36

HISTOEY OP ENGLAND.

CIIAP.

XVIII.

1G32.

now do. The French fleet, had then, after riding, duringseveral weeks, victorious and dominant in the Channel, landedsome troops on the southern coast. The immediate effect hadbeen that whole counties, without distinction of Tory or Whig,Churchman or Dissenter, had risen up,- as one man, to repelthe foreigners, and that the Jacobite party, which had, a fewdays before, seemed to be half the nation, had crouched downin silent terror, and had made itself so small that it had, duringsome time, been invisible. What reason was there for believingthat the multitude who had, in 1690, at the first lighting of thebeacons, snatched up firelocks, pikes, scythes, to defend theirnative soil against the French, would now welcome the Frenchas allies? And of the army by which James was now to beaccompanied the French formed the least odious part. Morethan half of that army was to consist of Irish Papists; and thefeeling, compounded of hatred and scorn, with which the IrishPapists had long been regarded by the English Protestants,had by recent events been stimulated to a vehemence beforeunknown. The hereditary slaves, it was said, had been for amoment free; and that moment had sufficed to prove that theyknew neither how to use nor how to defend their freedom.During their short ascendency they had done nothing but slay,and burn, and pillage, and demolish, and attaint, and con-fiscate. In three years they had committed such waste on theirnative land as thirty years of English intelligence and industrywould scarcely repair. They would have maintained their in-dependence against the world, if they had been as ready tofight as they were to steal. But they had retreated ignomini-ously from the walls of Londonderry. They had fled like deerbefore the yeomanry of Enniskillen. The Prince whom theynow presumed to think that they could place, by force of arms,on the English throne, had himself, on the morning after therout of the Boyne, reproached them with then- cowardice, and