eople, or by
overt act violating the laws. As for the people, what thoughts they have
in matters of religion in their own breasts I cannot reach."

But as to the charge of massacre, destruction, or banishment he says:
"Give us an instance of one man since my coming into Ireland, not in
arms, massacred, destroyed or banished; concerning the massacre or the
destruction of whom justice hath not been done, or endeavored to be
done."

This very pointed and daring challenge could hardly have been publicly
made by such a man as Cromwell, if, to his knowledge, a slaughter of
women and unarmed men had occurred. On the other hand, it is certain
that priests and others had been killed in cold blood; and a general who
delivers over a city to pillage, and forbids quarter, can hardly say
where outrage and massacre will cease. As to banishment, the
"Cromwellian settlement" was necessarily based on the banishment of
those whom the settlers displaced.

With regard to the policy of confiscation and resettlement, Cromwell
warmly justifies it. It is the just way of meeting rebellion, he says.
You have forfeited your estates, and it is just to raise money by
escheating your lands. But apart from the land forfeited, which is but a
part of the account, if ever men were engaged in a just and righteous
cause it was this, he asserts:

"We are come to ask an account of the innocent blood that hath been
shed; and to endeavor to bring to an account--by the presence and
blessing of the Almighty, in whom alone is our hope and strength--all
who, by appearing in arms, seek to justify the same. We come to break
the power of lawless Rebels, who having cast off the Authority of
England, live as enemies to Human Society; whose principles, the world
hath experience, are, To destroy and subjugate all men not complying
with them. We come, by the assistance of God, to hold forth and maintain
the lustre and glory of English Liberty in a Nation where we have an
undoubted right to do it;--wherein the people of Ireland (if they listen
not to such seducers as you are) may equally participate in all
benefits; to use liberty and fortune equally with Englishmen, if they
keep out of arms."

Such was the basis of the famous "Cromwellian settlement"--by far the
most thorough act in the long history of the conquest of Ireland; by far
the most wholesale effort to impose on Ireland the Protestant faith and
English ascendency. Wholesale and thorough, but not enough for