Ancestry of the Modern Irish Peasant 105

one time occupied so uniform a station in life. Through ignorance of the above facts it is sometimes stated in sarcasm that the Irish people all claim to have been descended from kings. In truth, it may be held that as a rule, among the humblest of these people, there are but few who could not claim by right a pedigree which was already illustrious long years before the oldest title now in the British Peerage was created. In this connection it is of no less interest that the reader should become familiar with other facts.

The disturbed condition of the country which had existed in Ireland for nearly fifty years previous to the invasion of Cromwell's army had undoubtedly deprived the poor classes of educational advantages and yet they were in no worse condition than the same class in England.

The Catholic gentry and the upper class, however, were better educated as a rule in Ireland than those filling the same station of life in England' and this condition had been gained, notwithstanding England's grievous penal laws. Any one who has examined the Irish records of this period to the extent the writer has can vouch for the fact that there were comparatively few of Cromwell's officers who could do more than sign their names in the crudest manner. On the other hand the Irish sent to Connaught were people of education and refinement.

There was such constant intercourse between the west coast of Ireland and the Continent by means of the Irish smugglers, that little heed was paid to the threatened penalty for obtaining an education. The voyage was neither a long nor an expensive one and many worked their passage. In Paris and elsewhere there existed generally some special provision made by the European governments to aid in the gratuitous education of young Irishmen

1 The celebrated Jesuit, Edmund Campion, who wrote his Historie of Ireland in 1570, has the following notice of the professors of law and physic in Ireland: "They speake latine like a vulgar language, learning in their common schools of leachcraft and law &c." See Annals of the Four Masters, etc., vol. v., p. 1397, note, A.D. 1530.

for the priesthood and otherwise. Catholics would naturally, under the circumstances, acquire sufficient knowledge of Latin to speak it and they received in addition the usual collegiate training. The Irish people have always been noted for their ready facility in acquiring a knowledge of languages and all who visited the Continent spoke French and Spanish as well. Therefore in Cromwell's day Irishmen of good birth generally spoke fluently Irish, Latin and one or more of the Continental languages, with often some knowledge of English. Many of them as "poor students" managed to travel to some extent and before returning home, in return for the education obtained, it was a frequent circumstance that they served for a time in a foreign army or in some civil capacity. Therefore, the statement made is true that the Irish gentlemen whose lands were confiscated and who were settled in Connaught were far superior in education and refinement to those of Cromwell's army who displaced them.

It is equally true, as stated, that the Irish peasantry of today are descended from a better ancestry on the average than any other known race.

CHAPTER VI

WILFUL DESTRUCTION OF HUMAN LIFE IN IRELANDCONDITION OF THE PEOPLE UNDER CHARLES AND JAMES TREATY OF LIMERICK WITH WILLIAM OF ORANGE-FREEDOM OF WORSHIP PLEDGED TO THE CATHOLICS-WILLIAM VIOLATES HIS PROMISES-ANNE AND THE GEORGES CATHOLICS IN IRELAND WERE NEVER INTOLERANT – THEIR LIBERALITY TOWARDS THE QUAKERS, METHODISTS AND JEWS

HALLAM, after reviewing the suffering and martyrdom to which the Catholic portion of the Irish population had been subjected, was of the opinion in reference to the penal laws, that': "To have exterminated the Catholics by the sword or expelled them, like the Moriscoes of Spain, would have been little more repugnant to justice and humanity, but incomparably more polite."

All Irish writers agree that for years the English devoted their entire energy to accomplish this object but Hallam was evidently in ignorance of the true spirit manifested by his countrymen who failed in an undertaking which exhausted all human effort.

Mathew Carey states':

"There can be no doubt that the cause of humanity would have gained immensely had Henry the Second exterminated the whole nation, men, women and children, provided he had peopled

1 Constitutional History, vol. iii., p. 401. Vindicia Hibernica, etc., p. 3.

the island with an English colony and imparted to them the benefit of English laws.

"The population at the time of the invasion was probably not more than seven or eight hundred thousand, if so many. If exterminated their suffering would have terminated.

"Whereas, for the five hundred years between the descent of the English and the final subjugation of the country under William the Third, the average waste of human life could not have been less than ten thousand, but say only six thousand per annum amounting on the whole to five millions. But the loss of life can only be regarded as a secondary consideration. The havoc that war makes of human beings bears no comparison with the havoc it makes of human happiness, particularly when it brings in its train the plague and famine, as it so frequently did in Ireland. But even independent of plague and famine the sufferings of the survivors ordinarily far outweigh those of the wretches who fall a sacrifice to the horrors of war."

Ben Jonson thus described the situation in Ireland:

"No age was spared, no sex nay no degree;
Not infants in the porch of life were free;
The sick, the old, who could but hope a day

Longer by nature's bounty, not let stay.

Virgins and widows, matrons and pregnant wives,

All died. 'T was crime enough that they had lives.
To strike but only those who could do hurt,
Was dull and poor."

Men, women and children were indiscriminately slaughtered and hunted as wild beasts.

To kill an Irishman' on sight was not unlawful even in

1 It was at one time only necessary to imagine an Irishman was going to or coming from a robbery. In the fifth year of Edward IV. it was enacted "that it shall be lawful to all manner of men, that find any thieves robbing by day or by night, or going, or coming to rob, or steal, in or out, going or coming, having no faithful man of good name and fame in their company, in English apparel, upon any of the leige people of the King, that it shall be lawful to take and kill those, and cut off their heads, without any impeachment of our Sovereign Lord the King, His heirs, officers, or ministers, or of any other,

The Irish Support James II.

109

Cromwell's day and if the murderer was subjected to any punishment it was only in the payment of a small fine, in case the authorities had to take some cognizance of the crime. We shall see that even within a comparatively recent period the British Government took no action to stop the murder of Catholics, before the outbreak of 1798 in County Armagh and elsewhere, nor to punish those who were guilty. And we will show that shortly thereafter, in 1798, a commanding officer gave orders to shoot any Irishman met by chance on the way "if he was supposed to be a rebel" and not to take the trouble of bringing in any prisoners.

Before Cromwell had ever seen Ireland it seemed as if the ingenuity of man could not possibly have added another device to what had already been done to beggar and to exterminate the Irish race, yet the efforts of Cromwell and his soldiers were never excelled but by the Orangeman, as we shall see, under the fostering care of the younger Pitt in his determination to force the people into the uprising of 1798.

After the Restoration the condition of the Irish people was in no way improved either during the reign of Charles or James. In many respects they fared worse, through the cowardly and treacherous course of James II. who deserted the Irish after having induced them to support his claim as their rightful King. The Irish people had no cause to like any member of the Stuart family and did not give their

and of any head so cut in the County of Meath, that the cutters of the said head and his ayders there to him, cause the said head so cut off to be brought to the portresse of the Town of Trim, and the said portresse to put it on a stake or spear upon the Castle of Trim, and that the said portresse shall his writing, under the common seal of the said town, testifying the bringing of said head and his ayders for the same, for to distrain and levy by their own hands of every man having half a plough land in the said baronny, one penny, and every other man having one house and goods to the value of forty shillings, one penny, and of every other cottier having house and smoak, one half penny, etc."-J. B. Brown, On Laws against Catholics. With no penalty for murdering an Irishman, and with a reward to be gained without question, it was a common circumstance, probably, under this law to have imagined every man as "coming or going to rob," so that time and opportunity only were needed, in such cases, for the extermination of the Irish race.