WILLIAM AND MART.

231

of the Roman Catholic than in favour of the Independent or theBaptist. The great party which traces its descent through theExclusionists up to the Roundheads continued during thirtyyears, in spite of royal frowns and popular clamours, to demanda share in all the benefits of our free constitution for those IrishPapists whom the Roundheads and the Exclusionists had con-sidered merely as beasts of chase or as beasts of burden. Butit will be for some other historian to relate the vicissitudesof that great conflict, and the late triumph of reason andhumanity. Unhappily such a historian will have to relate thatthe triumph won by such exertions and by such sacrifices wasimmediately followed by disappointment; that it proved farless easy to eradicate evil passions than to repeal evil laws; andthat, long after every trace of national and religious animosityhad been obliterated from the Statute Book, national andreligious animosities continued to rankle in the bosoms of mil-lions. May he be able also to relate that wisdom, justice andtime gradually did in Ireland what they had done in Scotland,and that all the races which inhabit the British isles were atlength indissolubly blended into one people!

CHAP.

XVII.

1691 .