been wholly depopulated. The men were desperate. It is
difficult to see how they could have been anything else, when driven to
desperation. They were called robbers; but there was a general confusion
about _meum_ and _tuum_ which they could not understand. Strangers had
taken possession of their cattle, and they did not comprehend why they
should not try to obtain it again in any possible way. Young men, whose
fathers had landed estates of L2,000 a-year, which were quietly divided
amongst Cromwell's Life-Guards, while the proprietor was sent out to
beg, and his daughters compelled to take in washing or do needlework,
could scarcely be expected to take such a change in their circumstances
very calmly. A man who had been transplanted from an estate worth L2,500
a year near Dublin, which his family had owned for four hundred years,
and whose daughters were given the munificent gratuity of L10 a-piece by
the Council Board, and forbidden for the future to ask for any further
assistance, might certainly plead extenuating circumstances[503] if he
took to highway robbery. Such circumstances as these were common at this
period; and it should be borne in mind that the man whose holding was
worth but L40 a-year felt the injustice, and resented the inhumanity of
his expulsion, quite as much as the nobleman with L4,000. So the Tories
plundered their own property; and, if they could be captured, paid the
penalty with their lives; but, when they were not caught, the whole
district suffered, and some one was made a scapegoat for their crime,
though it did not seem much to matter whether the victim could be
charged with complicity or not. After some years, when even the sons of
the proprietors had become old inhabitants, and the dispossessed
generation had passed away, their children were still called Tories.
They wandered from village to village, or rather from hovel to hovel,
and received hospitality and respect from the descendants of those who
had been tenants on the estates of their forefathers, and who still
called them gentlemen and treated them as such, though they possessed
nothing but the native dignity, which could not be thrown off, and the
old title-deeds, which were utterly worthless, yet not the less
carefully treasured. Yet, these men were condemned by their oppressors
because they did not work for their living, and because they still
remembered their ancient dignity, and resented their ancient wrongs. To
have worked and