r of the state at their disposal, to evict
the whole population in the queen's name, to drive all the families
away from their homes, to demolish their dwellings, and turn them
adrift on the highway, without one shilling compensation. Villages,
schools, churches would all disappear from the landscape; and, when
the grouse season arrived, the noble owner might bring over a party of
English friends to see his '_improvements!_' The right of conquest
so cruelly exercised by the Cromwellians is in this year of grace _a
legal right_; and its exercise is a mere question of expediency and
discretion. There is not a landlord in Ireland who may not be a Scully
if he wishes. It is not law or justice, it is not British power, that
prevents the enactment of Cromwellian scenes of desolation in
every county of that unfortunate country. It is self-interest, with
humanity, in the hearts of good men, and the dread of assassination
in the hearts of bad men, that prevent at the present moment the
immolation of the Irish people to the Moloch of territorial despotism.
It is the effort to render impossible those human sacrifices, those
holocausts of Christian households, that the priests of
feudal landlordism denounce so frantically with loud cries of
'_confiscation_.'

The 'graces' promised by Charles I. in 1628 demonstrate the real
wretchedness of the country to which they were deceitfully offered,
and from which they were treacherously withdrawn. From them we learn
that the Government soldiers were a terror to more than the king's
enemies, that the king's rents were collected at the sword's point,
and that numerous monopolies and oppressive taxes impoverished the
country. There was little security for estates in any part of Ireland,
and none at all for estates in Connaught. No man could sue out livery
for his lands without first taking the oath of the royal supremacy.
The soldiers enjoyed an immunity in the perpetration of even capital
crimes, for the civil power could not touch them. Those who were
married, or had their children baptized, by Roman Catholic priests,
were liable to fine and censure. The Protestant bishops and clergy
were in great favour and had enormous privileges. The patentees of
dissolved religious houses claimed exemption from various assessments.
The ministers of the Established Church were entitled to the aid of
the Government in exacting reparation for clandestine exercises of
spiritual jurisdiction by Roman Catholi