Out of every corner of the woods and glynns, they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find them, yea, and one another soon after; insomuch, as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves, and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able to continue there withal; that in short space there was none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man and beast*."

The authors of this calamity reaped from it the expected fruits. Five hundred and seventy-four thousand six hundred and twenty-eight acres were forfeited to the Crown, and distributed among Englishmen.

As famine had succeeded so well in Munster, it was adopted systematically in Leinster and Ulster; and that death which Homer pronounces to be the most miserable that man can

* State of Ireland.

die, was now prescribed and administered universally as a panacea for all the evils of Ireland. "The soldiers," as we learn from Moryson, "encouraged by the example of their officers, every where cut down the standing corn with their swords, and devised every means to deprive the wretched inhabitants of all the necessaries of life. Famine was judged the speediest and most effectual means of reducing them. The like expedient was practised in the northern provinces. The governor of Carrickfergus, Sir Arthur Chichester, issued from his quarters, and for twenty miles round reduced the country to a desert. Sir Samuel Bagnal, with the garrison of Newry, proceeded with the same severity, and laid waste all the adjacent lands."

Such was the executive part of the measures of Elizabeth's ministers.-Let us now lift the curtain of her Councils, and see what was passing there.

It appears from the letters of Sir H. Sidney and Sir J. Perrot* (who, to do them justice,

*It will be perceived that throughout my brief review of the measures of England towards Ireland, I

speak of such conduct with the horror it deserves), that when the death of the Earl of Desmond, and the suppression of his adherents, had left an interval of tranquillity which it was proposed to take advantage of, for the long-desired purpose of introducing a system of justice and liberal policy into Ireland, the Counsellors of Elizabeth opposed themselves to this humane design, and did not blush to assign the following reasons for their opposition:-"Should we exert ourselves," said they,

have relied almost exclusively upon English authorities-without availing myself either of the dreadful details of the Irish annalists, the high-coloured statements of the over-Catholic O'Sullivan, or even those comments full of true Irish feeling, by which honest Curry, in his valuable work on the Civil Wars of Ireland, brings out into stronger light and relief the frightful enormities which his pen has grouped toge

ther.

Leland, the only Irish authority on which I have rested, was sufficiently protected against any undue partiality to his country, by a Fellowship in the University of Dublin, a Prebend in St.Patrick's Cathedral, and a Chaplaincy at the Castle-all good securities against political heterodoxy.

"in reducing this country to order and civility, it must soon acquire power, consequence, and riches. The inhabitants will be thus alienated from England; they will cast themselves into the arms of some foreign power, or perhaps erect themselves into an independent and separate State. Let us rather connive at their disorders; for a weak and disordered people never can attempt to detach themselves from the crown of England."

This policy was not new in the history of nations. Diodorus Siculus tells us, that the ancient Kings of Egypt kept alive the spirit of religious dissensions among their subjects, as the best means of preventing a combination against their own tyranny-well knowing, that as long as a Dog-worshipper of Cynopolis was ready to cut the throat of a Fish-adorer of Oxyrynchus, there would be no fear of any rational concord in the cause of liberty among such people. Accordingly, at one time, by giving superior privileges to the Dog establishment— at another, by mortifying the Canine Ascendancy, and even affecting an inclination to bring

Fish worship into fashion, they contrived to cherish such a deadly animosity between these two respectable creeds, that when the Romans, who took somewhat more sensible views of such matters, became masters of Egypt, it required (as Plutarch tells us) the strongest and most skilful interposition of their authority, to put down both Dog and Fish together-or, at least, by removing all distinctions between them, to render their worship a matter of as little consequence as they were them

selves.

Never had the Rocks a fairer harvest of riot than during this most productive reign. One of my ancestors, who lived and battled through the whole of it, has transmitted to his descendants the high and illustrious distinction, of having been personally engaged in no less than forty rebellions-making within five of the number of years that good Queen Bess (as he well might call her) reigned-to say nothing of a multitude of episodical insurrections, of a lighter nature, with which he amused his summer months.