ositive refusal was made to recommend the passing of the "graces"
into law at the next session.

"Charles' faith" might now safely rank with Grey's; and the poor
impoverished Irishman, who would willingly have given his last penny, as
well as the last drop of his blood, to save his faith, was again cruelly
betrayed where he most certainly might have expected that he could have
confided and trusted. One of the "graces" was to make sixty years of
undisputed possession of property a bar to the claims of the crown; and
certainly if there ever a country where such a demand was necessary and
reasonable, it was surely Ireland. There had been so many plantations,
it was hard for anything to grow; and so many settlements, it was hard
for anything to be settled. Each new monarch, since the first invasion
of the country by Henry II., had his favourites to provide for and his
friends to oblige. The island across the sea was considered "no man's
land," as the original inhabitants were never taken into account, and
were simply ignored, unless, indeed, when they made their presence very
evident by open resistance to this wholesale robbery. It was no wonder,
then, that this "grace" should be specially solicited. It was one in
which the last English settler in Ulster had quite as great an interest
as the oldest Celt in Connemara. The Burkes and the Geraldines had
suffered almost as much from the rapacity of their own countrymen as the
natives, on whom their ancestors had inflicted such cruel wrongs. No
man's property was safe in Ireland, for the tenure was depending on the
royal will; and the caprices of the Tudors were supplemented by the
necessities of the Stuarts.

But the "grace" was refused, although, probably, there was many a recent
colonist who would have willingly given one-half of his plantation to
have secured the other to his descendants. The reason of the refusal was
soon apparent. As soon as Parliament was dissolved, a Commission of
"Defective Titles" was issued for Connaught. Ulster had been settled,
Leinster had been settled, Munster had been settled; there remained only
Connaught, hitherto so inaccessible, now, with advancing knowledge of
the art of war, and new means of carrying out that art, doomed to the
scourge of desolation.

The process was extremely simple. The lawyers were set to work to hunt
out old claims for the crown; and as Wentworth had determined to
invalidate the title to every estate in Connaught, the