consequently, the very pride and dignity of their arms walled in, as
it were, the tyrant from any of those cold-blooded and dastardly
atrocities which so disfigured his own career.

Notwithstanding that, after four hundred and twenty years of outlawry
the most cruel and unrelenting, the Irish were, (12th James I. 1614.)
at last, admitted within the pale of English law, and recognized
nominally as subjects at least, so long had they been subjected to the
grinding heel of oppression, and the baneful influences of continuous
warfare, and so long, also, had the usurper been accustomed to treat
them as enemies, that this recognition of their claims upon humanity
availed them but very little. Under the new regime, their freedom was
merely technical only; for now the terrible ban of the Reformation,
intensified by the cruel spirit evinced throughout the whole of
Elizabeth's infamous reign, was upon them, and their persecution, which
had so long been regarded as a matter of course, experienced but little
diminution through the attempted toleration of her weak and pedantic
successor. Still, frightful and unprecedented as was the ordeal through
which they had passed, they preserved their nationality, and clung to
their traditions, hoping one day to rid themselves of their oppressors,
as they had already done in the case of the Danes; and in this way has
the case stood between both parties up to the present hour.

Although long previous to the Reformation, the atrocities practiced
upon Catholic Ireland by Catholic England were of a character the most
revolting, and although the murderous hand of the invader was never
stayed by the knowledge or conviction, that both parties professed a
common creed and knelt at a common altar, yet the intensity of the
sufferings of the Irish, or what may be termed their studious, refined,
and systematic persecution, began with the _civilisation_ of Elizabeth.