Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 011.djvu/62

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Absenteeism.

his navy, recruited his army, replenished his coffers, and took their stand around his person on their native soil; and when they saw him the first to fly[1], they still erected his torn standard, and rallied in his cause[2], paying the penalty of their generous but misapplied devotion to a bigot and a tyrant, by utter ruin, and eternal exile. The outlawry and confiscations of 1688 drove near four thousand Irishmen of family into a dreary and perpetual absenteeism, and sent them to dole out for a pitiful hire, in the cause of oppression in other countries, the same valour, and the same spirit, which their fathers had displayed in support of the liberty of their own.

The sale of the estates of these unfortunate and involuntary absentees[3], under the authority of the English Parliament, changed a large portion of the Irish population, and introduced a new race of landed proprietors, whose interest it was to stay at home. The tide of absenteeship received a powerful check from the necessity of circumstances. Those Irish Catholics, who had escaped detection, or were exempt from suspicion, retired to their remote patrimonial domains, and sought safety in obscurity; hoping, by remaining peaceably at home, to escape the notice of a government which had sprung out of a revolution they had so lately opposed. The Protestants likewise found it their interest to remain the vigilant guardians of the new possessions they had recently acquired, and of the old, which they had so bravely protected. All parties were either impoverished or unsettled; and few had the means, if they had the desire, to remove from a scene of ferment and desolation, to one of security and enjoyment. For the Irish of any sect or race, there was then no resting-place.

While England gained every thing by a revolution, which she owed to the moral and political education acquired during a century of struggle for civil rights and religious freedom, Ireland lost nearly all she had left to lose through her deficiency in these endowments, resulting from many centuries of anarchy and misrule. The picture, sketched by a master-hand, of the condition of affairs at this singular epoch, is full of a fearful and melancholy interest. "By the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691," says Burke, "the ruin of the native Irish, and in a great measure of the first race of the English, was completely accomplished. The new interest was settled with as solid a stability as any thing in human affairs can look for. All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression which were made after the last event, were

  1. ↑ The Irish army under Tirconnel and Sarsfield made a most vigorous resistance against a superior and well-disciplined force; and Limerick, the last hold, was surrendered upon terms from which it appears that none more esteemed their valour and fidelity than King William himself.
  2. ↑ When James, after his flight from the battle of the Boyne, arrived in Dublin, he had the ingratitude and ungraciousness to reflect upon the cowardice of the Irish. He reached the Castle late at night, and was met at its gates by the Lady Lieutenant, the beautiful Duchess of Tirconnel, "La belle Jennings" of Grammont's Memoirs, In return for the sympathizing respects which marked her reception, the King is said to have sarcastically complimented her upon the "alertness of her husband's countrymen." The high-spirited beauty replied, "In that, however, your Majesty has had the advantage of them all." The King, in fact, was among the first to arrive in the capital with the news of his own defeat.
  3. ↑ They were estimated at the annual sum of two hundred and eleven thousand six hundred pounds.
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