the King.  What was the result?  They were given over to slaughter and plunder by the brutal soldiery of the English Fenians.  Their nobles and gentry were beggared and proscribed; their children were sold as white slaves to West Indian planters; and their gallant struggles for the king, their sympathy for the royalist cause, was actually denounced by the English Fenians as “sedition,” “rebellion,” “lawlessness,” “sympathy with crime.”  Ah, gentlemen, the evils thus planted in our midst will survive, and work their influence; yet some men wonder that English law is held in “disesteem” in Ireland.  Time went on, gentlemen; time went on.  Another James sat on the throne; and again English Protestant Fenianism conspired for the overthrow of their sovereign.  They invited “foreign emissaries” to come over from Holland and Sweden, to begin the revolution for them.  They drove their legitimate king from the throne—­never more to return.  How did the Irish act in that hour?  Alas!  Ever too loyal—­ever only too ready to stand by the throne and laws if only treated with justice or kindliness—­they took the field for the king, not against him.  He landed on our shores; and had the English Fenians rested content with rebelling themselves, and allowed us to remain loyal as we desired to be, we might now be a neighbouring but friendly and independent kingdom under the ancient Stuart line.  King James came here and opened his Irish parliament in person.  Oh, who will say in that brief hour at least the Irish nation was not reconciled to the throne and laws?  King, parliament, and people, were blended in one element of enthusiasm, joy, and hope, the first time for ages Ireland had known such a joy.  Yes—­

We, too, had our day—­it was brief, it is ended—­
When a King dwelt among us—­no strange King—­but OURS. 
When the shout of a people delivered ascended,
And shook the green banner that hung on yon towers,
We saw it like leaves in the summer-time shiver;
We read the gold legend that blazoned it o’er—­
“To-day—­now or never; to-day and for ever”—­
Oh, God! have we seen it to see it no more!

(Applause in court).  Once more the Irish people bled and sacrificed for their loyalty to the throne and laws.  Once more confiscation devastated the land, and the blood of the loyal and true was poured like rain.  The English Fenians and the foreign emissaries triumphed, aided by the brave Protestant rebels of Ulster.  King William came to the throne—­a prince whose character is greatly misunderstood in Ireland:  a brave, courageous soldier, and a tolerant man, could he have had his way.  The Irish who had fought and lost, submitted on terms, and had law even now been just or tolerant, it was open to the revolutionary regime to have made the Irish good subjects.  But what took place?  The penal code came, in all its horror to fill the Irish heart with hatred and resistance.  I will read for you what a Protestant historian—­a man of learning