s operations. A universal massacre
commenced of the English, now defenceless, and passively resigned to
their inhuman foes. No age, no sex, no condition was spared. The wife
weeping for her butchered husband, and embracing her helpless children,
was pierced with them, and perished by the same stroke.[**] The old,
the young, the vigorous, the infirm, underwent a like fate, and were
confounded in one common ruin. In vain did flight save from the first
assault: destruction was every where let loose, and met the hunted
victims at every turn. In vain was recourse had to relations, to
companions, to friends: all connections were dissolved, and death was
dealt by that hand from which protection was implored and expected.
Without provocation, without opposition, the astonished English, living
in profound peace and full security were massacred by their nearest
neighbors, with whom they had long upheld a continued intercourse of
kindness and good offices.[***]

But death was the lightest punishment inflicted by those rebels. All the
tortures which wanton cruelty could devise all the lingering pains of
body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate
revenge excited without injury, and cruelty derived from no cause. To
enter into particulars would shock the least delicate humanity. Such
enormities, though attested by undoubted evidence, appear almost
incredible. Depraved nature, even perverted religion encouraged by the
utmost license, reach not to such a pitch of ferocity, unless the pity
inherent in human breasts be destroyed by that contagion of example
which transports men beyond all the usual motives of conduct and
behavior.

The weaker sex themselves, naturally tender to their own sufferings,
and compassionate to those of others, here emulated their more robust
companions in the practice of every cruelty.[****] Even children, taught
by the example and encouraged by the exhortation of their parents,
essayed their feeble blows on the dead carcasses or defenceless children
of the English.[v]

* Temple, p. 42.

** Temple, p. 40.

*** Temple, p. 39, 40

**** Temple, p. 96, 101. Rush. vol. v. p. 415.

v Temple, p. 100

The very avarice of the Irish was not a sufficient restraint to their
cruelty. Such was their frenzy, that the cattle which they had seized,
and by rapine made their own, yet, because they bore the name of
English, were wantonly slaughtered, or, when covered