Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/93

Charles II The compromise which was thus effected proved satisfactory to neither of the contending interests. An Irish writer complains, not assuredly without reason, that by "an act of accumulative injustice the worst of traitors and the vilest of republican rebels were most prodigally rewarded; loyal subjects condemned unheard and stript of their very birthright; a vast multitude of poor widows and orphans sent a-begging; public faith notoriously violated; and, to sum up the whole matter in a few words, justice perverted in all its branches and degrees." The indignation of the colonists was less excusable, but it was not a whit less bitter. The Protestants of Ireland, Archbishop King tells us, restored the monarchy, and "the King, in recompense for so signal a service, gave them back a part of what they had given him.' Petty probably expressed the general feeling of the adventurers when he declared that "of all that claimed innocency seven in eight obtained it"; that "the restored persons by innocence and proviso have more than what was their own, anno 10641, by at least one-fifth"; that "they have gotten by forged feofments of what was more than their own at least one-third"; and that "of those adjudged innocents not one in twenty were really so." "The Catholics of Ireland," says a less 81