persecution.

The PARTICULAR conclusion Mr. Parnell attempts to prove is, that the
Catholic religion in Ireland had sunk into torpor and inactivity,
till Government roused it with the lash: that even then, from the
respect and attachment which men are always inclined to show towards
government, there still remained a large body of loyal Catholics;
that these only decreased in number from the rapid increase of
persecution; and that, after all, the effects which the resentment
of the Roman Catholics had in creating rebellions had been very much
exaggerated.

In support of these two conclusions, Mr. Parnell takes a survey of
the history of Ireland, from the conquest under Henry to the
rebellion under Charles I., passing very rapidly over the period
which preceded the Reformation, and dwelling principally upon the
various rebellions which broke out in Ireland between the
Reformation and the grand rebellion in the reign of Charles I. The
celebrated conquest of Ireland by Henry II. extended only to a very
few counties in Leinster; nine-tenths of the whole kingdom were
left, as he found them, under the dominion of their native princes.
The influence of example was as strong in this as in most other
instances; and great numbers of the English settlers who came over
under various adventures resigned their pretensions to superior
civilisation, cast off their lower garments, and lapsed into the
nudity and barbarism of the Irish. The limit which divided the
possessions of the English settler from those of the native Irish
was called THE PALE; and the expressions of inhabitants WITHIN THE
PALE, and WITHOUT THE PALE, were the terms by which the two nations
were distinguished. It is almost superfluous to state, that the