JAMES THE SECOND. 369

Unhappily James, instead of becoming a mediator became CI ^ I> - !i

the fiercest and most reckless of partisans. Instead of allaying ’ 1686 .the animosity of the two populations, he inflamed it to amser-height before unknown. He determined to reverse their rors 'relative position, and to put the Protestant colonists underthe feet of the Popish Celts. To be of the established religion,to be of the English blood, was, in his view, a disqualificationfor civil and military employment. He meditated the designof again confiscating and again portioning out the soil of halfthe island, and showed his inclination so clearly that oneclass was soon agitated by terrors which he afterwards vainlywished to sooth, and the other by hopes which he afterwardsvainly wished to restrain. But this was the smallest part ofhis guilt and madness. Pie deliberately resolved, not merelyto give to the aboriginal inhabitants of Ireland the entirepossession of their own country, but also to use them as hisinstruments for setting up arbitrary government in England.

The event was such as might have been foreseen. The colo-nists turned to bay with the stubborn hardihood of their race.

The mother country justly regarded their cause as her own.

Then came a desperatq struggle for a tremendous stake.

Everything dear to nations was wagered on both sides: norcan we justly blame either the Irishman or the Englishmanfor obeying, in that extremity, the law of self-preservation.

The contest was terrible, but short. The weaker went down.

Plis fate was cruel; and yet for the cruelty with which he wastreated there was, not indeed a defence, but an excuse: for,though he suffered all that tyranny could inflict, he sufferednothing that he would not himself have inflicted. The effect 'of the insane attempt to subjugate England by means of Ire-land was that the Irish became hewers of wood and drawersof water to the English. The old proprietors, by their effortto recover what they had lost, lost the greater part of whatthey had retained. The momentary ascendency of PoperyMacaulay , Ilislory. II. 0,4