TOLERATION IN THE EIGHT FOR IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 116

TOLERATION IN THE EIGHT FOR IRELAND

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Irish population is composed of two races who have never melted together, and can never by any possibility melt together. The evidence of history is all the other way. It is true that English policy has invariably aimed at the creation of an English settlement, which was to stand apart from the native population as disdainfully as an English regiment operating in the country of the Hottentots. With that object she endowed her colonists with every privilege that could give them an interest in hectoring the natives. She hemmed them around with every barrier that legislation and religion could build between them and the mere Irish. But the result in all ages has been the breaking down of the barriers, the identification of the colonists with the natives, and the substitution of some fresh English garrison for the purpose of despoiling and hunting down the English garrison which preceded them. If ever there were colonists firmly planted, they were the irresistible knights, each of them in his armour all but as impregnable as a modern ironclad, whom Strongbow left in possession of the land with none but half-naked Celtic clans, emaciated by three centuries of Danish invasions, to dispute it; yet before two hundred years were over there was scarcely a descendant of Strongbow's knights who was not branded with treason to the English interest. They spoke the Irish tongue. They loved the Irish land, they defied English statutes to seek the hands of Irish wives. The ' degenerate English ' they were called, and they were deprived of their heads for attempting to make themselves at home in Ireland, as a more modern English garrison are about to be deprived of their ascendency for sinning the other way. With the exception of Hugh O'Neil and stainless Hugh O'Donnell, who practically held Ulster as sovereign princes, Queen … continue reading »

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