Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry | Page 6

which an appetite
for conquest was inflamed by bigotry on the English side, while the
native, who had been left unaided to defend his home, was now
stimulated by foreign counsels, as well as by his own feelings, to guard
his altar and his conscience too.
James the First found Ireland half conquered by the sword; he
completed the work by treachery, and the fee of five-sixths of Ulster
rewarded the "energy" of the British. The proceedings of Strafford
added large districts in the other provinces to the English possessions.
Still, in all these cases, as in the Munster settlement under Elizabeth,
the bulk of the population remained on the soil. To leave the land was
to die. They clung to it amid sufferings too shocking to dwell on;[9]
they clung to it under such a serfhood as made the rapacity of their
conquerors interested in retaining them on the soil. They clung to it
from necessity and from love. They multiplied on it with the rapidity of
the reckless. Yet they retained hope, the hope of restitution and
vengeance. The mad ferocity of Parsons and Borlace hastened the
outbreak of 1641. That insurrection gave back to the native his property
and his freedom, but compelled him to fight for it--first, against the
loyalists; next, against the traitors; and lastly, against the republicans.

After a struggle of ten years, distinguished by the ability of the Council
of Kilkenny, and the bravery of Owen Roe and his followers, the Irish
sunk under the abilities and hosts of Cromwell. Those who felt his
sway might well have envied the men who conquered and died in the
breach of Clonmel, or fell vanquished or betrayed at Letterkenny and
Drogheda. During the insurrection of 1641, the royal government, at
once timid and tyrannical, united with the sordid capitalists of London
to plunder the Irish of their lands and liberty, if not to exterminate
them.[10] In order to effect this, a system of unparalleled lying was set
afoot against the natives of this kingdom. The violence which naturally
attended the sudden resumption of property by an ignorant, excited, and
deeply wronged people, was magnified into a national propensity to
throat-cutting. Exaggerations the most barefaced were received
throughout England. Deaths, which the English-minded Protestant, the
Rev. Mr. Warner, has ascertained to have been under
12,000--reckoning deaths from hardships along with those by the
sword--were rated in England at 150,000, and by John Milton at
616,000.[11] No wonder the English nation looked upon us as bloody
savages; and no wonder they looked approvingly at the massacres and
confiscations of the Lord Protector. But the Irish deemed they were free
from crime in resuming by force of arms the land which arms had taken
from them; they regarded the bloodshed of '41 as a deplorable result of
English oppression; they fought with the hearts of resolved patriots till
1651.
The restoration of the Stuarts was hailed as the restoration of their
rights. They were woefully disappointed. A compromise was made
between the legitimists and the republicans; the former were to resume
their rank, the latter to retain their plunder, Ireland was disregarded.
The mockery of the Court of Claims restored less than one-third of the
Irish lands. While in 1641 the Roman Catholics possessed two-thirds of
Ireland, in 1680 they had but one-fifth[12]. Besides, the new possessors
were of an opposite creed, and fortified themselves by Penal Laws.
Under such circumstances the aim of most men would be much the
same, namely, to take the first opportunity of regaining their property,
their national independence, and religious freedom. With reference to
their legislation on the two latter points, doubts may be entertained how

much should be complained of; and even those who condemn that on
the first, should remember that "the re-adjustment of all private rights,
after so entire a destruction of their landmarks, could only be effected
by the coarse process of general rules[13]."
Let us now run over a few dates, till we come to the event which gave
the Irish this opportunity. On the 6th of February, 1685, Charles the
Second died in the secret profession of the Roman Catholic faith, and
his brother, James Stuart, Duke of York, succeeded him.
James the Second came to his throne with much of what usually wins
popular favour. He united in his person the blood of the Tudor,
Plantagenet, and Saxon kings of England, while his Scottish descent
came through every king of Scotland, and found its spring in the Irish
Dalriad chief, who, embarking from Ulster, overran Albany. In addition,
James had morals better than those of his rank and time, as much
intellect as most kings, and the reputation acquired from his naval
administration, graced as it was by sea-fights in which no ship was
earlier in action