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SKETCHES OF NORTH CAROLINA.

CHAPTER IX.
THE POLITICAL SENTIMENTS OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH EMIGRANTS.

THE religious sentiments of the emigrants having been given, as Calvinistic and Presbyterian, for the holding of which they had suffered, and were ready to suffer again, we will glance at their political principles, which had no small influence in their emigration and location, and after life,—forming one of the three grand motives to cross the waters,—Religion, Politics, and Property.

I. In the truest sense of the word they were loyal. They, and their ancestors, were well convinced of the importance of a regular and firm government; and were true to their promises and their allegiance. James I. chose the Scotch for the colonizing Ireland, for two reasons: first, from their habits they were more likely to overcome the difficulties of a settlement; and second, from their principles of allegiance, most likely to make Ireland what he wished it—pacific and prosperous. In the first he was not disappointed; and his hopes of the second were crossed only as he and his successors failed to extend to the emigrants that protection he had promised, and was well able to give. They always maintained the conceded authority of the king, as supreme ruler according to the Solemn League and Covenant, by which they held themselves bound from the time it was taken in 1644, till they left Ireland about a century afterward; and some of their posterity in America profess to feel its binding power in some respects to this day. They opposed those violent measures, in parliament and out, which led to, or hastened, the king's death. They desired a reform of abuses, and a fulfilment of the Solemn League, on the part of the king, and designed a fulfilment of their own promises, and had not been found deficient in any emergency. They expected the king to be honest while they were loyal.

Their views of the parliamentary authority, after the king's death, are well expressed by one of their ministers, on examination before the military authority of the Parliament, at Carrickfergus, in 1650. Being required to take the Oath, or Engagement of submission to Parliament, which was to be in place of the Solemn