CROMWELL IN IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 196, 5 January 1877, Page 15

CROMWELL IN IRELAND.

"Ihe present English attitude to Turkey," says the Springfield ' HopuKican, "in view of the Bulgarians, reminds our cousins unpleasantly of the swift action of Cromwell, in behalf of the Piedmontese. On that occasion, months of denial and prolongation of the persecution were not tolerated, but the great Oliver sat down and indited the following note to the Holy Father : « Your Holiness is the head of the Roman Catholic religion in .Europe. lam at the head of tho Protestant religion. I hear that a dreadful persecution is bein ff carried on by the Piedmontese government against the Vaudois, at the instance, or under the sanction of your Holiness. Now I write to say that, if your Holiness does not immediately put a stop to these cruelties, I will come and lay Civita Vecchia in ashes.' From that hour the Protestants of Piedmont breathed their prayers in safety " As they were in the humor for looking up Cromwell's epistolary productions on the subject of " dreadful persecutions," it is a sort of wonder that the following tid-bit escaped our "English cousins" We commend it, at all events, to the attention of the ' Republican ' It was addressed to the Speaker of the Ilouee of Commons, and runs

thus : "It has pleased God to bless our endeavor? at Drogheda. After battering, wo stormed it. The enemy were abont 3,000 strong in th« town. I believe we put to the sword the whole number of (he defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their liv«s, and those that did are in safe custody for the Barbadoes. This hath been a marvellous great mercy. The enemy being not willing to put an issue upon the field of battle, had sent into this garrison all their prime soldiers, being about 3,000 horse and foob, under the command of their best officers, Sir Arthur Acton being made Governor. There were some seven or eight regiments, Ormond's being one, under tho command of Sir Edward Verney, I do not believe, neither do I know, that any officer escaped with his life, save only one lieutenant. . . I wish that nil honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone, to whom, indeed, the praise of this mercy belongs. For instruments they were very inconsiderable to the work throughout." It is of this massacre, unsurpassed in Bulgaria, that Lord Clarendon gave this account : " The soldiers threw down their arms upon a general offer of quarter ; so that the enemy entered the works without resistance, and put every man, governor, officer, and soldier to the sword ; and the whole army being entered the town, they executed all manner of cruelty and put everj man that related to the garrison, and all the citizens who were Irish, man, woman, and child to the sword." Fifteen hundred Christians were burned to death in a Bulgarian church, whither they had fled for refuge, and Mr. Gladstone, who pats M. de Layelevo on the back when he incites the Belgian Liberals to outrage their Catholic neighbors, and to seize the first opportunity of enacting penal laws against them, speaks out as the mouthpiece of horrified Christian England to demand that Turkey shall be obliterated as a nation. Yet the Moslems, who have never known the influences of Christianity in any form, are only doing to-day, what Christian England did that day in Christian Ireland. " During five days," says an English historian, " the streets of Drogheda ran with blood ; revenge and fanaticism stimulated the passions of the soldiers ; from the garrisons they turned their swords against the inhahita,ntß, x ßnd one thousand unresisting victims were immolated together toithin the walls of the great church, whitJier they had fled for protection." It is anti-Christian fanaticism, which is eaid to be one cause of the frightful atrocities of the campaign in Servia. The Mohammedans believe they gain a greater joy in Paradise for every Christian whom they kill, and this is why even the eh Jdren are not spared. It is a grim perversion of zeal no doubt, but is it not fairly matched — nay, altogether outdone by the' ferocious hypocrisy with which the self-styled "head of the Protestant religion" called on all England to " give the glory of this to God alone ? " What does the • Republican ' think about it ?