POOR PADDY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 62, 4 July 1874, Page 9

POOR PADDY.

Sib William Petty, writing to Secretary Thurloe for permission to transport two thousand young bora of about twelve yean of age, putt on the canting snivel, — " Who knows but it might be the meant of making them Englishmen — I mean rather, Christians." Thurloe answered :— "The Committee of the Council have voted one thousand girls, and as many youthe to be taken up for that purpose." None of these unhappy children ever again saw their native land— they were never again heard of. Some years ago, the late Duke of Malakoff, then Colonel Pellisier, earned unenviable notoriety by smoking some fugitive Arabs out of eaves wherein they had taken refuge. It was a brutal actian, and cannot be palliated ; but the idea was not original —it was a plagiarism from Ludlow. There will be found in that holy general's memoirs a case of smoking out, executed by his orders in the winter of 1652, whilst he was on the march from Dundalk to CastleMayney. I recommend its perusal. There is no need to relate here the circumstance attending the judicial murder of Oliver Plunkett, Primate of Armagh, on the testimony of Oates Bedloe, and Carstaire, notwithstanding the solemn declaration of the Protestant Archbishop of London! that the prelate was innocent. The Earl of Essex earnestly implored the King to save the unfortunate Primate's life, but in rain. " Te could Bave him ; I cannot ; you know well I dare not," was Charles the Second's reply. I will not dwell on the disasters which befel Ireland oa her fidelity to the worthless Stuarts. The siege and glorious defence of Limerick, the capitulation ; how nobly Sarsfield Earl of Lucan, kept the treaty, and how the Lord's justices broke it » soon as the '• wild geese " had sailed away with their valiant genera to win unfading laurels for the golden lilies of France. The seconds great migration of Irish valor, faish, and patriotism, are too well-knownl to require repetition. And here I may observe that you have de«cribed the Irish solders who fought under foreign banners as essentially " mercenary." What is mercenary f English treaties, and a mistaken but laudable devotion to the good-for-nothing Stuarts, forced them to seek service abroad. Their lands confiscated, their houses occupied by Scotch oolonista, Cromwellian troopers, or Williamite spoilers, their name unlawful and their religion a crime. Irishmen had no choioe between honorable service, and ignominy and beggary und erpenal laws at home. They bribed the flock, the bribed the son, To sell the priest and rob the sire ; Their very dogs were taught to run Upon the scent of wolf or friar. Among the poor, Or on the moor, Were hid the pious and the true, While traitor knave, And recreant slave Had riches, rank, and retinue. Yet exiled in those penal days Our banners over Europe blue.

Now, as to the troubles that commenced with fche Insurrection Act of 1795, and culminated in the rising of 1798. " The fact is incontrovertable," says Lord Holland, " that the people of Ireland were driven to resistance by > the free quarters and gross excesses of the soldiery, which were such as are not permitted in civilised warfare, even in an enemy's country. Dr. Dickinson, the Lord Bishop of Down, assured me that he had teen families returning peacefully from Mass, assailed without provocation by drunken troopa and yeomanry, and their wives and daughters exposed to outrage, from which neither his (the bishop's) remonstrances, nor those of other Protestant gentlemen, could save them." Sir John Moore, the gallant and heroic soldier who died so gloriously at Corunna, " appalled at the infamies of the lustful and brutal soldiery, and unable to suppress his sympathy with the helpless peasantry, exclaimed : — " If I were an Irishman, I would be a rebel." Ido not find in any of the accounts of the rebellion of '98 any transgressions of the patriots in Wexford that can be called a massacre ; nor can I discover anything like the atrocity which you so partially describe, such as burying men and then bowling at their heads. I will conclude the chapter of horrors which I have been ' relating, with another extract from Lord Holland — "More than twenty years have passed away : many of my political opinions are softened ; my predilections for some mea weakened, my prejudices against others removed ; but my approbation of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's conduct and actions remain unaltered and nnshaken. His country was bleeding under one of the most execrable tyrannies that our times have ever witnessed. He who thinks that a man can be even excused in such circumstances by any other consideration than that of despair from opposing by forces a pretended Government, seems to me to sanction a principle which would ensure impunity to the greatest of all human delinquents ; or at least to those who produce the greatest misery amongst mankind." I have done, but in conclusion, let me ask you if you are still of opinion that the " Irish are a distinctive people, separate from other people of the earth, distinct in religion, &c, in thevenormity of their vices ? " I undertook to disprove the false charge, and lam not without some hopes that I have succeeded in doing so. At all events, I think that I have been able to show that English and Scotch are not altogether without the ghoul-like cruelty which you were of opinion could belong to no character but that of " Poor Paddy." ________ J.D.