THE IRISH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 25, 19 October 1883, Page 27

THE IRISH.

{Indo-European Correspondence?)

Three is a phenomenon in connection with Irish history which is truly astonishing, and may at first sight appear unaccountable ; it iB the survivance of what is called the Irish race. For more than three centuries there has been a feud in that unhappy island between the Saxon and the Celt, which, besides the animosity of race, was embittered also by religious fanaticism, and kept up by the rivalry of material interests. For three centuries it has seemed to be the policy of the English to eradicate the Irish, and to thrust them, root and branches, into or across the ocean. Year after year, the war of extermination raged, and raged with such fury that it made those very hands shrink that had kindled it. Elizabeth, we know, was of an unrelentiug nature, yet such was the barbarity of her agents in Ireland that she was heard to exclaim "that she had found she had sent wolves, not shepherds to govern Ireland, for they had left nothing but ashes aad carcasses for her to reign over." At the time of the Desmond's Rebellion, so stern was the repression, and so unsparing the retribution, that the poet Spencer draws the following appalling picture : " Out of every corner of the woods and glynns, they (the Irish) come creeping forth on their hands ; for their legs could not bear them ; they spoke like ghosts crying out of their graves ; they did eat dead carrions, happy were they that could find them. In a short space there was none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country was suddenly void of man and beast." Instead of showing pity, Elizabeth cut off from the Irish the only means of rising from their ruin by confiscating their lands. She then parcelled them out among her greedy favourite", on condition that they would colonise them with English tenants. Janixjs-continued the work of fire and blood, «nd if the " wild Irif^Wtojoyed a breathing interval at the beginning of the civil war, th§»^ound heads of Cromwell soon made up for the respite. Supposing even the accounts that represent them wading with their horses breast-deep through streams of Catholic blood be exaggerated, they still lead to suppose carnage enough to make the survivors comparatively few ; and yet Paddy survived 1 The cruel policy of the sanctimonious Protector was cjntinued under the Stuarts ; it was continued under William and the Georges. Cromwell bad relegated the poor down-trodden Celts into the wilds of Conn aught ; it was the constant endeavour of the rulers of the land after him to prevent them from rising, and by foreign colonisation, or by native apostacy, to un-lrish Ireland ; and yet Ireland remained Irish ! When direct persecution was stopped by the Emancipation Act, famine took the place of the fire and sword, and the work of depopulation continued. We may safely assume that the stress of emigration told most heavily on the native Irish and Catholic element ; yet, after years of emigration, the census of 1882 shows that the Catholics have maintained their proportion to the whole population, or, if any change took place, it was in their favour.

This strange fact has become the more striking, these lost' lew years, by the downfall of the Irish Church, which was given up by England in despair, and by the breakdown of the Irish Missions, whose exposure we have but lately heard of. Ireland is as Catholic as she ever was since Elizabeth, and if anything she is more intensely Irish. Religious animosity may have softened down ; but natural aspirations have buoyed up, and national antagonism has been intensified. It is no longer the " Papists " alone that club together against the English ascendancy : it is everyone ; and.the trouble given by the Land Leaguers to the sister isle is none the less trying because their head, Mr. Parnell, is a Protestant.