Fragments; Some Forgotten Aspects of the Irish Question, Buddhism and Jainism, A National Theater [pp. 363-374]

APPLETONS' JOURNAL.
by love of adventure and a wild life, that Eng lishmen were allured across the Pale in consider able numbers. These became proverbially " more
Irish than the Irish." They learned the lan guage, adopted the costume, imbibed the man ners, and got infected with the wit of the subject
race. If this process of amalgamation had been
allowed to go on unchecked, Ireland would prob ably have had a different history. But it was
arrested inside the Pale by the Reformation;
outside the Pale by the statutes of Kilkenny.
By these statutes an impassable gulf was dug
between the two races. To intermarry with the
Irish, or indeed to form any sort of connection
with them, was a capital crime. It was also made
highly penal to present an Irishman to an ecclesiastical benefice, or to grant the rites of hospitality
to an Irish bard or story-teller. Yet the result of
it all was that when Henry VIII. quarreled with
the Pope, and thus added the bitterness of religious persecution to the hatred already engendered
by English tyranny, the area of English rule was
contracted within a compass of twenty miles.
Till then the extermination of the Irish, though
aimed at in various acts, was never openly recommended by English officials. It was left to
Protestant zeal to stain the English name with
this infamy. The poet Spenser calmly contemplates the extermination of the Irish as the
surest method of making an "Hibernia Pacata."
After describing in pathetic terms the desolation
of Munster by the ruthless soldiers of Elizabeth,
he observes: " The end will (I assure me) be
very short, and much sooner than it can be in
so great a trouble, as it seemeth, hoped for; although there should be none of them fall by the
sword nor be slain by the soldier, yet thus being
kept from manurance and their cattle from running abroad, they would quickly consume themselves and devour one another."
This horrible anticipation was, in fact, literally fulfilled, both in Elizabeth's reign and on
several subsequent occasions. In the reign of
James I., for example, Sir Arthur Chichester reported that he had found Ulster " abounding with
houses, corn, cattle, and a people who had been
bred up in arms" and were highly prosperous.
But they were Roman Catholics, and must make
room for Protestants. Accordingly, this militant
propagandist left the country "desolate and waste,
and the people upon it enjoying nothing but as
fugitives, and what they obtained by stealth."
But the sword and torch were too slow as instruments of destruction, or perhaps too expensive.
At all events, Chichester agrees with Spenser in
putting his trust mainly in famine. "I have often
said and written, it is famine that must consume
the Irish, as our swords and other endeavors work
not that speedy effect which is expected. Hun
ger would be a better, because a speedier, weapon
to employ against them than the sword." This
'barbarous policy succeeded too well. Pestilence
and famine committed frightful havoc among
those who had escaped the sword and fire.
Starving children were to be seen feeding in the
silent streets on the corpses of their parents,
and even the graves were rifled to appease the
pangs of hunger. And these horrors went on,
not during one or two years, but at intervals ex tending over generations. According to Sir Wil liam Petty's calculation, no fewer than five hundred and four thousand of the native Irish perished,
out of a total population of one million four hun dred and sixty-six thousand, in the eleven years
of the war following the rebellion of the Irish in
i64I-a rebellion of which Burke says, "No history that I have ever read furnishes an instance
of any that was so provoked." "Figures, however," says Mr. McLennan, in his most interesting
and instructive" Memoir of Thomas Drummond,"
"convey but a poor notion of the state to which
the country was reduced. Famine, as at the end
of the Elizabethan wars, stepped in to complete
the havoc of the sword. A plague followed.
Suicide became epidemic, as the only escape from
the intolerable evils of life. Cannibalism reappeared. According to an eye-witness, whole
counties were cleared of their inhabitants....
When survivors were found, they were either old
men and women, or children.'I have seen
these miserable creatures,' says Colonel Laurence,
'plucking stinking carrion out of a ditch, black
and rotten, and been credibly informed that they
digged corpses out of the grave to eat.' "
Did these dreadful sufferings soften toward
the Irish the hearts of their English oppressors?
On the contrary, says Sir William Petty, writing
in I672, "some furious spirits have wished that
the Irish would rebel again, that they might be
put to the sword."
Another era of persecution dates from William of Orange, and it was not till the twentyseventh of the reign of George II. that the Penal
Code reached what Mr. McLennan calls "the fullness of its hideousness-the reproach of politicians, and disgrace of Protestants and Churchmen." He gives such an admirably compressed
summary of these abominable laws, that I think
the reader will excuse my quoting the passage
in exkenso:
The Papist was withdrawn from the charge and
education of his family. He could educate his children neither at home nor abroad. He could not be
their guardian, nor the guardian of any other person's children. Popish schools were prohibited, and
special disabilities attached to Papists bred abroad.
A premium was set on the breach of filial duty and
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