CHAP. II. mated by Dr. Petty at about 850,000, of whom 150,000 were English and Scots. Experience had shown too repeatedly that when the English and Irish 1652-60 were intermixed, the distinctive English character in a few generations was lost. To prevent a recurrence of a transformation so subtle and so dangerous, Cromwell determined to make Connaught into a second Wales. The Western province had a natural boundary in the Shannon. Beyond this deep and effectual barrier, the families of the chiefs, the leading members of the Irish race--the middle and upper classes, as we should call them, from whose ranks the worst elements of disorder arose-might receive an equivalent for the lands of which they were deprived. There living among themselves they might die out or multiply as their lot might be. A line of physical demarcation would then be drawn between the Teutonic and Celtic population. Ulster, Munster, and Leinster would be the exclusive possession of Protestant English and Protestant Scots, reinforced, it might be, by Calvinist fugitives from the Continent. The Irish peasantry might be trusted to remain under their new masters, if the chiefs of their own blood were removed; and with peace, order, and good government, and protected from spoliation, they might be expected to conform, at no distant time, to the habits, language, and religion of their conquerors. The Swordsmen,' those who had been out in the war, were offered the alternative of Connaught or exile. Some chose the first, the larger number chose the second, and went, with the most devoted of their followers, into the French, Spanish, and Austrian services. The Catholic priests were more sharply dealt with. They were declared, in a sweeping BOOK judgment, guilty of high treason, and ordered to I. depart. A thousand of them hastened away of 1652-60 themselves; but as many or more remained, and it was a question what to do with them. At first, such of them as did not remove of their own accord were put on board vessels bound for Spain. This proving no deterrent, they were sent to the Barbadoes settlement. Finally, when the numbers arrested were too great to be so provided for, they were removed to two islands in the Atlantic, the Isle of Arran and Inis Bofin, where cabins were built for them, and they were allowed sixpence a day for their maintenance.1 On these principles Ireland was laid out and resettled by Cromwell's officers. In the apportionment of the claims the soldiers were asked whether their lands should be selected by authority for them, or divided by lot. They answered remarkably, that they would rather take a lot upon a barren mountain as from the Lord, than a portion in the most fruitful valley upon their own choice.' Both methods were adopted in the final decision. The regiments were kept together in bodies; the lot determined the situation of individuals. They were settled down regiment by regiment, troop by troop, company by company, almost on the lands they had conquered.' The peasants remained under them in their 2 1 I cannot pass over this part of my narrative without making my acknowledgments to Mr. Prendergast, to whose personal courtesy I am deeply indebted, and to whose impartiality and candour in his volume on the Cromwellian settlement I can offer no higher praise than by saying, that the perusal of it has left on my mind an impression CHAP. II. natural homes, as their under-tenants, or farm servants. They built and planted, they drained and ploughed. They went to work with heart and will 1652-60 in the homes which they had earned; and, by the natural enchantment which gives to order and industry its immediate and admirable reward, the face of Ireland began, once more, to wear a look of quiet and prosperity. The disorderly elements could not, at once and altogether, be removed. In inaccessible hiding-paces -in the bogs and mountains, and still enormous forests-bands of outlaws who had escaped Connaught lurked, under the name of Tories, and continued a war of plunder and assassination.' Their extirpation was a tedious process. The leaders were identified, and outlawed by name, and, when they refused to give themselves up, a price was set upon their heads, which their own comrades were willing to earn. 'The Irish bring them in,' said Major Morgan. 'Brothers and cousins cut one another's throats.' It was a hateful method, yet, under the circumstances, an inevitable one. The colonists found themselves shot at in the woods and fields, and their farmsteads burnt over their heads. 1 'Accustomed,' says Mr. Prendergast, to their own submissive rural classes, who represented the defeated and subdued Saxons, the English expected that the Irish would submit. They little knew the hearts, full of the noblest fire, that beat under the poorest rags in Ireland.' 'Father Plunket,' Mr. Prendergast continues, a friar of English race,' was employed to persuade the people into quiet. He reported they would rather pull God out of his throne, or throw themselves headlong into the sea, than become Such a state of feeling implies, 6 I. BOOK They used the readiest means of ridding themselves of enemies whom they regarded as no better than wild 1652-60 animals-wild animals, or even worse. Yet even these poor wretches scarcely deserve the sarcasm of their modern champion. No wonder they betrayed each other,' says Mr. Prendergast, when there was no longer any public cause to maintain.' Such was the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland— unrelentingly severe on the authors of the chronic misery under which the island had so long lain paralysed, infinitely favourable to her future prospects if the wound, at last cauterised, was never allowed to reopen. The owners of the soil had forfeited their rights, and were deprived of them. The religion out of which the worst of their crimes had originated was proscribed. These two things accomplished, Ireland was identified with England, and made a full participator in every advantage which England possessed. The separate Parliament-fruitful mother of so much mischief was swept away. The Irish representatives came to Westminster, and the two countries were made one under Cromwell's administration. For the first and last time, the sole object of the English Government was to further, to the utmost possible degree, the advancement and prosperity of Irish industry. Even the expatriation to Connaught was conceived and carried out in no ill-will to those who were removed. 'No one,' says Clarendon, was exported who had not forfeited his life by rebellion; and it was the only way to save them from utter destruction: for such was their humour, that no English man or woman could stray a mile from their homes, but they were found murdered or stripped by the Irish, who lay in wait for them; so that the soldiers, if they had been allowed to CHAP. II. remain in the country, would have risen upon them and totally destroyed them." There were plenty of persons, with Scripture arguments to back them, who 1652-60 advocated harsher work. The object,' said a Petition of Officers, 'is to prevent those of natural principles from being one with the Irish as well in affinity as idolatry, as many thousands did who came over in Queen Elizabeth's time, many of whom have had a hand in the murders and massacre. The order to the Israelites was to root out the heathen, lest they should cause them to forsake the Lord their God.' The argument was apposite, and, as the event proved, not ill-grounded. But had Cromwell's mode of government been persisted in-had there been no relapse into the old combination of iniquity and feebleness-events would have justified his resolution. He meant to rule Ireland for Ireland's good, and all testimony agrees that Ireland never prospered as she prospered in the years of the Protectorate. He yielded nothing which he held essential. He allowed no penal statutes to be hung out, like scarecrows, to be a jest and mockery. The execution of the soldiers who stole the fowl was the symbol of the entire administration. He allowed no wrong-doing -no tyrannous oppression of the poor. Ireland's interests were not sacrificed to England's commercial jealousies. A prosperous woollen manufacture had been set on foot by James the First's colonists. The British weaving interest took alarm, and Strafford, to please England and weaken Ireland, destroyed the trade. Cromwell, recognizing no difference between 1 3 Life of Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 42. 2 I.e. men without saving grace. 3The Irish have wool in great quantities, and if they should manu |