Catholics and the American Revolution (Volume 1) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: than to strengthen the authority of the King in America, the Quebec Act began that series of concessions which did not cease until the British Parliament itself and the high offices of administration have become accessible to Papists."?[Bancroft, iii, p. 156.] IRELAND IN THE REVOLUTION. That the Religious spirit was invoked in Ireland against the Americans there is abundant evidence. The first conciliatory Act of England towards the Irish Catholics was the Act of 1774, "To Enable His Majesty's Subjects of whatever persuasion to testify their allegiance to him," which Act the Government "not without some difficulty" passed through the Irish Parliament. But Lord North was anxious to "conciliate the Irish Catholics in order to unite the subjects of the King in Great Britain and Ireland" and so "sent positive orders that some Act should be passed of conciliatory tendency towards the Catholics."?[Amherst's Catholic Emancipation, p. 53.] On April 28, 1775, a Committee of the Aldermen and Commons of Dublin drafted an Address to George III. in which they said that Ireland was "defenceless against our natural and hereditary enemy and they had the mortification to find the military force drained from this Kingdom to enter into an unnatural conflict with Protestant subjects of the same empire."?[Almon's Remembrancer, vol. i, p. 162.] Efforts were made to enlist the Catholics of Ireland: I promise to give a bounty of half a guinea to every able bodied man who shall enlist with Major Boyle Roche (my relation) for the sen.ice of His Majesty: and I further declare that I will show every act of favor in my power to the friends of such, volunteers as show a proper spirit on this occasion. Kenmare. Killarney, August n, 1775. A Protestant in sending above advertisement to Rememb...