tholics during the
rebellion was, by the most moderate estimate, set down as 40,000.' His
grace seems to have been unacquainted with the contemporary evidence
collected by the Protestant historian Warner, who examined the
depositions of 1641, on which the story of the massacre was based, and
found the estimate of those who perished in the so-called massacre to
have been enormously exaggerated. He calculated the number of those
killed, 'upon evidence collected within two years after the rebellion
broke out,' at 4,028, besides 8,000 said to have perished through bad
usage. The parliament commissioners in Dublin, writing in 1652 to the
commissioners in England, say that, 'besides 848 families, there
were killed, hanged, burned, and drowned 6,062. Thus there were two
estimates--one of 12,000, the other of 10,000--each of which was far
lower than the estimate of 40,000, which his grace calls 'the
most moderate.' It turns out, moreover, that the argument based by
Archbishop Trench on the false estimate of those said to have been
massacred, is wholly worthless for the purpose intended by his grace.
The disproportion of Protestants to Roman Catholics, which appears
by the census of 1861, cannot be accounted for by the statistics
of 1641--be those statistics true or false. For the proportion of
Protestants to Roman Catholics was higher in 1672--thirty years after
the alleged massacre--than in 1861. The Protestants in 1672, according
to Sir W. Petty, numbered 300,000, and the Roman Catholics 800,000;
while in 1861 there were found in Ireland only 1,293,702 Protestants
of all denominations to 4,505,265 Roman Catholics. It follows from
these figures, as has been already remarked by Dr. Maziere Brady, that
there has been a relative decrease of Protestants, as compared with
Roman Catholics, of 395,772 persons. And this relative decrease was in
no way affected--inasmuch as it took place since the year 1672--by the
alleged massacre of 1641.

CHAPTER XII.

THE PURITAN PLANTATION.

It is a fearful thing to undertake the destruction of a nation
by slaughter, starvation, and banishment. When we read of such
enormities, perpetrated by some 'scourge of God,' in heathen lands and
distant ages, we are horrified, and we thank Providence that it is our
lot to be born in a Christian country. But what must the world think
of our Christianity when they read of the things that, in a most
Bible-reading age, Englishmen did in Ireland?

T