45. Thomas O’Brian Mac Mahon.
I have a book, the author of which must have been in a violent passion during the whole time that he was writing it, and certainly had not cooled when he penned the title page,—for thus it is entiled,
The Candor and Good Nature of Englishmen exemplified in their deliberate, cautious, and charitable way of characterizing the Customs, Manners, Constitution, and Religion of Neighbouring Nations, of which their own Authors are every where produced as Vouchers: their moderate, equitable, and humane mode of governing States dependent on them; their elevated, courteous, and conciliating Stile and Deportment, on all occasions; with, in particular, a true and well-supported specimen of the ingenuous and liberal manner in which they carry on Religious Controversy. By Thomas O’Brien Mac Mahon.
This book contains one very amusing 78passage. You sent out the Children of your princes,’ says he, addressing the Irish, ‘and sometimes your princes in person, to enlighten this kingdom, then sitting in utter darkness; and how have they recompenced you? Why, after lawlessly distributing your estates, possessed for thirteen centuries or more by your illustrious families, whose antiquity and nobility, if equalled by any nation in the world, none but the immutable God of Abraham’s ever beloved and chosen, though at present wandering and afflicted, people surpasses; after, I say, seizing on your inheritances, and flinging them among their Cocks, Hens, Crows, Rooks, Daws, Wolves, Lions, Foxes, Rams, Bulls, Hogs, and other birds and beasts of prey; or vesting them in the sweepings of their jails, their Small-woods, Dolittles, Barebones, Strangeways, Smarts, Sharps, Tarts, Sterns, Churls, and Savages; their Greens, Blacks, Browns, Grays, and Whites; their Smiths, Carpenters, 79
