Never were greater pains taken to keep a community pure than within the sacred precincts of the Derry walls; and never was Protestantism more tenderly fostered by the state--so far as secular advantages could do it.

The natives were treated as 'foreigners.' No trade was permitted except by the chartered British.

They were free of tolls all over the land, and for their sake restrictions were placed on everybody that could in any way interfere with their worldly interests.

So complete was the system of exclusion kept up by the English Government and the London corporation, in this grand experiment for planting religion and civility among a barbarous people, that, so late as the year 1708, the Derry corporation considered itself nothing more or less than _a branch of the City of London_! In that year they sent an address to the Irish Society, to be presented through them to the queen.

'In this address they stated themselves to be a branch of the City of London.
The secretary was ordered to wait upon the lord lieutenant of Ireland with the address and entreat the favour of his lordship's advice concerning the presenting of the same to her majesty.' A few days after it was announced that the address had been graciously received, and published in the _Gazette_.
The Irish were kept out of the enclosed part of the city till a late period.