458 RESULTS OF THE RECORD COMMISSIONS. 



and ill counsel of the English planted here, which in all former ages 

 have been the chief impediments of the final conquest of Ireland." 

 Again, he says, that the English lords palatine, " persuaded the King 

 of England that it was unfit to communicate the laws of England to 

 the Irish : that it was the best policy to hold them as aliens and ene- 

 mies, and prosecute them with continual war." And yet, after 

 quoting these passages, and adding on his own authority, that ." the 

 murder of a native was at the same time not considered a crime 

 punishable by law, while to wreak the most cruel injury on the 

 neighbouring septs was accounted an heroic exploit." Mr. Lascelles 

 puts forth the following slander, as cruel and unprecedented as it is 

 impudent, unsupported, and nonsensical : 



" After all, it is easy to see that the granting the above petition to the 

 Irish would not have been so much conceding any thing to those, as the 

 taking it away from these. And this was all that was meant by such 

 petitions. So little, then, were the petitioners in a condition to accept such 

 a boon, that it is known they neither understood nor cared for it : they were 

 resolved to stand by their own vernacular usages and laws, if these might be 

 so called. So enslaved were they to barbarism by their way of living, that 

 no acts of parliament could possibly emancipate them at once, or remove 

 their disabilities. But they saw that the granting their petition would utterly 

 repeal and dissolve the power of subsisting local government. And this was 

 the sole object of the petition, presented with one hand, and having arms in 

 the other." 



Thus, the hateful injustice which Sir John Davys, a member of the 

 Irish goverment, deplored two centuries ago, as a most grievous poli- 

 tical fault, occasioned by the most odious political vices, Rowley Las- 

 celles defends, in the present civilized age, by impudent and ground- 

 loss assertions, and the truly tory apology that the Irish were too 

 rude and poor to be treated with justice ; a ready argument for 

 every tyrant or slave-master. 



The last fifteen pages of this part of the work consist of crude ex- 

 tracts from works " of the right tendency/' under the head of " Na- 

 tional Characteristics of the Irish, as Men, as Statesmen, Writers, 

 Orators, &c." wretchedly defective in every thing, though containing 

 an extravagant length of twaddle about Hume, from Hardy's Life of 

 Lord Charlemont. The following observations concerning the state of 

 society in Ireland, are by Mr. Lascelles in propria persona : 



" In England all are free alike, the labourer and the prince, the servant as 

 well as the master ; and rights are distributably, not commutably equal : but 

 in Ireland and the Colonies, liberty looks like something noble, inyenuous, 

 privileged." 



In another place, he says 



" Let any one read Bryan Edwards's West Indies ; let him note the cha- 

 racter of the planter and the labouring population : to this let him add a 

 third, the character of the agent, whether for land or law, and the man of 

 office united in one, having an uncontrolled confidence placed in him, 

 attended, of course, by unlimited abuse of such confidence. IT WILL THEN BE 



EASY TO UNDERSTAND THE LEADING CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIETY IN IfiE- 

 LADN." 



The next division of the book contains Lodge's Baronetage of Ire- 

 land, being his valuable " lists from the record itself," brought down 



