” He argued that a charter, recognising free parliaments in Ireland, had been granted by Henry III. in the first year of his reign. And perhaps the following thrust was intended as an argumentum ad hominem for Lord Galway, “We have heard great outcries, and deservedly, on breaking the Edict of Nantes and other stipulations; how far the breaking of our constitution (which has been of five hundred years’ standing) exceeds that, I leave the world to judge” (page 172). The English Commons in May 1698 examined and censured this pamphlet, and addressed the king praying that in a parliamentary way the dependence and subordination of Ireland to the imperial crown of England might be preserved and maintained — also, that his Majesty would take all necessary care that the laws, which direct and restrain the parliament of Ireland in their actings, be not evaded but strictly observed. The king promised the desired prevention and redress; but was anxious that nothing should be transferred into the journals of the Irish Parliament. Vengeance had been taken on the printed paper of Molyneux’s book, but the author’s death had already put him out of the reach of terrestrial courts. 