WILLIAM AND MAKY.

175

Houses was called to the state of Ireland. The government ofthat kingdom had, during the six months which followed thesurrender of Limerick, been in an unsettled state. It was nottill the Irish troops who adhered to Sarsfielcl had sailed forFrance, and till the Irish troops who had made their electionto remain at home had been disbanded, that William at lengthput forth a proclamation solemnly announcing the terminationof the civil war. From the hostility of the aboriginal inhabitants,destitute as they now were of chiefs, of arms and of organization,nothing was to be apprehended beyond occasional robberies andmurders. But the war cry of the Irishry had scarcely died awaywhen the first faint murmurs of theEnglishry began to be heard.Coningsby was during some months at the head of the adminis-tration. He soon made himself in the highest degree odiousto the dominant caste. He was an unprincipled man: he wasinsatiable of riches; and he was in a situation in which richeswere easily to be obtained by an unprincipled man. Immensesums of money, immense quantities of military stores had beensent over from England. Immense confiscations were takingplace in Ireland. The rapacious governor had daily opportuni-ties of embezzling and extorting; and of those opportunities heavailed himself without scruple or shame. This however wasnot, in the estimation of the colonists, his greatest offence.They might have pardoned his covetousness: but they could notpardon the clemency W'hich he showed to their vanquished andenslaved enemies. His clemency indeed amounted merely tothis, that he loved money more than he hated Papists, and thathe W'as not unwilling to sell for a high price a scanty measure ofjustice to some of the oppressed class. Unhappily, to the rulingminority, sore from recent conflict and drunk with recent victory,the subjugated majority w r as as a drove of cattle, or rather asa pack of W'olves. Man acknowledges in the inferior animalsno rights inconsistent with his own convenience; and as man

chap.

xix.

HjD.i.