ut deep moral
condemnation. It was not merely that the Irish were ignorant,
thriftless, filthy, debased and loathsome in their pitiable misery and
despair: it was that in his view, justice, truth, honesty had utterly
perished among them, and therefore were not due to them. Of any other
side to the picture, he like other good Englishmen, was entirely
unconscious: he saw only on all sides of him the empire of barbarism and
misrule which valiant and godly Englishmen were fighting to vanquish and
destroy--fighting against apparent but not real odds. And all this was
aggravated by the stiff adherence of the Irish to their old religion.
Spenser came over with the common opinion of Protestant Englishmen, that
they had at least in England the pure and undoubted religion of the
Bible: and in Ireland, he found himself face to face with the very
superstition in its lowest forms which he had so hated in England. He
left it plotting in England; he found it in armed rebellion in Ireland.
Like Lord Grey, he saw in Popery the root of all the mischiefs of
Ireland; and his sense of true religion, as well as his convictions of
right, conspired to recommend to him Lord Grey's pitiless government.
The opinion was everywhere--it was undisputed and unexamined--that a
policy of force, direct or indirect, was the natural and right way of
reducing diverging religions to submission and uniformity: that
religious disagreement ought as a matter of principle to be subdued by
violence of one degree or another. All wise and good men thought so: all
statesmen and rulers acted so. Spenser found in Ireland a state of
things which seemed to make this doctrine the simplest dictate of common
sense.

In August, 1582, Lord Grey left Ireland. He had accepted his office with
the utmost reluctance, from the known want of agreement between the
Queen and himself as to policy. He had executed it in a way which
greatly displeased the home Government. And he gave it up with his
special work, the extinction of Desmond's rebellion, still
unaccomplished. In spite of the thousands slain, and a province made a
desert, Desmond was still at large and dangerous. Lord Grey had been
ruthlessly severe, and yet not successful. For months there had been an
interchange of angry letters between him and the Government. Burghley,
he complains to Walsingham, was "so heavy against him." The Queen and
Burghley wanted order restored, but did not like either the expense of
war, or the re