Queen Elizabeth; and let any man, who has the most superficial
knowledge of human affairs, determine whether national hatred,
proceeding from such powerful causes, could possibly have been kept
under by the defeat of one single rebellion--whether it would not
have been easy to have foreseen, at that period, that a proud,
brave, half-savage people, would cherish the memory of their wrongs
for centuries to come, and break forth into arms at every period
when they were particularly exasperated by oppression, or invited by
opportunity. If the Protestant religion had spread in Ireland as it
did in England, and if there had never been any difference of faith
between the two countries--can it be believed that the Irish, ill-
treated and infamously governed as they have been, would never have
made any efforts to shake off the yoke of England? Surely there are
causes enough to account for their impatience of that yoke, without
endeavouring to inflame the zeal of ignorant people against the
Catholic religion, and to make that mode of faith responsible for
all the butchery which the Irish and English for these last two
centuries have exercised upon each other. Everybody, of course,
must admit, that if to the causes of hatred already specified there
be added the additional cause of religious distinction, this last
will give greater force (and what is of more consequence to observe,
give a NAME) to the whole aggregate motive. But what Mr. Parnell
contends for, and clearly and decisively proves, is that many of
those sanguinary scenes attributed to the Catholic religion are to
be partly imputed to causes totally disconnected from religion; that
the unjust invasion, and the tyrannical, infamous policy of the
English, are to take their full share of blame with the sophisms and
plots of Catholic priests. In the reign of Henry VIII., Mr. Parnell
shows that feudal submission was readily paid to him by all the
Irish chiefs; that the Reformation was received without the