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7 (1855)
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■WIXTJAM AltD MAttY.

43

against Tourville, could be certain that he should not he hanged, chap.How ahject too, how spiteful, must be the nature of a man who, ■ |69 j —engaged in the most momentous of all undertakings, andaspiring to the noblest of all prizes, could not refrain from pro-claiming that he thirsted for the blood of a multitude of poorfishermen, because, more than three years before, they hadpulled him about and called him Hatchetface. If, at the verymoment when he had the strongest motives for trying to con-ciliate his people by the show of clemency, he could not bringhimself to hold towards them any language but that of an im-placable enemy, what was to be expected from him when heshould be again their master? So savage was his nature that,in a situation in which all other tyrants have resorted to blan-dishments and fair promises, he could utter nothing but re-proaches and threats. The only words in his Declaration whichhad any show of graciousness were those in which he promisedto send away the foreign troops as soon as his authority was re-established; and many said that those words, when examined,would be found full of sinister meaning. He held out no hopethat he would send away Popish troops who were his own sub-jects. His intentions were manifest. The French might go;but the Irish would remain. The people of England were to bekept down by these thrice subjugated barbarians. No doubt aRapparee who had run away at Newton Butler and the Boynemight find courage enough to guard the scaffolds on w'hich hisconquerors were to die, and to lay waste our country as he hadlaid waste his own.

The Queen and her ministers, instead of attemptingto suppress James’s manifesto, very wisely reprintedit, and sent it forth licensed by the Secretary of State, andinterspersed with remarks by a shrewd and severe com-mentator. It was refuted in many keen pamphlets: it wasturned into doggrel rhymes; and it was left undefended