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were not of great moment. Even the King’s Bench was at thistime almost deserted. The Court of Exchequer overflowed with ■business; for it was the only court at Dublin from which no writof error lay to England, and consequently the only court inwhich the English could be oppressed and pillaged withouthope of redress. Rice, it was said, had declared that theyshould have from him exactly what the law, construed with theutmost strictness, gave them, and nothing more. What, in hisopinion, the law, strictly construed, gave them, they couldeasily infer from a saying w-hich, before he became a judge, w r asoften in his mouth. “I will drive,” he used to say, “acoachand six through the Act of Settlement.” He now earned histhreat daily into execution. The cry of all Protestants w 7 asthat it mattered not what evidence they produced before him;that, when their titles were to be set aside, the rankest forgeries,the most infamous witnesses, were sure to have his countenance.To his court his countrymen came in multitudes with writs ofejectment and writs of trespass. In his court the governmentattacked at once the charters of all the cities and boroughs inIreland; and he easily found pretexts for pronouncing all thosecharters forfeited. The municipal corporations, about a hundredin number, had been instituted to be the strongholds of the re-formed religion and of the English interest, and had conse-quently been regarded by the Irish Roman Catholics with anaversion which cannot be thought unnatural or unreasonable.Had those bodies been remodelled in a judicious and impartialmanner, the irregularity of the proceedings by which so desi-rable a result had been attained might have been pardoned. Butit soon appeared that one exclusive system had been sw'ept awayonly to make room for another. The boroughs were subjectedto the absolute authority of the Crown. Towns in which almostevery householder was an English Protestant were placed underthe government of Irish Roman Catholics. Many of the new

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CHAP.

XII.