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James II extraordinary rapidity throughout the country, to the effect that the Irish, whose numbers were greatly exaggerated, were engaged in massacring the Protestant population. At the same time a proclamation, purporting to be issued by the Prince of Orange, was printed and extensively circulated. In this document, which was admirably calculated to inflame the passions of the hour, both magistrates and populace were incited to acts of violence against the papists. The effect of such a publication at such a moment can be readily conceived. After a few hours of terror, and of the cruelty which terror seldom fails to produce, it became known that the proclamation was a forgery and the report groundless; but national animosities are more easily roused than appeased; and among the influences which combined to produce the penal legislation of the next century a prominent place must unquestionably be assigned to the recollection of what was called the "Irish night."

Many years afterwards, Hugh Speke, one of the most scurrilous and mendacious of the pamphleteers who, during the latter half of the seventeenth century, were the disgrace of English politics, confessed, or rather boasted, that he was the originator of this design, and received from the ministers of Queen Anne a 155