in St. James's Park, we shall have a hint by and by. Some of whom received full 'satisfaction,' and others never could.

Here is a kind of Epistle General, in a quite other tone, intended to give satisfaction' to a quite other class, if they are capable of it.

DECLARATION

OF THE LORD LIEUTENANT OF IRELAND, FOR THE

UNDECEIVING OF DELUDED PEOPLE.

6

THE Supreme Council of Kilkenny,' still more the Occult 'Irish Hierarchy' which was a main element thereof, remains, and is like to remain, a very dark entity in History: little other, after all one's reading, than a featureless gaunt shadow; extinct, and the emblem to us of huge noises that are also extinct. History can know that it had features once :-of fierce darkvisaged Irish Noblemen and Gentlemen; dark-visaged Abbases O'Teague, and an Occult Papist Hierarchy; earnestly planning, perorating, excommunicating, in a high Irish tone of voice: alas, with general result which Nature found untrue. Let there be noble pity for them in the hearts of the noble. Alas, there was withal some glow of real Irish Patriotism, some light of real human valour, in those old hearts: but it had parted company with Fact; came forth enveloped in such huge embodiment of headlong ferocity, of violence, hatred, noise, and general unveracity and incoherency, as-as brought a Cromwell upon it at last! These reflections might lead us far.

What we have to say here is, that in the present expiring condition of the Irish Rebellion, nearly trodden to destruction now, it has been judged very fitting, That there be an end of excommunication for the present, and a real attempt at union instead. For which object there has, with much industry, been brought-about a 'Conventicle,' or general Meeting of the Occult Hierarchy, at a place called Clonmacnoise, in the month of December last. Clonmacnoise, 'Seven Churches of Clonmacnoise;' some kind of Abbey then; now a melancholy tract of ruins, on some bare gravelly hills,' among the dreary swamps

of the Shannon; nothing there but wrecks and death,-for the bones of the Irish Kings lie there, and burial there was considered to have unspeakable advantages once :-a Ruin now, and dreary Golgotha among the bogs of the Shannon; but an Abbey then, and fit for a Conventicle of the Occult Hierarchy, 'which met on the 4th of December, 1649,' for the purpose above said. There, of a certainty, in the cold days of December, 1649, did the Occult Hierarchy meet,-warmed, we hope, by good log-fires and abundant turf,-and for somewhat less than three weeks' hold consultation. The real issue of which has now, after Twohundred years, come to be very different from the then apparent one!

The then apparent issue was a 'Union;' worthless 'superficial Union,' as Cartel calls it; skin-deep, which was broken again within the month, and is of no interest to us here. But it chanced also that, to usher-in this worthless Union,' the Occult Hierarchy published in print a Manifesto, or general Injunction and Proclamation to the Irish People; which Manifesto, coming under the eye of the Lord Lieutenant, provoked an Answer from him. And this Answer, now resuscitated, and still fit to be read by certain earnest men, Irish and other: this we may define as the real issue for us, such as it is. One of the remarkablest State-Papers ever issued by any Lord Lieutenant; which, if we could all completely read it, as an earnest Editor has had to try if he could do, till it became completely luminous again, and glowed with its old veracity and sacred zeal and fire again, might do us all some good perhaps !—

The Clonmacnoise Manifesto exists also, as a small brown Pamphlet of six leaves, printed at Kilkenny and reprinted at London in January 1649;'2 but is by no means worth inserting here. It is written in a very smooth, indeed vague and faint style, the deeply discrepant humours at Clonmacnoise not admitting of any other for their superficial Union ;' and remains, in the perusal, mostly insignificant, and as if obliterated into dimgrey,-till once, in the Lord Lieutenant's fiery illumination, some

1 Life of Ormond, ii. 105-110.

2 King's Pamphlets, large 4to, no. 43, §5; the London Reprint, or the day of purchasing it by the old Collector, is dated with the pen 31 January,' 1649-50.

traits of it do come forth again. Here is our short abstract of it, more than sufficient for present purposes.

The Kilkenny Pamphlet starts by a preamble headed "Declaration," as most such documents are called in those days; setting forth, with some brevity, That whereas various differences had existed in the Catholic Party, said differences do now ' and shall, blessed be Heaven, all reconcile themselves into a "real" Union ;" real Union now, by these presents, established, 'decreed, and bound to continue:-signed duly by all the Oc'cult Hierarchy, twenty Bishops more or less, Antonius Clonmac'nosensis among the rest. This is the first part of the Clon'macnoise Manifesto: this is to be read in every Church for 'certain Sundays; and do what good it can. - Follows next, 'similarly signed a short set of "Acts," special Orders to Priests and People at large, What they are to do by way of furthering 'said Union, and bringing good success to the Cause. Among 'which Orders we recognise one For masses, universal prayers (not wholly by machinery, we hope); and, with still more sa'tisfaction, another For decisively putting down, or at least in every way discountenancing, those bands called "Idle-Boys" '(ancestors of Captain Rock, one perceives); who much infest the country at present.

"Our Manifesto then, thirdly, winds up with an earnest admonition, called also "Declaration," to the People of Ireland 'high and low, Not to be deceived "with any shew of clemency 'exercised upon them hitherto;" inasmuch as it is the known 'intention of the English Parliament to exterminate the whole ' of them; partly by slaughter, partly by banishment "to the Tobacco Islands," and hot West-India localities, whither many 'have already been sent. Known intention; as can be deduced ' by the discerning mind from clear symptoms, chiefly from these 'two: First, that they, the English Parliament, have passed an "Act of Subscription," already disposing of Irishmen's estates 'to English Money-lenders: and then second, That they have de'cided to extirpate the Catholic Religion,—which latter fact, not 'to speak of their old Scotch Covenant and so forth, may be seen ' with eyes, even from this Lord Lieutenant's own expressions in 'his Letter to the Governor of Ross; which are quoted. To

1 Antea, p. 86.

'extirpate the Catholic Religion: how can they effect this but by 'extirpating the professors thereof? Let all Irishmen high and 'low, therefore, beware; and stand upon their guard, and adhere to the superficial Union; slaughter, or else banishment to the • Tobacco Islands, being what they have to expect.' —— It is by this third or concluding portion of the Clonmacnoise Manifesto that the Lord Lieutenant's wrath has been chiefly kindled but indeed he blazes athwart the whole Document, athwart it and along it, as we shall see, like a destroying sword, and slashes in pieces it and its inferences, and noxious delusions and deludings, in a very characteristic style.

What perhaps will most strike the careless modern reader, in the Clonmacnoise Manifesto with its 'inferences' of general extermination, is that 'shew of clemency;' and the total absence of those 'many Inhabitants' butchered at Drogheda lately: total absence of those; and also of the Two-hundred Women in the Marketplace of Wexford,' who in modern times have even grown 'Two-hundred beautiful Women' (all young, and in their Sunday clothes for the occasion), and figure still, in the Irish Imagination, in a very horrid manner. They are known to Abbé Macgeohegan, these interesting Martyrs, more or less; to Pater Irenæus, to my Lord Clarendon, Jacobite Carte, and other parties divided by wide spaces and long centuries from them; but not to this Occult Hierarchy sitting deliberative close at hand, and doing their best in the massacre way, who are rather concerned to guard us against 'shews of clemency exercised hitherto!' This circumstance, and still more what Cromwell himself says on the subject of massacring,' will strike the modern reader; and the 'Two-hundred women,' and some other things, I persuade myself, will profitably vanish from the Marketplace henceforth!

That wretched Chimera will vanish; and also, I think, a certain terrible Fact, which the Irish Imagination pretends to treat sometimes as a chimera, will profitably reassert its place there. The Massacre of 1641 was not, we will believe, premeditated by the Leaders of the Rebellion; but it is an awful truth, written in sun-clear evidence, that it did happen ;—and the noble-minded among the men of Ireland are called to admit it, and to mourn for it, and learn from it! To the ear of History