easier to give notice to them to appear, so that the Protestants either did not know of the election or durst not appear at it." 

 First let us see about the boroughs. King, in his section on the corporations, states in terms that "they" (the Protestants) "thought it reasonable to keep these (corporate towns) in their own hands, as being the foundation of the legislative power, and therefore secluded papists," etc. The purport, therefore, of King's objection to the new constitution under King James's charters was the admission of Roman Catholics. Religious equality was sinful in his eyes. 

 The means used by James to change the corporations, namely bringing quo warrantos in the Exchequer against them, and employing all the niceties of a confused law to quash them, we have before condemned. In doing so, he had the precedents of the reigns called most constitutional by English historians, and those not old, but during his brother's reign; nor can anyone who has looked into Brady's treatise on Boroughs doubt that there was plenty of "law" in favour of James's conduct.[26]   But still public policy and public opinion in England were against these quo warrantos, and in Ireland they were only approved of by those who were to be benefited by them. 

 But the means being thus improper, the use made by James of this power can hardly be complained of. The Roman Catholics were then about 900,000, the Protestants, over 300,000. James, it is confessed, allowed one-third of the corporations to be Protestant, though they were little, if at all, more than one-fourth of the population. This will appear no great injustice in our times, although some of these Protestants may, as it has been alleged, have been "Quakers." 

 It must also be remembered that those proceedings were begun not by James but by Charles; that the corporations were, with some show of law, conceived to have been forfeited during the Irish war, or the Cromwellian rule; and that being offered renewals on terms, they refused; whereupon the quo warrantos were brought and decided before the regular tribunals during the earlier and middle part of James's reign. On the 24th September, 1687, James issued his Royal Letter (to be found in Harris's Appendix, pp. 4 to 6), commanding the renewal of the charters. By these renewals, the first members of the corporations were to be named by the lord lieutenant, but they were afterwards to be elected by the corporations themselves. There certainly are non-obstante and non-resistance clauses ordered to be inserted, in the prerogative spirit of that day, which were justly 

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