BOOK I. the two countries, removed Strafford's obstructions, encouraged manufactures of every description, and 1652-60 gave entire liberty of trade.' The vice of Ireland was idleness; therefore, by all means, he stimulated industry. He abolished license, which the Irish miscalled liberty. He gave them instead the true liberty of law and wise direction; and he refused to sacrifice to English selfishness any single real benefit which it was in his power to confer. Unguentem pungit, pungentem Hibernicus ungit. So said a Hibernian proverb. The worst means of governing the Irish is to give them their own way. In concession they see only fear, and those that fear them they hate and despise. Coercion succeeds better they respect a master hand, though it be a hard and cruel one. But let authority be just as well as strong; give an Irishman a just master, and he will follow him to the world's end. Cromwell alone, of all Irish governors, understood this central principle of Irish management. He was gone before his administration could bear fruit in the feeling of the people, and history remembers only in him the avenger of the massacre. Yet, three years only after the settlement, General Fleetwood could write that the country was perfectly quiet; English people, if they would come over and buy land, would find facture it themselves the English wool, they must of necessity fetch their clothing from England, and consequently in a sort depend on it for their livelihood, and be disabled to cast off that dependence without nakedness to themselves and their children.'-Carte's Ormond. 1 Arthur Young on Ireland, vol. ii. p. 178. CHAP. II. Ireland little different from home; considering what the devastation had been, the 'plenty' that had sprung up was 'wonderful." The English of all 1652–60 sorts, Munster Royalists as well as the new settlers, submitted heartily and loyally. The Presbyterians remained unforgiving, but they were left unmolested, by-and-by to reap as they had sown. The well-disposed among the Irish were reconciled sooner than might have been expected to a rule which gave them the reality of protection. Not a few of the old sort, who had escaped the weeding, were taking advantage of openings that offered themselves, and renting lands from settlers who wished to return to England. Priests and dispossessed proprietors were hiding in disguise among the tribes, making mischief where they were able. But the peasantry seemed proof against seduction. The mere husbandmen,' wrote Dr. Jones to Fleetwood, 'being now in very good condition, will hardly be driven into action. What their priests may persuade them to I know not; I am confident the gentry will never be able to move them from their resolution to enjoy their present ease 1 Fleetwood to Thurloe, June 18, 1655.-Thurloe Papers. 2 Our dissenting, but I hope godly, friends in this country carry such a jealousy with the present magistracy and ministry as I am weary of hoping for accommodation: everywhere they are unanimous and fixed in separating from us even to the ordinance of hearing the Word.'-'Nathaniel Brewster to Thurloe, October 12, 1656.' 3Here is one Marcus O'Decies, who has been a notable trooper and lieutenant of foot in the Irish army. This man hath taken six or seven great townlands from several landlords, but lying together, whereby he hath many patrons to excuse his transportation. Those lands he hath planted all with strangers unknown in these parts. They behave themselves proudly, not like other churls, and under colour of ploughing are able to make up among them a reasonable good troop of horse.'-'Dr. H. Jones to Fleetwood, Dublin, January 23, 1656-7.' Thurloe Papers. 4 Afterwards Bishop of Meath. BOOK I. 1652-60 and quiet as long as by the State it shall be permitted to them." Had the system thus established been continued for a few more years, the industrial advantages of Ireland, the abundance of soil, the cheapness of labour, the boundless quantities of admirable wool, the unrivalled rivers and harbours, could not have failed to have attracted thither energetic men from all countries, who, in turning the national resources to account, would have acquired permanent mastery over the old inhabitants. Romanism, sternly repressed, must have died out, as Protestantism died in Spain and Italy. Industry was everywhere alive, creating wealth and comfort, order and organization. Intelligent and just authority laid an effectual bridle on temptation to rebellion, and the progress made by Ireland in the following century, when the most beneficial of these conditions was unhappily absent, and only the most galling were retained, encourages a belief that, had Cromwell's principles been accepted as the permanent rule of Irish administration, the lines of difference between the two countries, now as marked as ever, and almost as threatening, would have long ago disappeared. 1 Thurloe Papers. CHAPTER III. THE REVOLUTION. SECTION I. THE problem which presented itself on the Restoration of the Stuarts was incapable of equitable solution. The Anglo-Irish leaders of the rebellion of 1641, who, previous to the rising, had undoubtedly received encouragement from Charles the First-who, in the course of the civil war, had given money and sent regiments to England to fight on the royal side, and had received their final defeat from Cromwell himself, expected naturally to be restored to their estates, and to see the Parliamentary adventurers, and the soldiers who had been the instruments of their oppression, flung out from the lands which they had usurped. The perplexed and Protean insurrection had settled itself at last into the form which, as originally designed, it was to have assumed from the first-a defence of the Crown against the Parliament. All parties and both religions had accepted the King's viceroy as their leader. The wreck of the Royal army had crossed from England, and had received their last overthrow in the Irish ranks, and in defending Irish towns. Even the Nuncio himself, the leader of the party most bitterly antagonistic to England, had been recognized by Charles as a friend. All factions-Ormond's own original Royalists, the CHAP. III. 1660 BOOK I. 1660 Lords of the Pale, and the Irish of Owen Roe-had been included in a common confiscation. All guilty alike in the eyes of the Commonwealth, they expected to be regarded in the Restoration as alike deserving reward; or, if not reward, at least replacement in the properties which they had lost in the King's service. It was no less true, on the other hand, that the rebellion, whatever the differences of opinion among its chiefs, had been at its commencement a revolt of Ireland against England, and as such denounced and disavowed by the King himself. It had been a ferocious effort of the Irish race to shake off English authority, to exterminate the English settlers and the Protestant religion. It had been attended by horrors and atrocities which had burnt themselves indelibly into every Saxon memory; and the Cromwellian conquest had been in fact a resubjugation of Ireland by England, and in the name of England. English authority had been, for the first time, completely established over the whole island, and it was as little likely that England would consent to part with the fruits of a victory so precious and so dearly bought, as that the English settled there would yield up, without a struggle, their just reward for the blood which they had sacrificed. The Cromwellians could only be ejected by arming the native Irish against them; and the bare attempt or mention of such a step would have cost Charles his hardly recovered crown. By all technical forms-by engagements written and spoken-by the indisputable truth that, before their final defeat, they had all been accepted by the King as loyal subjects, and were all in arms in his favour, his honour was pledged to do justice to the Irish Catholic landowners. By the essential facts of the |