and deeper treachery than even that which characterized the stealthy and
unexpected stroke of his midnight dagger. He adopted the guise of
friendship; and professing to forget the past, lured into his power with
festive blandishments the chiefs of many a noble following, whom he
dared not meet in open fight, but who, at a given signal, and while the
brimming goblet circled through the feast, were suddenly set upon and
foully murdered ere they could draw a dagger or leap to their feet. In
corroboration of this assertion, we have only to refer to Mullaghmast,
where a deed of this description was perpetrated; and of a character so
cruel and dastardly, that the names of those concerned in the inhuman
plot are now desecrated by every individual raised above the brute, or
inspired with the hope of heaven.

Nor was there any mode of propitiating the satanic spirit which seemed
to actuate the English against their opponents, from the first moment
that they set their foot upon Irish soil; for, when, in the lapse of
years, a portion of the inhabitants in the vicinity of the Pale,
professed their readiness to conform to the manners, laws and customs
of the invader, their overtures were rejected, and they were still held
at the point of the sword, as "the Irish enemy," and denied the
protection of the laws that they were ready to obey. In short, every
move of the English, established beyond any possibility of doubt, that
their sole object was the utter and complete extirpation of the
natives, and the subsequent establishment upon their conquered shores
of a dynasty from which every drop of pure, Celtic blood should be
excluded forever.

But that day never arrived, and with God's help never shall. However
she might have suffered or failed through an occasional traitor,
Ireland, as a whole, fought against English usurpation from the moment