bably, distrusting tribunals which were systematically and notoriously partial, took flight, and no less than six counties were confiscated, and planted with English and Scotch. The plantation scheme was conducted with much ability, partly by the advice of Bacon. The great depopulation of the country in the last war rendered it comparatively easy, and Sir John Davis noticed that, for the first time in the history of the confiscations, some attention was paid to the interests of the natives, to whom a considerable proportion of the confiscated land, selected arbitrarily by the Government, was assigned.1 The proprietary rights, however, of the clans, in accordance with the recent decision, were entirely disregarded. Great numbers of the old proprietors, or head tenants, were driven from their land, and the large Presbyterian element now introduced into Ulster greatly increased the bitterness of theological animosity. The new colonists also, planted in the old Irish territory, though far surpassing the natives in industrial enterprise, were of a class very little fitted to raise the moral level of the province, to conciliate a people they despised, or to soften the shock of a great calamity. The picture drawn of their general character by Stewart, the son of one of the ministers who came over, is probably a little over-coloured, but there is no reason to doubt its substantial truth, and it does much to explain the ferocious character of the rebellion that followed. 'From Scotland came many, and from England not a few, yet all of them generally the scum of both nations, who from debt, or breaking or fleeing from justice, or seeking shelter, came hither, hoping to be without fear of man's justice, in a land where there was nothing, or but little as yet, of the fear of God. . . On all hands Atheism increased, and disregard of God; iniquity abounded,

1 Davis's Tracts. Carte's Ormond, i. 16.

with contention, fighting, murder, adultery. . . . Going to Ireland was looked on as a miserable mark of a deplorable person; yea, it was turned into a proverb, and one of the worst expressions of disdain that could be invented was to tell a man that "Ireland would be his hinder end." Although among those whom Divine Providence did send to Ireland,' says another Presbyterian writer, there were several persons eminent for birth, education, and parts, yet the most part were such as either poverty, scandalous lives, or, at the best, adventurous seeking of better accommodation, had forced thither.'1

In

The aspect of Ireland, however, was at this time more encouraging than it had been for many years. the social system, as in the physical body, the prostration of extreme illness is often followed, with a strange rapidity, by a sudden reflux of exuberant health. When a nation has been brought to the utmost extremities of anguish; when almost all the old, the sick, the feeble have been hurried to the grave; when the population has been suddenly and enormously reduced; when great masses of property have quickly changed hands; and when few except the most vigorous natures remain, it may reasonably be expected that the cessation of the calamity will be followed by a great outburst of prosperity. Such a rebound followed the Black Death, which in the fourteenth century swept away about a fourth part of the inhabitants of Europe; and a similar recovery, on a smaller scale, and due in part at least to the same cause, took place in Ireland after the Elizabethan and the Cromwellian wars, and after the great famine of the present century. Besides this, a new and energetic element was introduced into Irish life. English law was extended through the island. The Judges went

Reid's Hist. of the Irish Presbyterians, i. 97, 98.

their regular circuits, and it was hoped that the resentment produced by recent events would be compensated or allayed by the destruction of that clan system which had been the source of much disorder, by the abolition of the exactions of the Irish chiefs, and by the introduction of skilful husbandmen, and therefore of material prosperity, into a territory half of which lay absolutely waste, while the other half was only cultivated in the rudest manner. It was inevitable that the English and the Irish should look on the Plantation in very different ways. In the eyes of the latter it was a confiscation of the worst and most irritating description; for, whatever might have been the guilt of the banished earls, the clans, who, according to Irish notions, were the real owners of the soil, had given no provocation; and the measure, by breaking up their oldest and most cherished customs and traditions, by banishing their ancient chiefs, by tearing them from their old homes, and by planting among them new masters of another race, and of a hostile creed, excited an intensity of bitterness which no purely political measure could possibly have produced. In the eyes of the English the measure was essential, if Ulster was to be brought fully under the dominion of English law, and if its resources were to be developed; and the assignment of a large part of the land to native owners distinguished it broadly and favourably from similar acts in previous times.

It met with

Moors out of Grenada into Barbary, without providing them any new seats there; when the English Pale was first planted, all the natives were clearly expelled, so as not one Irish family had so much as an acre of freehold in all the five counties of the Pale; and now within these four years past, the Greames were removed

no serious resistance. Even the jury system was at once introduced, and although it was at first found that the clansmen would give no verdicts against one another, jurymen were speedily intimidated into submission by fines or imprisonment. In a few years the progress was so great that Sir John Davis, the able AttorneyGeneral of King James, pronounced the strings of the Irish harp to be all in tune, and he expressed both surprise and admiration at the absence of crime among the natives, and at their complete submission to the law. 'I dare affirm,' he wrote, 'that for the space of five years past there have not been found so many malefactors worthy of death in all the six circuits of this realm (which is now divided into thirty-two shires at large) as in one circuit of six shires, namely, the western circuit, in England. For the truth is that in time of peace the Irish are more fearful to offend the law than the English or any other nation whatsoever.' The nation,' he predicted, 'will gladly continue subjects, without adhering to any other lord or king, as long as they may be protected and justly governed, without oppression on the one side or impunity on the other. For there is no nation or people under the sun that doth love equal or indifferent justice better than the Irish; or will rest better satisfied with the execution thereof, although it be against themselves; so as they may have the protec

from the borders of Scotland to this kingdom, and had not one foot of land allotted unto them here; but these natives of Cavan have competent portions of land assigned unto them, many of them in the same barony where they dwelt before, and such as are removed are planted in the same county, so as his Majesty doth in this imitate the skilful

husbandman who doth remove his fruit trees, not with a purpose to extirpate and destroy them, but that they may bring better and sweeter fruit after the transplantation.'-Sir J. Davis's second Letter to the Earl of Salisbury.

Ibid. first Letter to the Earl of Salisbury.

tion and benefit of law when upon just cause they do desire it.'1

But yet it needed little knowledge of human nature to perceive that the country was in imminent danger of drifting steadily to a fearful catastrophe. The unspeakable horrors that accompanied the suppression of the Irish under Elizabeth, the enormous confiscations in three provinces, the abolition of the land customs most cherished by the people, the legal condemnation of their religion, the plantation among them of an alien and hostile population, ever anxious to root them from the soil-all these elements of bitterness, crowded into a few disastrous years of suffering, were now smouldering in deep resentment in the Irish mind. Mere political changes leave the great body of the community untouched, or touch them only feebly, indirectly or superficially; but changes which affect religious belief or the means and conditions of material subsistence are felt in their full intensity in the meanest hovel. Nothing in Irish history is more remarkable than the entire absence of outrage and violence that followed the Ulster Plantation, and for the present at least the people showed themselves eminently submissive, tractable, and amenable to the law. But the only possible means of securing a permanence of peace was by convincing them that justice would be administered with impartial firmness, and that for the future at least, under the shadow of English rule, their property and their religion, the fruits of their industry, and the worship of their God, would be scrupulously respected. Had such a spirit animated the Government of Ireland, all might yet have been well. But the greed for Irish land which had now become the dominating passion of English adventurers was still un

1 Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued, pp. 200, 201, 213.