county of Kilkenny on the 16th of April, 11th of Proprietors James 1st. (1613)* and he was again chosen on the 19th of June, 9th of Charles 1st. (1634)+ to represent the same county in the parliament assembled by lord Strafford, who boasted that this was the first national parliament which had ever been held, as no other had ever before represented the whole kingdom, but merely the fluctuating territory of the English pale. On this occasion Ireland appeared, for the first time, to be emphatically under the dominion of England. In these two parliaments, so important in the history of the country, it must ever be matter of interest to recollect the names and characters of the persons, who were by their debates and enactments to produce consequences, so important. Up to that time there had been either no public feeling, or it had most certainly been exhibited by no reflex in the commons house of parliament. The value indeed of a house of representatives is chiefly that of giving this reflex of popular feeling, though that feeling may, and perhaps occasionally must be somewhat distorted. It was then tain a pardon of alienation, on payment of a fine greater than the former, but generally proportioned to the value of the property alienated. Such were the principal sources of this branch of the royal revennes of these countries, the natural growth of the barbarous period of our early history. In Ireland they obtained for many centuries, only within the pale, until the time of James I. and that of his successor. Daring these reigns they produced no inconsiderable income to the crown, but were at the same time a fruitful source of fraud and oppression. At the restoration other branches of revenne supplied their place, but how far the evils which led to the abolition of the old forms have been removed, may become the subject of some future invesligation. • Journals of the house of commous, anno 11 James I. + Ib. Proprietors that the spirit of liberty began to be stirring, and the attempts to stifle it first by king James' lavish creation of boroughs, and subsequently by lord Strafford's arbitrary use of the means thus put into his hands, just served to render the explosion so much the more dreadful. In that, it is not necessary to say that this great statesman most unworthily, as well as most unjustly was made to perish, though one of the best friends, which Ireland could ever boast; for there are stages of society, in which the legislator, to be serviceable, must be, for a time at least, invested with the very largest powers. By an inquisition taken 4th of June, 21st of James 1. (1623), it was found that Robert Grace of Courtstown had enfeoffed on the 30th of June, 15th James I. (1617) sir Roger Jones of Doranstown in the county of Meath, in the manor of Tullaghrohan and other lands in this county, to certain uses, and that he paid a fine of £80 Irish for the licence of alienation. On the 19th of March, 12th Charles I. (1637), a grant was made (by virtue of "the commission of grace for remedy of defective titles," dated 7th Sept. 1636,* • Already for a period of upwards of 400 years, from the invasion of Ireland by Henry II. to the close of the reign of Elizabeth, did this unbappy land exhibit the most tragic scenes of infatuated misrule, aud unparalleled oppression on one side, and of consequent insubordination, and sanguinary resistance, on the other. "Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant" says Galgacus in the life of Agricola by Ta citus. Such also was the impolitic and inhuman maxim that "the only way to civilize the Irish was to exterminate them, and seize their estates," a maxim, which, originating in the false and insidious Cambrensis, seems to have been the actuating principle which guided their insatiable rulers during the whole of this melancholy period of devastation and borror. Elizabeth's successor must undoubtedly be considered the first English monarch who possessed the entire dominion |