Ireland in 1862

Front matter

IRELAND IN 1862.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH

OF

Book I. — Political Equality

Chapter First. True Spirit of the Emancipation Bill, .... 1 Ch. II. Unequal Divison of Public Offices between Protestants and

Ch. III. Unequal Distribution of Parliamentary power and Electoral

rights between England and Ireland, 15

Ch. IV. "Want of Impartiality in the Administration of Justice, . . 21

Ch. V. The Jury- Packing System, 30

Ch. VI. Exorbitant Powers of Grand Juries in matters of local administration, 44

Ch. VII. Municipal and Parochial Institutions, ..... 52

Ch. VIII. Financial Relations between England and Ireland, . . 56

Ch. IX. Exceptional Laws and Measures to which Ireland is subjected, 61

Chapter First. Its origin and historical antecedents, .... 74

Ch. II. Different kinds of Tenure, 76

Ch. III. Tenancy-at-Will ; — its conditions, .:.... 79

Ch. IV. Powers and Rights of the Landlord, ... 85

Ch. V. Absenteeism, 91

Ch. VI. Agents. — The Crow- Bar Brigade, . . . .* .95

Ch. VII. Confiscation by Law, 101

Ch. VIII. Consolidation of Farms, 104

§ 1. Substitution of Pasture Lands for Corn Fields, . ib. § 2. Fertility and Productive Capacity of Ireland, . . 107 § 3. What number of Inhabitants is Ireland capable of supporting? Ill

b

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Page [Ch. VIII. Consolidation of Farms,]

§ 4. Statistics of Produce during the Famine Years, . . 113 § 5. In what consists the Improvement effected by the Consolidation of Farms, 117

Ch. IX. Evictions, 124

Ch. X. Deplorable consequences of the system, 138

Ch. XI. Tenant- Right of Ulster, 143

Ch. XII. Condition of the Agricultural Classes in the other countries of

Europe, 148

Ch. XIII. The Incumbered Estates' Court, . . . , . .160 Ch. XIV. Attempts at Legislation previous to the Bill of 1860, . . 168

Ch. XV. The BiU of 1860, 178

Ch. XVI. Condition of the Tenant since the Bill of 1860, . . .193

Chapter First. Plans of Emigration, 221

Ch. II. Statistics of the Exodus, 226

Ch. III. Pecuniary resources of the Emigration, ..... 228

Ch. IV- Countries emigrated to, 229

Ch. V- Government control over Transport of Emigrants, . . . 231

Ch. VI. The Departure of the Emigrants, 236

Ch. VII. Dangers to the Faith of the Emigrant, 242

Ch. VIII. Progress of the Church in America, through Emigration, . 247

Ch. IX. Results of Emigration to Canada and Australia, . . • 254

Ch. X. Irish Emigrants in England, 257

Ch. XI. Economical and Political consequences of Emigration, . . 267

Chapter First. History of its establishment in England and Ireland, . 305

Ch. II. The Central Board ; (Poor Law Commission), .... 309

Ch. III. Boards of Guardians, 312

Ch. IV. Workhouse Officials, 316

Ch. V. Poor-Rates, 319

Ch. VI. Mode of dispensing Belief, 324

Ch. VII. Workhouse Diet, 328

Ch. VIII. Condition of Children in the Workhouses, .... 332

Ch. IX. Dangers to Morality, 336

Ch. X. Intolerant spirit of the Poor Law administration with regard to

Ch. XI. Official contempt for the Catholic Beligion, .... 344

Ch. XII. Removal of Irish Poor from England, 351

Ch. XIII. Parliamentary Committee of 1861, on Reform of the Poor Law, 356

Appendix to Book VI ; (P. 339). — On the condition of Catholics in

the English Workhouses, 363

Chapter First. History up to 1831, 368

Ch. II, Lord Stanley's system of " National Education" (1831), . . 375 Ch. III. Unequal composition of the ' ' National Board, " as to Protestants

and Catholics, 377

Ch. IV. Preponderance of the Protestant element in the editing of the

Class Books, 381

Ch. V. Successive alterations in the original system, .... 387 Ch. VI. Proselytism in the " National" Schools of Ulster, . . .392

Ch. VII. Precautions taken against Catholic proselytism, . . . 399

Ch. VIII. Normal and Model Schools, 402

Ch. IX. Free Religious Schools, 406

Ch. X. Complaints of the Episcopacy against the "National " system, . 409 Ch. XL Parliamentary discussion of 1860. — Concessions made to the

Ch. XII. Colleges and Universities, 417

§ 1, Intermediate Education, ib,

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Page [Ch. XII. Colleges and Universities,]

§ 2. Superior Education, 419

The Protestant University of Dublin, ( Trinity College) . ib. The Queen's University, (Queen's Colleges) . . . 420 The Catholic University, 425

Chapter First. The Catholic Church of Ireland before the "Reformation," 429

Ch. II. Establishment of the "Reformation," 431

Ch. III. Religious Statistics of Ireland, 443

Ch. IV. Actual situation of the Catholic Church, ..... 449

Ch. V. Budget of the Protestant Church in Ireland, .... 461

Note on the Constitution of the Dissenting Churches, . . 474

Ch. VI. The Bible Societies, 476

Ch. VII. Orangeism, 482

Appendix

No. I. (Page xxiii.)— Historical Sketch of the Irish Parliament, . . 499 No. II. (Page 104). — Case of Mr. Dalton, a Tenant; in the Court of

Chancery, May, 1860, 501

No. III. (Page 226). — General Statistics of Emigration from the United

Kingdom, from 1815 to 1860, inclusive, .... 502

No. IV. (Page 278). — Note on the constant tradition of Destitution in

Ireland, 503

No. V. (Page 331.) — Daily Diet in a Prison and a Workhouse in

Dublin, 506

No. VI. (Page 412). — Memorial on the "National Education" system;

transmitted to Mr. Cardwell, Chief Secretary for Ireland, by

Nineteen Irish Members of Parliament ; 10 August, 1860. . 507

No. VII. (Page 446).— Census of Ireland, 1861, 510

No. VIII. (Prefatory Notice). — Letlre de Mgr. UEveque d 'Orleans

a Vauteur 516

HISTOEICAL INTKODUCTION.

The history of Christian and civilized Europe offers nothing comparable to what we know of Ireland since the conquest of that country by England.

Great iniquities still exist in the world. Slavery has been holding her ground for the last eighty years in the United States, and was a stain upon the American Republic long before becoming the instrument of her ruin, or at least of a scandalous dissolution. In Sweden, civil liberty of conscience is still proscribed by laws of another age, and is only bouo-ht by exile or loss of property. Perfidy and violence are going hand in hand to destroy the nationality of Poland, and crush in her the last struggles of Catholic faith by the united force of schism and despotism. In fine, there is in the East of Europe an anti-Christian empire crumbling away visibly under the weight of its own corruption; whose protestations do not hinder indignant Europe from requiring an account of the thousands of victims butchered by Moslem fanaticism almost under our eyes, which empire is, nevertheless, protected by the mutual jealousy and distrust of western nations. All these facts are so many outrages upon justice, and so many insolent triumphs of might over right.

Even beside these astounding iniquities, that of which Ireland has for nearly seven hundred years been the victim deserves the attention of the world ; and the bare exposal of her case will forthwith win for her the liveliest and deepest sympathy.

Other nations, even the most unfortunate, have seen days of greatness and prosperity ; there is not one amongst them which, after the flood of barbarian invasion had begun to subside, even aniid the painful formation of modern society, did not enjoy some influence over neighbouring states, and exercise an action upon the general economy of European oolitics. Even those now bowed down under the most iron yoke can remember brighter days, and buoy up invincible hope with the memories of a glorious past.

Poland has had her Jagellons, and will never forget the time when, in the hands of her immortal Sobieski, she was

B

11 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

the bulwark of Europe against the irruptions of Islam ; Venice and Genoa once led the commerce of the world ; Spain, so long distracted by civil war, once ruled an empire scarcely equalled in our times by the British dominion ; Gustavus Vasa, Gustavus Adolphus, and Charles XII. gave Sweden, at times, a marked preponderance in northern affairs ; the rock of Malta itself, to-day but an advanced sentinel of the English fleet in the Mediterranean, filled, in the annals of modern times, that glorious page which the Villiers de l'lle Adam, the Lavalettes, and the knights of St. John of Jerusalem wrote and signed with their blood.

Ireland has never known such days. At the very moment when, after the struggles and divisions of barbarous times, the nations of the continent began to settle down in unity and strength, her worst days dawned upon her.

The struggles with the Norsemen, and the more fatal dissensions of the princes of Ulster and Munster — of the O'Neils and O'Briens — were still covering Ireland with smoking ruins, and arming the inhabitants one against another for the ruin of all, when, by a mysterious lot, she fell a prey to the English, and was hurled into that arena in which crimson tracks have marked her long and painful course.

We will briefly recount this lamentable history; and we hope to be able to show that if Ireland has succumbed in an unequal contest, it is not that at any time valour, devotedness, and the most indomitable perseverance were wanting to her. These are the very qualities which have protracted the struggle, and so long rendered its issue doubtful.

But besides the fact that her adversaries dared to turn against her arms reprobated by honour, and that she could be vanquished without disgrace where her conquerors could but reap ignominy and shame from their triumph, we may be allowed to think that these extraordinary trials of Ireland have formed a part of the general plan of Providence in her regard. Defeats, like victories, and even more so, have their divine significancy ; and if the most grinding and humiliating oppression of the Irish people dates from the time when, by a sublime choice, they preferred the sword and famine to apostacy, who would not consider their humiliation and reverses more glorious than the offensive prosperity of their masters ?

It is, in truth, a consolation to think that the immortal cause of human dignity has been better upheld on that field where the shamrock of S. Patrick springs up amidst nothing but ruins, in a land drenched with blood, than in that country where the spiritual omnipotence of Henry VIII. triumphed, in less than a century, over a race haughty and doggedly ten-

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. Ill

acious whenever the perishable interests of this earth are at stake.

II

The English domination in Ireland has had one peculiar feature which must be thrown into relief, at the risk of sacrificing many historical details, sufficiently well known, and which have, more than once, been grouped in a masterly manner.

Ireland is not simply a conquered country, she is a confiscated country ; that is to say, the suppression of her nationality and the proscription of her religion are not her only wrongs : what her oppressors coveted and wrenched from her beyond her national independence and religion — (the former destroyed, because for that violence sufficed, the other proof against persecution, and showing to-day more vitality than ever, because the whole world cannot crush conscience) —-was the lordship of the Irish soil: so that, as in the wars of antiquity, or the times of barbarian invasion, it was the ownership of the land which was wrested from the vanquished, it was the land itself, and not merely political rights, which the victors claimed and seized. An ambition which has upset the world has, at times, been able to justify itself by the apparent greatness of its object. Is not this greatness missing where glory is less an object than plunder, and where the conqueror seems to aim at nothing but gain? Now, such has been the inevitable and uniform character of all England's wars with Ireland. Whilst the green flag of the latter waved only on fields where she fought for her faith, the possession of her soil, and her religion, the legions of " red coats" braved the perils of battle for lucre. The march of conquest and confiscation were simultaneous.

III

It was in the month of May, 1169, that the first soldiers of Henry II. landed on the eastern coast of Ireland. Scarcely more than a century before, William and his Normans had dethroned, at Hastings, the old Saxon dynasty. The remembrance of that invasion and conquest was certainly a powerful incitement to FitzGerald, Strongbow, and their companions. Besides, what could the Irish cavalry, mounted upon small ponies, and having no arms of attack but small javelins, and of defence but wooden bucklers, do against the long lances and mailed steeds of the Normans? Be it said also that a traitor had undertaken to give information to the strangers, and that

IV HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION,

from the outset of the Anglo-Norman conquest perfidy seconded violence. A King of Leinster, Dermot, expelled through hatred of his tyranny, had fled into England: there he found Henry II. meditating for fourteen years before on the means of executing the bull of donation which he had obtained from Adrian IV.* Treason came to offer to too-longrestrained ambition the prey it coveted. Henry II. took care not to neglect so good an opportunity, and the expedition to Ireland was resolved on. A similar crime, crowned with like success, had, four centuries before, opened Spain to the Mussulmen of Africa, and the name of Dermot has come down to us not less execrable than that of Count Julian.

A rapid but incomplete conquest, succeeded by partial insurrections, and lastly by a general rising, were the phases of the invasion from 1169 to 1175. A treaty, concluded at this time between Henry II. and Roderick O'Connor — who took "upon himself to stipulate in the name of the whole island — conferred on Henry the suzerainty of the island, and the immediate dominion over the the south-east part, comprising the kingdoms of Meath and Leinster, Dublin and its dependencies, and Waterford as far as Dungarvan. This tract, thus become a real English province, wTas called the Pale, on account of the pallisades and fortifications enclosing it.

With the establishment of this armed colony commenced a struggle of four centuries, during which the Pale may be looked upon as a fortress besieged on the land side, and receiving continual reinforcements by sea ; the besieged made frequent sorties, and sometimes carried fire and sword beyond the Shannon; the natives rushed against the English citadel, and made heroic efforts to drive into the sea the soldiers of Strongbow and Hugh de Lacy. But after bloody encounters, the limits of the two powers remained nearly the same ; the English not having available force enough to crush at a single blow the desperate resistance of the enemy and, unfortunately for Ireland, her native princes not bidding sufficient truce to their mutual broils to oppose to the invaders a compact unity and the final effort of a levee en masse.

In the fourteenth century, the national party found in

* It is well known by what means the religious feeling of this Pope was surprised. As soon as Henry II. had learned the exaltation of his fellowcountryman, Nicholas Breakspere, to the Chair of St. Peter, he sent an embassy to him to represent to him the deplorable state to which religion was reduced in Ireland— to persuade him that the authority of the Vicar of Jesus Christ was completely misconceived there— and to offer to re-establish in that unhappy country proper discipline, manners, and obedience to the supreme Pastor. Deceived by these hypocritical insinuations, Adrian IV. sent Henry II. the bull, of which so perfidious a use was made contrary to his real intentions. — (Haverty, History of Ireland, 1860; p. 202.)

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. V

Edward Bruce, and his valiant followers, powerful auxiliaries against the English ; but the great battle of Faughard (1318), in which Bruce was slain, blighted these hopes ; and although at the reign of Edward III. the boundary of the Pale had considerably shrunk, the English still held enough of ground not to give up the idea of a conquest where national pride and private greed were so largely engaged.

Two expeditions of Richard II. again covered Ireland with ruins and slaughter, without forwarding the solution of the question ; and the terrible struggle of the wars of the Roses, in which the fields of England were drenched with her noblest blood, did not allow the garrison of the Pale to think of anything more than holding their own and repulsing the attacks of the natives.

The support given by Ireland, in the reign of the first of the Tudors, to two adventurers, wdio attempted to get possession of the throne upon which the rights of the houses of York and Lancaster were centered in the person of Henry VII., proves, that after three centuries of uninterrupted war, the English empire in Ireland was anything but stable, since one Lambert Simnel, the son of an Oxford tradesman, and a young Fleming, Perkin Warbeck, were able to threaten the future of the new dynasty ; but these attempts failed, and when, under Henry VIII., it was a name dear to Ireland that rallied around it all the faithful soldiers of independence, a piece of odious perfidy, to which the English general, Lord Leonard Gray, stooped, deprived the national party of the brave Thomas FitzGerald, and his uncles, who were bold enough to aspire after an Ireland free and Irish. All were hanged and quartered at Tyburn, in the century in which the perilous and difficult work of conquest was to be brought to a close.

IV

Up to the present, territorial confiscation had been effected on a limited scale. The unarmed and defenceless alone can be despoiled with impunity. During the last four centuries, the Irish had too valiantly defended their independence, to warrant English soldiers, however great their lust of plunder, to risk the acceptance of vast domains far from the protection of the Pale and the garrison.

We must distinguish, under Henry II., confiscation in law, and confiscation in fact. The first was general, absolute, without restriction ; not only inasmuch as the English monarch had got himself proclaimed sovereign of the kingdom of Ireland, which, according to feudal law, only conferred upon

VI HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

him a mediate sovereignty over the land, and not one equivalent to ownership, — but because Henry divided Ireland as a conquered country among his barons; so that, according to the testimony of Sir John Davies, Attorney-General in the time of James I., " all Ireland was, by Henry, cantonized among ten of the English nation ; and though they had not gained possession of one-third of the kingdom, yet, in title, they were owners and lords of all, so as nothing was left to be granted to the natives."*

As to the occupation of the granted lands, or confiscation in fact, it was not to be done by a stroke of the pen ; and many a struggle had to be gone through before the royal charters came into full operation.

From the outset Henry II. gave away considerable domains :f to Hugh De Lacy, to Richard Strongbow, to FitzGerald, and to the principal barons of the invading army4 But these lands were situated in Leinster and Meath, i.e., beyond the limits of the English Pale.§ It was also by grants of land that Richard II. succeeded in gaining over to the royal banners a few of the chieftains of Ulster and Munster ; but these were but slender beginnings. In the Anglo-Norman race prudence and violence go hand in hand for lucre: the time had not yet come for safely settling down in the remote districts of that island, so fertile in soil, so mild in climate; as yet they were but an English army encamped in Ireland; they could venture upon murderous forays as far as Connacht, but before the barons could build castles on the shores of Lough Corrib, or in the rich valleys of Antrim || county, the persecuting genius of Elizabeth, the fiscal profligacy of James I., and the merciless blade of Cromwell's troopers had to be thrown into the scale.

* (Quoted by Haverty, p. 224. )

t To Hugh de Lacy, 800,000 acres ; to another baron, in the County Limerick, 100,000 acres. (Th. Moore, History of Ireland, ch. xxvii.)

J " Thus was commenced on a large scale that wholesale confiscation by which the land of Ireland was taken indiscriminately from its ancient possessors, and granted, without any show of title, to the Anglo-Norman adventurers." (Haverty, History of Ireland, p. 207.)

§ When the kingdom of Cork had been granted by charter to Robert Fitz- Stephen and Milo de Cogan, they only succeeded in getting possession of a few cantons of the vast territory many years later ; and when the brothers of the Earl of Limerick had been invested with the county of Limerick or Thomond, they declined the dangerous gift, which another competitor, Philip de Brason, vainly tried to get into his power.

|| The domains thus granted, but not occupied, have been happily called " fiefs in partibiis." (L'Irlande, by Messrs. Chavanne de la Giraudiere and Huillard-Brgholles, p. 58.)

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. \U

V

A rapid sketch of English legislation in Ireland during these four centuries, will show, in its clearest light, the real character of the conquest. That legislation goes farther, even, than the memory of armed violence, to justify the eternal antipathy of the Irish nation for the masters who have thrust themselves upon her. The whole spirit of that legislation is summed up in the term habitually used to designate the Irish in the official documents of the epoch, " the Irish enemy;" an expression which says and explains all, and which itself represented a principle of which particular laws were only the application.

" Against the stranger," (i.e., against the enemy — the pagans had but a single term to express those two ideas,) " eternal revenge," was one of the fundamental principles of the barbarous code of the XII. Tables.*

The application of this principle to the Irish enemy fell into disuse only at the end of the eighteenth century; and the principle itself was not abrogated until a period not very distant from us.

For the citizen, equality and justice; for the subject, protection and kindness; but for him who is not even a subject — for him who is an enemy, and a wild enemyf — what, according to the ideas of those days, was there other than the brutal law of force, and the perseverance of an unrelenting rigour — " adversus hostem seterna auctoritas."

A few quotations will show that such certainly was the rule followed by the English kings in their dealings with the Irish people.

Under Edward I., the native clans nearest the English establishments proposed the cessation of all hostilities, and only demanded, together with the title of subjects, the benefit of English law.| But the name of subjects granted them, together with the benefit of the laws, would have saved them from the systematized depredations of their powerful neighbours ; the official title of subjection was, consequently, refused them, for fear it might become a title to protection^

* Adversus hostem seterna auctoritas. — (Tab. III., Frag. 7, vid. Cic. De Off. Book i. chap. 12.)

t "Wild Irish," as often used as "Irish enemy." Both are found together in a French despatch of Richard II. to his council, in 1394 : " Les Irrois sauvages, nos ennemis" (quoted by Moore ii. 236). "The term wild Irish is as familiar in the English language as the term wild beasts." (Preb. Milner ; An Inquiry, p. 232.)

X The petitioners offered to pay into the royal treasury 8,000 marks as the price of this concession. (Moore, ch. 35.) § M. El. Regnault ; V Irl. p. 125.

Vlll HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

A law of the reign of Edward II. (1307-1327) permitted every English landlord to destroy the will of any of his Irish dependants, and to dispose of their property as he thought fit, and even to appropriate it himself.*

The progress of oppression and misery had induced a certain number of Irish to fly their unfortunate country as early as the beginning of the fifteenth century : this was the beginning of the exodus of which our own times were destined to see the lamentable excess. A law of Henry IV. forbade the emigration of the " Irish enemy."!

During the same reign, commerce with the "Irish enemy" was forbidden ; every English dealer carrying on business with the Irish was to be considered a criminal, and treated as such. Commercial relations were not, however, the only things proscribed.

But commercial relations were not the only ones interdicted and punished. " Every Irishman found talking with an Englishman shall be apprehended as a spy, and punished as an enemy of the king." — adversus hostem ssterna auctoritas ! An act of the fifth year of Edward IV., surpasses the above-mentioned in brutal contempt of justice and humanity: — " That it shall be lawful to all manner of men that find any

thieves having no faithful men of good name

and fame in their company, in English apparel, to take and kill those, and to cut off their heads." And a subsequent Act imperatively commanded that the Irish within the pale shall wear English habit, take English names, and swear allegiance upon pain and forfeiture of goods.J

Every English subject, or Norman, marrying an Irishwoman, or wearing the Irish dress, was to be treated as an Irishman, i.e., as a serf in body and goods.

It is hard to say whether cruelty or absurdity predominates

in the following law: " that any man who did not

shave his upper lip might be treated as an Irish enemy."§ — ■ (Law of 1447, Henry IV.) This law was repealed only in the second year of the reign of Charles I.

The statute of Kilkenny, passed in 1367, contained, among other severe measures, destined to separate the two peoples by an irreconcilable hatred, a clause making the choice of an Irish nurse equal to high treason.

The textual reproduction of these legislative movements of

* Moore, iii. 75.

+ "By an Act of the Parliament, in the 11th year of this reign, it was ordained that no Irish enemy should be permitted to depart from the realm, without special leave under the Great Seal of Ireland." (Moore, iii. 151.)

% 5 Ed. IV. cap. ii. and cap. iii. (a.d. 1465.) § Haverty, p. 325.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. IX

the English domination in Ireland, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, is required, in order to take away the air of exaggeration and injustice from the following request addressed to Pope John XXII., at the beginning of the fourteenth century : —

"Most Holy Father, we send you some precise and truthful information with regard to the state of our nation, and the injustice we are undergoing, and our ancestors have undergone, at the hands of the kings of England, of their agents, and of the English barons born in Ireland.

" After having violently expelled us from our habitations, from our fields and our ancestral lands, — after having forced us to save our life by fleeing to the mountains, the bogs, the woods and caves, — they are perpetually harassing us even here, in order to drive us out, and to take possession of our country in all its extent. They have annihilated all the written laws by which we were formerly governed. They have left us without laws, in order the better to compass our ruin. They have enacted detestable ones .... It is the belief of all their laymen, and of many of their ecclesiastics, that there is no more sin in killing an Irishman than in killing a dog.* They all maintain that they have a right, if they can, to take from us our lands and our goods.f

" These grievances, added to the difference of language and manners existing between them and us, render the idea of any understanding between them and us impossible, — so great is their lust of dominion, and so lively is our natural desire to rid ourselves of an intolerable servitude, and to recover the inheritance of our sires. We have, in the bottom of our heart, an inveterate hatred, produced by long injustice, by the murder of our fathers, of our brothers, of our near relations ; and one which will not be quenched either in our times, or those of our children. Thus, then, we are determined to fight, without remorse, as long as we live, for our rights; and we will never leave off until the day when they shall be unable to do us any more harm, and on which the supreme Judge shall have visited their crimes with vengeance, which will happen sooner or later, we confidently hope. Until then, Ave will fight to the death for independence, which is our natural right, forced thereto as we are by every necessity, and choosing rather to brave peril like men of heart, than to pine away amidst affronts." J

A merciless war, in which the sword and law did equal execution, having for its object wholesale confiscation of the

+ And their honor, too. The crime of violation was not punishable by law when the victim was an Irishwoman. See a case which happened under Edward I. : — Robert de la Roche and Adam le Waleys were indicted for an offence of this description against Margery 0'E.orke ; but it being found that the aforesaid Margery was an Irishwoman, the aggressors were acquitted. (T. Moore, p. 177.)

% Fordum, Scot. Hist, Ed. Hearne, v. iii. p. 920, translated into French by M. Angusin Thierry.

X HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

Irish soil ; such, in two words, is the history of the English conquest up to the period when the antagonism of religions, added to the national antipathies of four centuries, lent the war a more atrocious character, made oppressive laws the mightiest instrument of fanaticism, and enlisted in the service of the most ignoble cupidity the great names of God, of truth, and the Gospel.