rom the followers of Cartwright in separating
themselves from the state church, in which they found many "filthy
traditions and inventions of men." Beginning to organize hi separate
congregations about 1567, they were said by Sir Walter Raleigh to have
as many as 20,000 adherents in 1593. Though heartily disliked by
re-actionaries and by the _beati possidentes_ in both church {346} and
state, they were, nevertheless, the party of the future.

[1] A. O. Meyer: _England und die katholische Kirche unter Elizabeth_,
p. 231.

SECTION 5. IRELAND

If the union of England and Wales has been a marriage--after a
courtship of the primitive type; if the union with Scotland has been a
successful partnership--following a long period of cut-throat
competition; the position of Ireland has been that of a captive and a
slave. To her unwilling mind the English domination has always been a
foreign one, and this fact makes more difference with her than whether
her master has been cruel, as formerly, or kind, as of late.

[Sidenote: English rule]

The saddest period in all Erin's sad life was that of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, when to the old antagonism of race was added a
new hatred of creed and a new commercial competition. The policy of
Henry was "to reduce that realm to the knowledge of God and obedience
of Us." The policy of Elizabeth was to pray that God might "call them
to the knowledge of his truth and to a civil polity," and to assist the
Almighty by the most fiendish means to accomplish these ends. The
government of the island was a crime, and yet for this crime some
considerations must be urged in extenuation. England then regarded the
Irish much as the Americans have seemed to regard the Indians, as
savages to be killed and driven off to make room for a higher
civilization. Had England been able to apply the method of
extermination she would doubtless have done so and there would then be
no Irish question today. But in 1540 it was recognized that "to
enterprise the whole extirpation and total destruction of all the
Irishmen in the land would be a marvellous gumptious charge and great
difficulty."

Being unable to accomplish this or to put Ireland at {347} the bottom
of the sea, where Elizabeth's minister Walsingham often wished that it
were, the English had the alternatives of half governing or wholly
abandoning their neighbors. The latter course was felt to be too
dangerous, but had it been a