For a much longer period than that which had sufficed to blend the Romans with the nation to which of all others they were the most adverse, the Protestants settled in Ireland considered themselves in no other light than that of a sort of a colonial garrison, to keep the natives in subjection to the other state of Great Britain.  The whole spirit of the Revolution in Ireland was that of not the mildest conqueror.  In truth, the spirit of those proceedings did not commence at that era, nor was religion of any kind their primary object.  What was done was not in the spirit of a contest between two religious factions, but between two adverse nations.  The statutes of Kilkenny show that the spirit of the Popery laws, and some even of their actual provisions, as applied between Englishry and Irishry, had existed in that harassed country before the words Protestant and Papist were heard of in the world.  If we read Baron Finglas, Spenser, and Sir John Davies, we cannot miss the true genius and policy of the English government there before the Revolution, as well as during the whole reign of Queen Elizabeth.  Sir John Davies boasts of the benefits received by the natives, by extending to them the English law, and turning the whole kingdom into shire ground.  But the appearance of things alone was changed.  The original scheme was never deviated from for a single hour.  Unheard-of confiscations were made in the northern parts, upon grounds of plots and conspiracies, never proved upon their supposed authors.  The war of chicane succeeded to the war of arms and of hostile statutes; and a regular series of operations was carried on, particularly from Chichester’s time, in the ordinary courts of justice, and by special commissions and inquisitions,—­first under pretence of tenures, and then of titles in the crown, for the purpose of the total extirpation of the interest of the natives in their own soil,—­until this species of subtle ravage, being carried to the last excess of oppression and insolence under Lord Strafford, it kindled the flames of that rebellion which broke out in 1641.  By the issue of that war, by the turn which the Earl of Clarendon gave to things at the Restoration, and by the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691, the ruin of the native Irish, and, in a great measure, too, of the first races of the English, was completely accomplished.  The new English interest was settled with as solid a stability as anything in human affairs can look for.  All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression, which were made after the last event, were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon and were not at all afraid to provoke.  They were not the effect of their fears, but of their security.  They who carried on this system looked to the irresistible force of Great Britain for their support in their acts of power.  They were quite certain that no