There had been no ancient national government displaced, no dynasty
overthrown; the Irish had _no national flag_, nor any capital city as
the metropolis of their common country, nor any common administration
of law.' He might have added that they had no _mint_. There never was
an Irish king who had his face stamped on a coin of his realm. Some
stray pieces of money found their way into the country from abroad,
but up to the close of the sixteenth century the rudest form of barter
prevailed in Ulster, and accounts were paid not in coins but in cows.
Even the mechanical arts which had flourished in the country before
the arrival of the Celts had gradually perished, and had disappeared
at the time of the English invasion. Any handy men could build a house
of mud and wattles. Masons, carpenters, smiths, painters, glaziers,
&c., were not wanted by a people who despised stone buildings as
prisons, and abhorred walled towns as sepulchres. Spinning and weaving
were arts cultivated by the women, each household providing materials
for clothing, which was little used in warm weather, and thrown off
when fighting or any other serious work was to be done.

I should be sorry to disparage the Celtic race, or any other race, by
exaggerating their bad qualities or suppressing any reliable testimony
to their merits. But with me the truth of history is sacred. Both
sides of every case should be fairly stated. Nothing can be gained by
striving to hide facts which may be known to every person who takes
the trouble to study the subject. I write in the interest of the
people--of the toiling masses; and I find that they were oppressed and
degraded by the ruling classes long before the Norman invader took
the place of the Celtic chief. And it is a curious fact that when the
Cromwellians turned the Catholic population out of their homes and
drove them into Connaught, they were but following the example set
them by the Milesian lords of the soil centuries before.