through the Exclusionists up to the Roundheads continued during thirty years, in spite of royal frowns and popular clamours, to demand a share in all the benefits of our free constitution for those Irish Papists whom the Roundheads and the Exclusionists had considered merely as beasts of chase or as beasts of burden. But it will be for some other historian to relate the vicissitudes of that great conflict, and the late triumph of reason and humanity. Unhappily such a historian will have to relate that the triumph won by such exertions and by such sacrifices was immediately followed by disappointment; that it proved far less easy to eradicate evil passions than to repeal evil laws; and that, long after every trace of national and religious animosity had been obliterated from the Statute Book, national and religious animosities continued to rankle in the bosoms of millions. May he be able also to relate that wisdom, justice and time gradually did in Ireland what they had done in Scotland, and that all the races which inhabit the British isles were at length indissolubly blended into one people!
CHAPTER XVIII
Opening of the Parliament--Debates on the Salaries and Fees of Official Men--Act excluding Papists from Public Trust in Ireland- -Debates on the East India Trade--Debates on the Bill for regulating Trials in Cases of High Treason--Plot formed by Marlborough against the Government of William--Marlborough's Plot disclosed by the Jacobites--Disgrace of Marlborough; Various Reports touching the Cause of Marlborough's Disgrace.--Rupture between Mary and Anne--Fuller's Plot--Close of the Session; Bill for ascertaining the Salaries of the Judges rejected--Misterial Changes in England--Ministerial Changes in Scotland--State of the Highlands--Breadalbane employed to negotiate with the Rebel Clans--Glencoe--William goes to the Continent; Death of