James II
regarded by the Celtic population with intense aversion and distrust. Into all these bodies it was now resolved to introduce a new and popular element. To destroy the Protestant ascendancy, yet not to create a Catholic ascendancy in its place; to deprive the colonists of the power to exercise oppression, while leaving them the power necessary for self-defence, was, perhaps, a task beyond the range of human statesmanship. Still tact and moderation might have done much. But tact and moderation formed no part of the character of James Stuart. For a time, it is true, he hesitated. He was a zealous, indeed a bigoted Catholic; but he was an English King, and he could not but feel that it was upon the Protestant colonists, little as he had reason to love them, that, in the last resort, the power of England over Ireland must depend.7 He was surrounded with English councillors, and those councillors, Catholics no less than Protestants, regarded with undisguised hostility every measure which might tend to separate Ireland from the British crown. Tyrconnell, however, continued to urge the claims of his countrymen, and to support those claims by arguments which, to the Catholics at least, must have appeared unanswerable. The King, he insisted, could not live for ever. The next heir was a Protestant;
131
