atholic soldiers whom the good pay and quarters of England would
attract across St. George's Channel. Tyrconnel had been, during some
time, employed in forming out of the peasantry of his country a military
force on which his master might depend. Already Papists, of Celtic
blood and speech, composed almost the whole army of Ireland. Barillon
earnestly and repeatedly advised James to bring over that army for the
purpose of coercing the English. [444]

James wavered. He wished to be surrounded by troops on whom he could
rely: but he dreaded the explosion of national feeling which the
appearance of a great Irish force on English ground must produce.
At last, as usually happens when a weak man tries to avoid opposite
inconveniences, he took a course which united them all. He brought over
Irishmen, not indeed enough to hold down the single city of London, or
the single county of York, but more than enough to excite the alarm and
rage of the whole kingdom, from Northumberland to Cornwall. Battalion
after battalion, raised and trained by Tyrconnel, landed on the western
coast and moved towards the capital; and Irish recruits were imported
in considerable numbers, to fill up vacancies in the English regiments.
[445]

Of the many errors which James committed, none was more fatal than this.
Already he had alienated the hearts of his people by violating their
laws, confiscating their estates, and persecuting their religion. Of
those who had once been most zealous for monarchy, he had already made
many rebels in heart. Yet he might still, with some chance of success,
have appealed to the patriotic spirit of his subjects against
an invader. For they were a race insular in temper as well as in
geographical position. Their national antipathies were, indeed, in
that age, unreasonably and unamiably strong. Never had the English
been accustomed to the control of interference of any stranger. The
appearance of a foreign army on their soil might impel them to rally
even round a King whom they had no reason to love. William might perhaps
have been unable to overcome this difficulty; but James removed it. Not
even the arrival of a brigade of Lewis's musketeers would have excited
such resentment and shame as our ancestors felt when they saw armed
columns of Papists, just arrived from Dublin, moving in military
pomp along the high roads. No man of English blood then regarded the
aboriginal Irish as his countrymen. They did not belong to our b