e honourable, high-minded
men, full of natural tenderness and gentleness, to every one with whom
they were placed in _human relations_. The Irish, unfortunately, they
looked upon as savages who had refused peace and protection when it
was offered to them, and were now therefore to be _rooted out and
destroyed_.' A reformer in 1583, however, suggested a milder policy.
He recommended that 'all Brehons, carraghs, bards, rhymers, friars,
monks, jesuits, pardoners, nuns, and such-like should be executed by
martial law, and that with this clean sweep the work of death might
end, and a new era be ushered in with universities and schools, a
fixed police, and agriculture, and good government.'

When the English had destroyed all the houses and churches, burnt all
the corn, and driven away all the cattle, they were disgusted at the
savage state in which the remnant of the peasantry lived. A gentleman
named Andrew Trollope gave expression to this feeling thus: 'The
common people ate flesh if they could steal it, if not they lived on
shamrock and carrion. They never served God or went to church; they
had no religion and no manners, but were in all things more barbarous
and beast-like than any other people. No governor shall do good here,'
he said, 'except he show himself a Tamerlane. If hell were open and
all the evil spirits abroad, they could never be worse than these
Irish rogues--rather dogs, and worse than dogs, for dogs do but after
their kind, and they degenerate from all humanity.'[1]

[Footnote 1: Froude, vol. xi. p.246.]

The population of Ireland was then by slaughter and famine reduced to
about 600,000, one-eighth of the population of England; but far too
many, in the estimation of their English rulers. Brabason succeeded
Malby in Connaught, and surpassed him in cruelty. The Four Masters
say: 'Neither the sanctuary of the saint, neither the wood nor the
forest valley, the town nor the lawn, was a shelter from this captain
and his people, till the whole territory was destroyed by him.' In the
spring of 1582 St. Leger wrote from Cork: 'This country is so ruined
as it is well near unpeopled by the murders and spoils done by the
traitors on the one side, and by the killing and spoil done by the
soldiers on the other side, together with the great mortality in town
and country, which is such as the like hath never been seen. There has
died by famine only not so few as 30,000 in this province in less than
half a year, besid