THE SOUL OF ULSTER 
 
 ERNEST W HAMILTON
 
 Q,
 
 The Soul of Ulster
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 The First Seven 
 Divisions 
 
 A detailed and authori- 
 tative account of the part 
 taken by the British army 
 in the fighting from Mons 
 to^Ypres. It is the splen- 
 did epitaph of England's 
 professional army, which 
 at the end of the three 
 months was practically 
 annihilated. 
 
 With Maps. :: $1.50 Net.
 
 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 By Ernest W. Hamilton, <Author 
 
 of "The First Seven ^visions." :: :: :: 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. BUTTON & CO. 
 
 681 FIFTH cAVENUE
 
 COPYRIGHT. 1917, 
 
 BY E. P. BUTTON & CO. 
 
 printed in the Chitted States of Hmerica
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IT has been very truly said that the Ulster question 
 is only properly understood by Ulstermen, residents 
 in other parts of Ireland having, at the best, an 
 incomplete grasp of the real deep-down issues. It 
 may, I think, with equal truth be added that mere 
 residence in Ulster is not in itself sufficient to lay 
 bare the inner soul of the people, there being in 
 the case of the native part of the population a very 
 wide gap between their secret feelings and that which 
 appears on the surface. In moments of acute political 
 interest this gap becomes sensibly lessened. 
 
 North Tyrone has been the scene since the Re- 
 distribution Bill of more closely-contested elections 
 than any other Constituency in the kingdom; and as 
 one who has taken an active part as principal or 
 otherwise in all of these contests, I have perhaps 
 had exceptional opportunities of getting occasional 
 rather startling glimpses of the real soul of Ulster. 
 
 ERNEST HAMILTON, 
 
 M.P. for North Tyrone, 
 1885-1892. 
 
 2061346
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ULSTER PRIOR TO COLONIZATION ... 1 
 
 THE ULSTER PLANTATION 19 
 
 THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT ... 55 
 
 THE CIVIL WAR 73 
 
 THE 1798 REBELLION 89 
 
 ULSTER TO-DAY 107 
 
 MOONLIGHT OUTRAGES 141 
 
 THE RED HAND OF ULSTER .... 153 
 
 CONCLUSION. 177
 
 ULSTER PRIOR TO COLONIZATION
 
 fTlHE ethics of the Ulster question 
 are fast bound up in the general 
 ethics of colonization. Is colonization to 
 be classed as an act of piracy, or is it a 
 necessary part of the gradual reclamation 
 of the world? It may be both, in which 
 case the problem is still further resolved 
 into the question as to whether the good 
 resulting from colonization justifies the 
 original act? Most people will agree that 
 the answer must depend upon the parti- 
 cular circumstances surrounding each case. 
 A broad, general principle which will 
 govern all cases seems out of reach.
 
 4 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 Religion is perhaps the most attractive 
 excuse, because all proselytizers, if sincere 
 in the belief that their particular gospel 
 alone carries the secret of salvation, must 
 equally believe that the end justifies the 
 means. It is a logical sequence. And so 
 it comes about that most of history's 
 blackest or reddest acts bear the official 
 stamp of God's service. 
 
 In Australia, New Zealand and North 
 America the Gospel has succeeded more 
 primitive creeds, and we therefore comfort 
 ourselves with the reflection that all is 
 well, including the unpublished and, in 
 many cases, unpublishable, processes by 
 which this came about. Into these pro- 
 cesses few care to inquire, but we find 
 that the net result in every case is a 
 steady disappearance of the native 
 element. This one concrete fact is in
 
 Ulster Prior to Colonization 5 
 
 itself perhaps more eloquent than any 
 history. It seems to point with some 
 plainness to the conclusion that the land 
 and not the souls of the natives was the 
 first aim of the colonists, or, in any case, 
 that, if the salvation of their souls was 
 secured, it was done by the convenient 
 sacrifice of their bodies. 
 
 In a world whose most unpopular 
 product is the naked truth, we need never 
 expect the picture of British colonization 
 the world over to be faithfully drawn. 
 It would, perhaps, not be a pretty picture. 
 But, ugly as it might be in its truth, it 
 would still fail to suggest even to the 
 most philanthropic any obvious and at 
 the same time practicable act of repara- 
 tion. The philanthropist might deplore 
 the wicked acts of other days, but he could 
 not undo them; he could not even
 
 6 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 neutralize them; and however sincere his 
 philanthropy, he would hardly even if 
 he could reconstitute the anti-coloniza- 
 tion conditions. 
 
 It can safely be said that no coloni- 
 zation scheme has ever been more abun- 
 dantly justified, both by antecedent 
 conditions and by results, than has that 
 of Ulster by James I. of England. The 
 antecedent conditions were, in fact, very 
 bad, and even apologetic ingenuity could 
 hardly argue that the fault lay at the door 
 of the English. If ever a province of 
 Ireland enjoyed Home Rule, that province 
 was Ulster prior to the Great Plantation 
 of 1609. The population was almost ex- 
 clusively native. The stream of English 
 undertakers and adventurers which for 
 centuries had been attracted by the rich 
 pastures of Munster and Leinster, found
 
 Ulster Prior to Colonization 7 
 
 no similar attraction in the barren bogs 
 of the cold northern Province. Ulster 
 had been left severely alone. It had a 
 poor soil, a cold climate, a savage popula- 
 tion, and it was dangerously remote from 
 the Pale, and all the official protection 
 afforded by the armed forces of that 
 British oasis. 
 
 In Antrim there was, during the latter 
 half of the sixteenth century, a certain 
 sprinkling of Scotch Campbells and 
 McDonnels, but these formed a migratory 
 population, coming and going as oppor- 
 tunity for fighting arose. Down and 
 Armagh could also boast a handful of 
 English settlers, eking out a struggling 
 and miserable existence by their own 
 labour on boycotted lands subject at all 
 times to forays and rapine. 
 
 Outside of the three eastern counties
 
 8 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 there were no agricultural settlers, and 
 the native Irish could rule and be ruled 
 as they wished. Taking it from shore to 
 shore, Ulster was incomparably the most 
 Irish of the four Provinces, and it was 
 reigned over by the O'Neills, of whom 
 the most interesting historically was 
 Shane. Shane in his day styled him- 
 self King of Ulster, and in truth he 
 had some claim to this title. O'Reilly, 
 O'Hanlon and O'Kane admitted his 
 sovereignty; O'Donnell and Maguire at 
 times disputed it and suffered accordingly. 
 Shane was nothing but a coarse and 
 common savage. He would seem to have 
 had no virtues and all the vices. To 
 secure his succession, he murdered his 
 nearest relative. O'Donnell accused him 
 in 1564 of having caused the death of 
 500 persons of quality, and of at least
 
 Ulster Prior to Colonization 9 
 
 14,000 of the poor. On one occasion, in 
 1562, he had a difference of opinion with 
 Maguire, to settle which he fell upon that 
 chieftain's harvest people at Belleek and 
 killed 300 men, women and children. He 
 was inordinately and grotesquely vain, 
 especially of his least commendable 
 exploits. 
 
 As may well be supposed, the vices of 
 Shane were not confined to the walls of 
 his own castle at Dungannon. They 
 appear to have been common to the 
 whole province. Fitzwilliam, writing to 
 Cecil towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, 
 complained that he was "a banished 
 man wearing himself out among unkind 
 people a people most accursed, who 
 lusted after every sin. Murder and incest 
 were every-day matters, and a lying 
 spirit brooded over all the land." Sidney,
 
 10 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 writing to the Queen herself, in 1567, 
 says: "Surely there was never people 
 of worse minds, for matrimony is no 
 more regarded in effect than conjunction 
 between unreasoning beasts. Perjury, 
 murder and robbery counted allowable. 
 Finally, I cannot find that they make any 
 conscience of sin." 
 
 Not only was Ulster the worst of the 
 Provinces socially and morally, but it 
 was by far the most backward in industrial 
 enterprise. There was but little tillage 
 and no settled industries. Herds of cattle 
 formed the chief means of subsistence, 
 and these changed hands with uncomfort- 
 able frequency and to the usual accom- 
 paniment of murder and outrage. Might 
 was the only right. The rich system- 
 atically oppressed the poor, and the lot of 
 the lower orders was miserable indeed.
 
 Ulster Prior to Colonization 11 
 
 There was no law but the old Brehon law 
 which invariably found a verdict for the 
 richer and the stronger. Virtues were 
 not accounted as such. The standard of 
 morality was set by wandering bards 
 known as Rhymers, whose panegyrics 
 extolled not nobility of thought and 
 action, "but the most beastliest and 
 odious parts of men's doings, and their 
 own likewise for whom the rhymes be 
 made. Such be cherished, defended, and 
 rewarded with garments till they leave 
 themselves naked." * 
 
 The above occasional glimpses of a 
 Pan-Celtic Ulster under its own chieftains 
 are not furnished as a suggestion of what 
 might recur under Home Rule, but 
 simply as a justification of the initial act 
 of colonization. Where such was the 
 
 Fitzwilliam to Elizabeth.
 
 12 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 state of society, it was clear that a remedy 
 of some sort was called for, not in the 
 interests of England but in the interests 
 of Ulster itself. Coercion and instruction 
 were alike failures as instruments of 
 reform; only the example of a more 
 advanced civilization working in their 
 midst could be expected to open the eyes 
 of the natives to the higher possibilities 
 of existence. 
 
 At the end of the sixteenth century, 
 English and Irish had been in more or 
 less close touch for over four hundred 
 years; but though, during that period, 
 England had advanced to a comparatively 
 high state of civilization, Ireland had 
 remained stationary. The contemporaries 
 in Ireland of Shakespeare were the 
 Rhymers extolling in verse, which merci- 
 fully has not survived, "The beastliest
 
 Ulster Prior to Colonization 13 
 
 and most odious parts of men's doings." 
 Century after century had passed without 
 Ireland registering even a fractional 
 advance in manners or culture. It sys- 
 tematically resented all attempts to raise 
 it out of the mire. In that mire it had 
 lived from the back of history, and in 
 that mire it was content and, indeed, 
 determined to remain. Settled laws, 
 settled industries were beyond its under- 
 standing, and like all aboriginal countries, 
 it resented what it could not understand. 
 
 The bane of the country had always 
 been its geographical position. It lay on 
 the very western limit of the world an 
 inaccessible island to which the enlighten- 
 ment born of the interchange of ideas 
 between nations could never penetrate 
 except by hearsay. It was outside the 
 radius of first-hand social and moral
 
 14 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 evolution, and the imported article it 
 invariably regarded with suspicion. 
 
 The gradual elevation of thought which 
 has reclaimed Europe from the savagery 
 of the dark ages can be traced by the 
 student of history to periodical crusades 
 started here and there against existing 
 practices. The original crusade may be, 
 and generally is, the work of one man, 
 but the work which he has started is 
 carried on after his death by sects or 
 societies of which he remains the inspira- 
 tion. The new ideas gradually take hold, 
 and so the world advances, each country 
 in turn assimilating the reforms of its 
 neighbour. 
 
 An isolated country is naturally 
 debarred from participation in such 
 advance, but it remains happily (or 
 unhappily) unconscious of its stagnation,
 
 Ulster Prior to Colonization 15 
 
 through lack of opportunity for comparing 
 itself with others. Not only this, but in 
 the absence of a wholesome standard of 
 comparison, it readily falls into the error 
 of over-estimating its own merits and 
 importance in the world. It becomes the 
 victim of megalomania. This would be 
 a harmless vanity enough, did it not 
 inevitably carry with it the absence of 
 effort or even of desire to improve. When 
 a country is not only ignorant but also 
 incredulous of its own relative inferiority, 
 that country is doomed by the gods to 
 destruction. England herself has suffered 
 much from this common hallucination of 
 the insular; Ireland far more so. There 
 has been no real eradication of primitive 
 impulses. Behind a ready but thin 
 assumption of agreement with imported 
 ideas, the basic nature of the native Irish
 
 16 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 Celt remains to-day the same as it was 
 in the days of Elizabeth; the same as it 
 was in the days of Strongbow, and pro- 
 bably very much the same as it was in 
 the days of Noah. The progressive views 
 of the idealist will be glibly applauded, 
 but they make no more lasting impression 
 than a rainbow. It is mainly owing to 
 this barrier between them and all recog- 
 nized forms of thought that the Irish are 
 so proverbially apt to mistake their best 
 friends for their foes, and their worst 
 foes for their friends. 
 
 The peculiarities of the native Irish 
 character were even in the days of 
 Elizabeth thoroughly understood by 
 those on the spot, but not so by the 
 politicians at home an anomaly by no 
 means confined to the sixteenth century; 
 and as the politicians always held the
 
 Ulster Prior to Colonization 17 
 
 purse-strings, and always knew better 
 than the administrator, it is not surprising 
 that the heart, health and fortune of the 
 latter unhappy functionary usually ended 
 by being broken. 
 
 After Shane's death, Essex was 
 appointed Governor of Ulster. His ad- 
 ministration was not a success. He was 
 supplied with a mere handful of soldiers, 
 underpaid and underfed, and the chieftains 
 could afford to laugh at him. His term 
 of office was marred by one or two acts of 
 flagrant treachery which even the excuse 
 of retaliation could not justify. 
 
 Essex's armed incursions were directed 
 no less against the Antrim Scotch than 
 against the Irish. These Scotch were not 
 colonists in the ordinary sense; they 
 were mercenary soldiers whom the Irish 
 chiefs employed to fight their inter-tribal
 
 18 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 battles for them. Their fighting reputa- 
 tion was great, and they would do battle 
 for anyone who paid them. Sir Francis 
 Knollys reckoned in 1566 that 100 of 
 the Scots were more formidable as foes 
 than 200 of the Irish. In any case, they 
 were more than a match for Essex, and 
 he made no headway against them. He 
 finally died in Dublin in 1576, a broken 
 and disappointed man.
 
 THE ULSTER PLANTATION
 
 r 1 1 HE end of the sixteenth century 
 * saw O'Neill and O'Donnell joining 
 hands in a fresh endeavour to extend 
 their own rule even beyond the bounds 
 of Ulster. In September, 1601, 6,000 
 Spanish troops landed at Kinsale, and 
 with these the two northern Chiefs, after 
 a devastating march through Ireland, 
 managed to join forces. Mount joy, how- 
 ever, who had succeeded the second Essex 
 as Deputy, collected an army and very 
 easily defeated the combined forces, who 
 were seized with an unaccountable panic. 
 The Spaniards who, according to the 
 historian, were not such fast runners as 
 the Irish had to bear the brunt of the 
 pursuit and many fell. The total casualties 
 21
 
 22 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 on the English side were one man killed. 
 O'Neill himself, seeing the game was up, 
 shortly afterwards presented himself before 
 Mount joy, and on his knees swore eternal 
 loyalty. 
 
 This rebellion may be written down as 
 the direct cause of the Ulster Plantation. 
 O'Neill and O'Donnell left the country 
 and their lands were confiscated. The 
 Four Masters record the circumstance as 
 follows: "It was from this rising and 
 from the departure of the Earls that 
 their principalities, their territories, their 
 estates, their lands, their forts, their 
 fruitful harbours, and their fishful bays 
 were taken from the Irish of the province 
 of Ulster, and were given in their presence 
 to foreign tribes; and they were expelled 
 and banished into other countries, where 
 most of them died."
 
 The Ulster Plantation 23 
 
 In these few words is recorded Ireland's 
 great grievance. The "foreign tribes" 
 were the Ulster Protestants, and they were 
 introduced on to the scene as follows. 
 
 James VI. of Scotland succeeded to the 
 English throne upon the death of Eliza- 
 beth in March, 1603. The immediate 
 effect of his accession was that England^ 
 and Scotland now for the first time be- 
 came united under one sovereign. The 
 Scots became "Britons," * fellow members 
 with the English of the joint kingdom; 
 and to the astute mind of James the idea 
 presented itself of utilizing these new 
 recruits to the national flag for purposes 
 of still further consolidating the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 James conceived the idea of the Planta- 
 tion of O'Neill's and O'Donnell's forfeited 
 
 *The actual title was not established till 1701.
 
 24 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 lands with a colony of British. This 
 much-abused monarch, who certainly 
 managed to get the wrong side of con- 
 temporary historians possibly by out- 
 manoeuvring them in debate could at 
 least boast an active, if not always a 
 tactful, brain. He was a thinker and a 
 man of ideas, some of which were good 
 and some bad, a phenomenon not wholly 
 confined to the first of the English Stuarts. 
 The Ulster Plantation idea was, when all 
 is said and done, a good one, and based 
 on those purely logical deductions on 
 which James so greatly prided himself. 
 He saw a land, by no means evilly used by 
 nature, which from time immemorial had 
 been a by-word a country torn by in- 
 ternal strife, saturated with its own blood 
 shed by itself, idle, ragged and wretched. 
 It was fairly arguable that such a state
 
 The Ulster Plantation 25 
 
 of things, being chronic and having suc- 
 cessfully survived all remedies prescribed, 
 might be due not to the malevolence of 
 fate, or to the incompetence of the English 
 Government, but to the inherent qualities 
 of the natives themselves, to whom every 
 form of restraint and every form of 
 settled industry seemed intolerable. From 
 this it was but a step to the natural 
 corollary that the remedy lay in the 
 introduction of a more solid and stable 
 race. 
 
 The idea so far could hardly claim the 
 merit of originality. It had indeed been 
 tried in Ireland with unvarying non- 
 success for four hundred years. The Pale 
 was the brightest example of the system's 
 workings, and the condition of that 
 uneasy settlement was riot an entirely 
 happy augury for the success of similar
 
 26 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 ventures. The other planted areas in 
 Munster and Leinster stood out as colossal 
 monuments of failure, sufficient to damp 
 the enterprise even of the most logical of 
 monarchs. James' logic, however, had 
 an eminently practical side. The mere 
 fact of failure was not enough for him. 
 Like Aristotle, he burrowed below the 
 surface for causes material or efficient. 
 Both seemed to be found in one salient 
 fact. ' Many of the earlier settlers had 
 come to Ireland without their women- 
 folk, had married with the natives, re- 
 married in the second generation, and in 
 the third had lost their identity and 
 become merged in the hybrid mass of 
 Anglo-Norman-Irish, and Anglo-Irish, 
 which so successfully added to the con- 
 fusion and unrest of central and southern 
 Ireland. In the case of some of the
 
 The Ulster Plantation 27 
 
 earlier settlers, this absorption was 
 thorough and complete. Here there had 
 been no religious barrier. The settlers 
 mostly men of ill-defined principles 
 quickly assimilated the native habits, 
 adopted native views, and even native 
 names, and became in the words of the 
 contemporary historian more Irish than 
 the Irish themselves. 
 
 With the later settlers the process was 
 less thorough. These came over as Pro- 
 testants, recent converts to whom the 
 old faith was anathema, and, through all 
 the mixed-up jumble of subsequent cen- 
 turies, they retained their distinctive 
 religion and their distinctive Anglo-Nor- 
 man names. In many cases, however, 
 the distinctive English characteristics of 
 this secondary tide of settlers had under- 
 gone marked changes. They were few
 
 28 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 and the natives were many, and, on the 
 principle that it is easier to go down hill 
 than up, they followed the line of least 
 resistance and absorbed many of the 
 manners and customs of those whom their 
 ostensible mission was to elevate. 
 
 James reviewed these former failures 
 with an analytical eye. Why had they 
 failed? What was the cause? The im- 
 mediate cause was very obviously that, 
 instead of the settlers pushing the mass of 
 natives up the hill of good behaviour, the 
 mass of natives had pushed them down. 
 But it was clear that a remedy must be 
 looked for in the discovery of more remote 
 causes than these. To the mind of James, 
 it seemed (1), that the earlier settlers had 
 been too few in number; (2), that their 
 lack of their own women-folk spelt certain 
 disaster; (3), that they had been of the
 
 The Ulster Plantation 29 
 
 wrong class. The first two of these pro- 
 positions were fairly obvious. The dis- 
 covery of the third gave evidence of more 
 acumen. The Munster and Leinster 
 settlers had been mere needy adventurers, 
 broken men for the most part, or ne'er- 
 do-wells of good family, who embarked on 
 the Irish undertaking with the avowed 
 intention of making all they could out of 
 it by fair means or foul ; as a rule the means 
 were foul. Agricultural and industrial 
 stability could never grow out of such 
 seed. So thought James. For the suc- 
 cess of his Ulster scheme a more sub- 
 stantial strain was called for, and, by the 
 ordination of fate, one lay ready to his 
 hand. 
 
 Throughout the reigns of Henry VIII., 
 Mary, and Elizabeth, the Border Counties 
 of Dumfriesshire, Roxburghshire, Cumber-
 
 30 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 land and Northumberland had been a 
 cause of unceasing trouble to the two 
 kingdoms, the jurisdiction of which both 
 sides of the Border repudiated in favour 
 of a more congenial code of their own. 
 Internal and interminable feuds, between 
 the representatives of England on the one 
 side and Scotland on the other, had kept 
 the Middle and Western Marches in a 
 state of ceaseless broil for close on a cen- 
 tury. The Wardens were either powerless 
 to interfere or were themselves impli- 
 cated. With the Union of the two king- 
 doms under James, it was clearly desir- 
 able that these border raids and forays 
 should cease; but they did not cease. 
 The county boundaries still remained, and 
 to the Border mind these county boun- 
 daries offered every justification for a 
 continuance of the enjoyable traditional
 
 The Ulster Plantation 31 
 
 feuds. The technical union of the two 
 countries meant nothing to them. 
 
 To James, newly installed on his English 
 throne, came the great idea of quieting 
 the unruly Border country and colonizing 
 Ulster with one and the same stroke. 
 It was true that at first sight the Borderers 
 appeared to be little less lawless and un- 
 ruly than the Ulster natives whom they 
 were to replace, or rather to reform by 
 their example; but a closer examination 
 showed up very marked differences, and 
 differences which pointed to James' plan 
 being less of a wild-cat scheme, when 
 analysed, than appeared on -the sur- 
 face. 
 
 The Borderers were lawless and unruly 
 from the national point of view, but from 
 their own point of view they were neither 
 the one nor the other. All their actions
 
 32 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 were governed by a rigid code, the viola- 
 tion of which carried with it disgrace worse 
 than death, and the violation of which was, 
 as a consequence, extremely rare. They 
 could also boast some fine sterling quali- 
 ties which, at that time, were certainly 
 strange to the land of their prospective 
 adoption. Their word, once given, was 
 binding even to death. A broken word was 
 a crime blacker than murder. To such an 
 extent was this reverence for the sanctity 
 of a promise carried that even a prisoner 
 going to execution was not bound, when 
 he had once passed his word. Treachery 
 of any and every kind was looked 
 upon with unspeakable abhorrence. They 
 were brave, too, these Borderers, with a 
 dogged, resolute bravery that was equally 
 a part of their code, and they had a strong 
 sense of justice which was superior to the
 
 The Ulster Plantation 33 
 
 rancour even of the bitterest blood feuds. 
 They were exclusively Protestant. 
 
 Enough has been said to show that 
 here, at any rate, was a race endowed 
 with many of the essentials for successful 
 colonization. It was argued, with some 
 show of reason, that their international 
 feuds which were mainly a matter of 
 tradition and of geography (the English 
 and Scotch Borderers being of identical 
 race) would abruptly die out amidst new 
 surroundings, and that their common 
 interests would weld them into solid union. 
 
 In 1609 the work of deportation started 
 and continued for several years. Arm- 
 strongs, Elliots, Johnstones, Pattersons, 
 Watsons, Thompsons, Riddles, Littles, 
 Scotts, Bells, Turnbulls, Pringles, Rout- 
 ledges, Andersons, Blacks, Bairds, Nixons, 
 Dicksons, Crosiers, Rutherfords, Beatties
 
 34 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 and a host of other Border clans crossed 
 the seas, with their wives and families, 
 and turned their backs for good and all 
 on the land of their birth. So was carried 
 out the great Ulster Plantation. There 
 was no armed opposition; the natives 
 withdrew into the mountain districts, and 
 the colonists settled down on the granted 
 lands. They increased and multiplied; 
 they utilized the water-power for factories; 
 they reclaimed the bogs and tilled the land 
 so gained. All went well in the planted 
 districts. Peace and prosperity took the 
 place of rapine and misery, and before the 
 first quarter of the Seventeenth Century 
 was passed the justification of the Ulster 
 Plantation seemed beyond dispute.
 
 The Ulster Plantation 85 
 
 1641 
 
 Thirty-two years had passed since the 
 first batch of British colonists had 
 landed in Ulster. A second generation 
 of the settlers had sprung up, strictly 
 within the bounds of the Colony. The 
 two races had kept jealously apart. At 
 the same time there was no open friction. 
 The natives, with characteristic adula- 
 tion of success, either feigned or real, 
 turned tolerant faces on the settlers, 
 while these, for their part, had no cause 
 to be other than friendly with those that 
 they had come to live among. But there 
 was no intermarriage. The settlers were 
 in sufficient numbers to make this 
 unnecessary, and racial prejudices still 
 ran very high. 
 
 Then, just as Ulster was beginning to
 
 36 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 put on the garb of her ultimate prosperity, 
 came the great massacre of 1641-1642. 
 Without any provocation, and equally 
 without any warning, the native Irish, 
 who for thirty-two years had given no 
 sign of hostility, rose at a preconceived 
 signal, fell upon the isolated colonists, 
 and stripped them literally to the skin. 
 In this condition men, women and chil- 
 dren were turned out into the cold. All 
 succour and sustenance to the outcasts 
 was prohibited under very dire penalties, 
 so that the old and the ailing quickly 
 succumbed. The more vigorous, how- 
 ever, hung on to life by one means or 
 another, and at the end of a week, nature's 
 processes were voted too slow, and the 
 hunting down and butchery of these 
 naked wretches became a recognized form 
 of sport. In its turn mere killing began
 
 The Ulster Plantation 37 
 
 to pall, and tortures of various kinds 
 were resorted to, at first as a means of 
 finding out where the settlers had hidden 
 their money, but later on for the mere 
 sake of torturing. A letter was read in 
 the English Parliament in December, 1641, 
 which stated: 
 
 "All I can tell you is the miserable 
 state we continue under, for the rebels 
 daily increase in men and munition in all 
 parts, except the province of Munster, 
 exercising all manner of cruelties, and 
 striving who can be most barbarously 
 exquisite in tormenting the poor Pro- 
 testants, cutting off their ears, fingers and 
 hands, plucking out their eyes, boiling 
 the hands of little children before their 
 mothers' faces, stripping w r omen naked and 
 ripping them up," etc.
 
 38 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 The main record, however, of this 
 terrible occurrence is furnished by Sir 
 John Temple, Master of the Rolls at the 
 time, who collected and published in book 
 form the sworn depositions of the many 
 witnesses who gave evidence before the 
 Commission of Enquiry. Many of the 
 witnesses had themselves been mutilated, 
 but survived long enough to give their 
 evidence. Others had a knowledge of 
 the Irish language, by means of which 
 they were able to pass themselves off as 
 Irish, and so remain unwilling witnesses 
 of the scenes which they describe. Forty 
 volumes of the depositions are still pre- 
 served at Trinity College, Dublin. The 
 indictment they furnish is a truly appall- 
 ing one. Sir John says: "If we shall 
 take a Survey of primitive Times and 
 look into the Sufferings of the first Chris-
 
 The Ulster Plantation 39 
 
 tians, that suffered under the Tyranny and 
 cruel Persecution of those heathenish 
 Emperors, we shall certainly not find any 
 one Kingdom where more Christians 
 suffered, or more unparalleled Cruelties 
 were acted in many years upon them, than 
 were in Ireland within the space of the 
 first two Months after the breaking out 
 of this Rebellion .... to let in death 
 among an innocent, unprovoking, un- 
 resisting people, who had always lived 
 peaceably with them, administering all 
 manner of Helps and Comforts to those 
 who were in Distress: that made no 
 Difference between them and those of 
 their own Nation, but even cherished them 
 as Friends and loving Neighbours, with- 
 out giving any Cause of Unkindness or 
 Distaste unto them." 
 
 The crime of the Protestants, however,
 
 40 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 was not unneighbourly conduct, but the 
 fact of their presence in a foreign land. 
 They were aliens, and the elimination of 
 aliens has always been the first item on 
 the official Nationalist programme. They 
 take up room. 
 
 The destruction of an entire colony is 
 no light task. Its thorough accomplish- 
 ment, at a period when powder and shot 
 were too good to waste, necessitated the 
 free use of fire and water. All the princi- 
 pal Ulster rivers where accessible were 
 called into service. At Portadown over 
 1,000 were, at one time or another, 
 drowned in the River Bann, where the 
 bridge was broken down in the middle, 
 and the victims thrust in with pikes from 
 both sides. We have a similar scene 
 recorded at the River Toll in Armagh, 
 where a number were drowned near
 
 The Ulster Plantation 41 
 
 Loughgall. Two hundred were piked and 
 flung into the Tyrone Blackw r ater, which 
 for a time ran red with blood; 180 were 
 drowned at the bridge of Gallon, and 100 
 in a lough at Ballymacilmurrogh; 300 
 were drowned in one day in a millpool 
 at Killamoon. Where no more suitable 
 water was available, parties were driven 
 to bog-holes, where they were held under 
 with pikes till dead. 
 
 These drownings point to a certain dis- 
 position on the part of the natives at 
 any rate at the first to carry out the 
 killings as rapidly and mercifully as cir- 
 cumstances would permit. It must be 
 remembered that they were acting under 
 orders, and these orders must often have 
 been embarrassing from their wholesale 
 nature. For example, Phelim O'Neil, 
 the head of the movement, after being
 
 42 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 repulsed from the Castle of Augher, 
 ordered all the Protestants in the three 
 adjacent parishes to be at once massacred, 
 irrespective of age or sex. Such an order 
 would almost necessitate some compre- 
 hensive scheme of execution. O'Neil, 
 who is described as a weak creature 
 entirely devoid of personal courage, in- 
 variably signalized his defeats in the field 
 by an indiscriminate massacre of all the 
 helpless victims within reach. After his 
 defeat at Lisburn, he, in revenge, 
 butchered Lord Caulfield, who had just 
 been hospitably entertaining him, and 
 fifty others with him. 
 
 Fire, though obviously less merciful 
 than water, also proved a useful agent of 
 quick destruction 152 men, women and 
 children were burnt in the Castle of 
 Lisgool in Fermanagh; 22 in a thatched
 
 The Ulster Plantation 43 
 
 house at Kilmore, in Armagh; 26 at 
 Langale, in the same county, and a number 
 in the church at Blackwaterstown. The 
 trouble was that the houses in which the 
 refugees had taken shelter would not 
 always burn, in which cases more circuit- 
 ous methods had to be adopted. 
 
 "Now for such of the English as stood 
 upon their Guard, and had gathered 
 together, though but in small Numbers, 
 the Irish had recourse to their ancient 
 Stratagem, which, as they have formerly, 
 so they still continue to make frequent 
 use of in this Rebellion; and that was 
 fairly to offer unto them good Conditions 
 of Quarter, to assure them their Lives, 
 their Goods and free Passage, with a safe 
 Conduct into what Place soever they 
 pleased, and to confirm these Covenants 
 sometimes under their Hands and Seals,
 
 44 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 sometimes with deep Oaths and Protesta- 
 tions; and then, as soon as they had them 
 in their Power, to hold themselves dis- 
 obliged from their Promises, and to leave 
 their soldiers at Liberty to despoil, strip 
 and murder them at their Pleasure." 
 
 These tactics were adopted with com- 
 plete success by Rory McGuire at Tullah, 
 and at Liffenskeagh in Co. Fermanagh; 
 by Phelim O'Neil and his brother Tullach 
 at the Cathedral of Armagh, and by 
 Phil O'Riley at Belterbert, at Newtown 
 Church and at Longford Castle. In every 
 case all those who surrendered under 
 promise of safe conduct were stripped and 
 butchered. 
 
 The apparent disposition on the part 
 of the natives to despatch the earlier of 
 their victims quickly and mercifully was 
 not long-lived. After the first big batches
 
 The Ulster Plantation 45 
 
 of captives had been got rid of by drown- 
 ing or burning, some very horrible forms 
 of death were devised for small detached 
 parties, the details of which are too revolt- 
 ing for reproduction. Women and 
 children would seem to have been the 
 worst sufferers, and on the side of the 
 natives the gentler sex and even the 
 children joined eagerly in the horrible 
 work. One small boy was heard to boast 
 that his arm was so wearied with hacking 
 and stabbing that he could not raise it. 
 
 Sir John Temple comments on the 
 apparent want of defensive organization 
 and coherence among the British settlers, 
 and explains this by pointing out that in 
 the first place these were completely taken 
 by surprise, having so far lived on terms 
 of perfect amity with the native Irish; 
 and in the second place that the farms
 
 46 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 of the settlers being very much separated 
 it would have been impossible for the 
 men to mass together for defence without 
 abandoning their women and children 
 to inevitable torture and death, so that 
 they preferred to stay and die with them. 
 In Derry, Coleraine and Carrickfergus 
 the English settlers were able to concen- 
 trate in certain numbers, and on these 
 places no attempts were made by the 
 natives. The latter, according to Sir John 
 Temple, would appear to have been better 
 murderers than fighters. On the last day 
 of December, 1641, a small force, con- 
 sisting of one regiment, was landed in 
 Dublin under Sir Simon Harcourt. This 
 force was shortly afterwards supplemented 
 as follows: 
 
 "Soon after a considerable Number of 
 Horse as well as of Foot, sent over by
 
 The Ulster Plantation 47 
 
 the Parliament in England, arrived in 
 Dublin, and having in some petty en- 
 counters thereabouts tried the metal of 
 the Rebels, and found their Spirit of a 
 poor and base Alloy, they began extremely 
 to disvalue them, and would be no longer 
 abased with the fabulous Reports of their 
 great Strength or Numbers, which with 
 much advantage they had long made 
 use of. Therefore, now they began to 
 seek them out in all Places, and where- 
 soever they came to meet with them 
 they always prevailed, even with small 
 Numbers very often against great Mul- 
 titudes of them, sparing not many Times 
 to pursue them into the midst of their 
 greatest Fastnesses, and with so great 
 Success was the War prosecuted by the 
 English, from the first Landing of their 
 Forces out of England until September,
 
 48 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 1643, as that, in all Encounters they had 
 with the Rebels during that Time, they 
 never received any Scorn or Defeat, but 
 went on victoriously, beating them down 
 in all Parts of the Kingdom." 
 
 The actual number of the Protestant 
 colonists who were massacred, or who 
 died of cold and hunger, is not easy to 
 arrive at. A large proportion of the 
 victims were babies or young children, 
 who would not be included in any recent 
 census. Even the census of adults could 
 be no more than approximate. Dr. (after- 
 wards Sir William) Petty, one of the 
 ablest men of the day, with a marked 
 genius for statistics, reckoned the Pro- 
 testant settlers in Ireland as numbering 
 260,000 in 1641, and 150,000 in 1653, 
 showing a wastage in the twelve years 
 of 110,000. The latter figure is largely
 
 The Ulster Plantation 49 
 
 borne out by a petition of the Irish 
 Roman Catholics to James II. in 1687, 
 in which they reckon the then total 
 population of Ireland at 1,200,000, of 
 whom 170,000 were Protestants. 
 
 The priests in the weekly returns which 
 they furnished from the various parishes 
 concerned, claimed 154,000 victims be- 
 tween October, 1641, and April, 1642. 
 A Cork priest, named Mahoney, pub- 
 lished in 1645 an "exhortation" to his 
 fellow-countrymen in which he said: 
 "You have already killed 150,000 enemies 
 in these four or five years, as your very 
 adversaries howling openly confess in their 
 writings, and you do not deny. I think 
 more heretic enemies have been killed; 
 would that they had all been! It remains 
 for you to slay all the other heretics, or 
 expel them from the bounds of Ireland."
 
 50 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 Mahoney's estimate, however, clearly 
 includes those killed in the earlier years 
 of the fighting which succeeded the 
 massacre. It is probable that the great 
 discrepancies between various estimates 
 as to the numbers killed, arises from the 
 same confusion. The actual massacre 
 may be said to have been over by the 
 middle of 1642, but it was succeeded by 
 eleven years of ceaseless guerilla warfare 
 little less bloody, during which a further 
 number of the Protestant settlers in Ire- 
 land undoubtedly lost their lives, and 
 subsequent estimates would find it hard 
 to draw a clear dividing line between the 
 victims of the massacre proper, and the 
 victims of the subsequent fighting. Crom- 
 well himself, when interviewing the Dutch 
 Ambassador in London in connection with 
 the Waldensian massacres, in which some
 
 The Ulster Plantation 51 
 
 Irish troops had been concerned, said that 
 the natives in Ireland had butchered 
 200,000 of the settlers. This figure seems, 
 at first sight, at variance with Dr. Petty's 
 estimate, which only shows a falling off 
 of 110,000 Protestants in twelve years; 
 but to this 110,000 must be added, not 
 only the natural increase of the resident 
 Protestants during this period, but the 
 whole of Cromwell's army (36,000), and 
 the many British "adventurers" who 
 swelled the influx of Protestants during 
 the general scramble for the forfeited 
 lands which succeeded the rebellion. In 
 any case, the sworn depositions which 
 can still be seen by the curious make it 
 quite clear that the massacre was not 
 only of a wholesale nature, but was 
 carried out with many circumstances of 
 horror.
 
 52 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 This rebellion was the first systematic 
 attempt to exterminate the British in 
 Ireland since the rising of the natives 
 against the very early settlers in 1230. 
 Desmond had made a personal effort in 
 this direction in 1598, as to which the 
 Four Masters make boast that "after 
 seventeen days, not a son of a Saxon was 
 left alive in the Desmond territories," 
 but this patriotic effort was only local, 
 O'Neil in Ulster being at the time too 
 much harassed by Essex to co-operate. 
 
 The 1641 massacre may unhesitatingly 
 be put down as the most disastrous 
 occurrence in the history of the island, 
 for apart from its own intrinsic horrors 
 it laid the seeds of an undying distrust 
 among future generations of Colonists, 
 and, in its own generation, it brought in 
 its train twelve years of unintermittent
 
 The Ulster Plantation 53 
 
 civil warfare. These twelve years proved 
 the most devastating Ireland had known. 
 All the worst passions of men were let 
 loose. Reprisals followed on atrocities, 
 and further atrocities followed the re- 
 prisals. On the top of both came famine 
 and plague, and, by the time peace was 
 finally established, nearly a third of the 
 total population of Ireland had perished. 
 "The cause of the war," says Petty, 
 "was the desire of the Romanists to 
 recover the Church revenue, worth about 
 11 0,000 per annum, and of the common 
 Irish to get back all the Englishmen's 
 estates, and of the ten or twelve grandees 
 to get the empire of the whole. But, as 
 for the bloodshed of the contest, God 
 knows best who did occasion it." 
 
 In Ulster, which was the principal scene 
 of the massacre, the affair was largely
 
 54 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 engineered by Phelim O'Neil, whose aim 
 was, of course, to get back the O'Neil 
 estates, which had been forfeited as the 
 result of thirty years of brigandage and 
 broken covenants on the part of first 
 Shane, and then Hugh.
 
 THE CROMWELLIAN 
 SETTLEMENT
 
 A T the end of eight years of carnage, 
 ** Cromwell landed at Dublin in 
 1649. His military genius at once made 
 itself felt. Order and system took the 
 place of independent guerilla warfare, and 
 a permanent settlement seemed at length 
 within sight. Ireton succeeded Cromwell, 
 and Coote and Monro succeeded Ireton, 
 but it was four years after Cromwell's 
 landing before peace was finally estab- 
 lished. 
 
 Irish writers are fond of stigmatizing 
 Cromwell's regime as a reign of terror, 
 but, as a matter of fact, this was not so. 
 He was scrupulously just in his dealings 
 with the natives, and never brutal. His 
 
 57
 
 58 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 first act on landing was to publish a 
 general order that no violence should be 
 done to any persons not in arms with 
 the enemy: that soldiers taking goods 
 without payment should be punished ac- 
 cording to the articles of war, and that 
 officers who allowed this rule to be dis- 
 obeyed should forfeit their commissions. 
 These rules were strictly adhered to. 
 Soldiers were hung for stealing chickens, 
 and no act of rapine passed unpunished. 
 Ireton, who succeeded Cromwell, was, if 
 anything, more punctilious. 
 
 It is more than probable that, in his 
 own day, Cromwell was respected and 
 even admired by the natives, as such 
 men invariably are in Ireland. Rowley 
 Lascelles, who in the early part of the 
 nineteenth century was appointed by the 
 Government to examine the Irish State
 
 The Cromwellian Settlement 59 
 
 Records and Rolls, reported that his 
 examination led him to the belief that 
 Cromwell's Government was the most 
 popular Ireland has ever known. He 
 was no promiscuous butcher, like Coote. 
 At Drogheda and Wexford he was un- 
 doubtedly severe, but only with such 
 severity as was recognized by the then 
 usages of war. In the case of Drogheda, 
 the town was summoned to surrender 
 unconditionally. Aston, the Governor, 
 who had stored within the city large 
 supplies of food and munitions, refused, 
 thinking that Cromwell would follow the 
 traditional procedure in such cases, and 
 sit down before the town for a protracted 
 siege which might end anyhow. Crom- 
 well, however, who was no respecter of 
 traditional methods, outraged all calcula- 
 tions by immediately assaulting the town.
 
 60 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 Twice he was repulsed, but the third 
 assault, led by himself, was successful. 
 All those found in arms were put to the 
 sword, and of those that surrendered, one 
 out of every ten was shot and the re- 
 mainder deported to Barbadoes. Very 
 much the same programme was carried 
 out at Wexford, to the immense surprise 
 of the garrison, who were not used to such 
 energetic forms of warfare. The effect 
 in Ireland of these two swift strokes was 
 electrical. All the principal towns hauled 
 down their flags, and were treated with 
 a leniency which was new to Ireland. 
 
 The strong probability is that Cromwell 
 owes his unpopularity with Irish writers 
 of the Prendergast type, not to his 
 severity with the sword, but to his banish- 
 ment of the natives across the Shannon. 
 By this edict he became in great measure
 
 The Cromwellian Settlement 61 
 
 the official father of the grievance which 
 is the starting point of all Ireland's 
 Philippics against England and English 
 rule. He made it possible for the first 
 time for the native lands to be occupied 
 with security by Protestant colonists from 
 across the water. James I.'s scheme, as 
 an act of permanent plantation, may be 
 said to have failed, for half the settlers 
 had been butchered, and the rest driven 
 to concentrate for protection in such 
 towns as Enniskillen, Derry, Coleraine and 
 Carrickfergus. The dreadful fate of the 
 immigrants of forty years before could 
 not but scare the mere agriculturalist 
 from any desire he might otherwise have 
 had to make Ulster his home. It was 
 clear that the goodwill of the natives 
 could not be won by individual acts of 
 kindness. All such were outweighed, and.
 
 62 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 indeed, wholly neutralized by the initial 
 act of usurpation. Nothing could have 
 been more conciliatory than the James I. 
 settlers, but their conciliation had counted 
 for nothing in face of the one salient fact 
 that they were in arbitrary occupation of 
 Irish soil. This has always been the 
 Irish attitude of mind, and is, in fact, 
 the keynote of the whole Irish question. 
 It explains why neither local charities 
 nor national concessions elicit so much 
 as a glimmer of gratitude from those 
 who benefit by them. What call is there 
 for gratitude towards those who dole 
 back in fragments that which they 
 originally stole en bloc? 
 
 It was evident, then, that friendly over- 
 tures on the part of the British Colonists 
 could make no permanent impression on 
 the native mind, which was incapable of
 
 The Cromwellian Settlement 63 
 
 seeing anything beyond the main fact 
 of dispossession. This left two courses 
 only open: either the evacuation of Irish 
 lands by the Protestants, or the re- 
 colonization of the eastern half of Ireland 
 under conditions which would ensure se- 
 curity of life and property to the colonists. 
 Cromwell preferred the latter course. The 
 bulk of the native population was banished 
 to the west of Ireland, only such numbers 
 being retained in the east as would keep 
 the land tilled without acting as a stand- 
 ing menace. There was to be no possi- 
 bility of a recurrence of 1641. 
 
 Cromwell's act has secured for him the 
 undying hatred of the native Irish, because 
 it laid the foundation stone of colonial 
 stability in Ireland; but there can be 
 no doubt that it was a statesmanlike 
 measure, had it only been carried out in
 
 64 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 a more practical manner; and it was a 
 measure which was morally justified by 
 the fact of the recent massacre. The 
 natives outnumbered the colonists by six 
 to one, and in the face of recent experi- 
 ences, no more British agriculturalists 
 could be expected to settle in east Ireland 
 unless the great mass of the natives were 
 removed to a safe distance. Cromwell 
 foresaw all these things, and took his 
 measures accordingly, but in detail his 
 scheme proved unworkable. The first step 
 was the forfeiture of the lands of all those 
 implicated in the late rebellion, who were 
 bidden to betake themselves across the 
 Shannon. By this edict over 2,000,000 
 acres became forfeit. This figure included 
 not only native Irish lands, but the lands 
 of prominent Royalists, and "ma- 
 lignants." Glebe and Crown lands were
 
 The Cromwellian Settlement 65 
 
 also confiscated, and thrown into the 
 common basket with the lands of the 
 rebels. An elaborate and costly survey, 
 under the direction of Sir William Petty, 
 followed, after which came the question 
 of distribution. 
 
 Here was the real trouble. The 
 general idea was that the lands should 
 be divided among the Cromwellian soldiers 
 in satisfaction of their four years' arrears 
 of pay, and also among those who had 
 advanced money to finance the expedition. 
 This, on the face of it, was as it should 
 be, but when it came to paying 36,000 
 soldiers, to whom varying amounts were 
 due, with allotments of land of very 
 varying value, the difficulties of just 
 dealing were felt to be insurmountable. 
 In the end it was decided (with the army 
 consenting) that the distribution should
 
 66 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 be by lot: each regiment taking its pay 
 in the meadows, bogs or mountains, as 
 the case might be, of the particular dis- 
 trict for whose subjugation it had been 
 responsible. Munster lands were valued 
 at 12s. per acre, Leinster at 8s., and 
 Ulster at 4s., figures which are of no 
 small interest in view of the relative 
 prosperity of the three Provinces to-day. 
 The scheme was worked out with military 
 precision, but as a Land Act it was fore- 
 doomed to failure. 
 
 The Ironsides were great soldiers, but 
 they were not agriculturalists, and in 
 most cases they were only too glad to 
 barter their newly-acquired lands for a 
 lump sum down. Their officers and many 
 of the old residents took advantage of the 
 soldiers' difficulties to build up big estates 
 at small cost to themselves, and the
 
 The Cromwellian Settlement 67 
 
 prime object of the settlement was on the 
 high road to defeat even before the 
 death of the Commonwealth. In place 
 of a militant British population evenly 
 distributed over the whole of the newly- 
 forfeited lands, the year 1660 saw a 
 scattered British population working lands 
 of unwieldy extent with the aid of the 
 very natives who had lately been dis- 
 possessed of them. Unnatural conditions 
 such as these could only breed trouble, 
 and it was not long before the native 
 labourers by day became Tories or 
 Rapparees by night, maiming, killing or 
 burning the live and dead stock of those 
 they worked for. 
 
 The accession of Charles II. still further 
 added to the confusion and unrest. This 
 episcopalian Monarch confirmed the Crom- 
 wellian Settlement as a whole, but restored
 
 68 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 many of the native proprietors to their 
 forfeited lands, and, as was only to be 
 expected, handed back to the Bishops 
 and Protestant Church generally the glebe 
 lands of which Cromwell the Nonconfor- 
 mist had mulcted them. This pious act 
 deprived many of the Ironsides of the 
 lands to which they considered them- 
 selves justly entitled in respect of their 
 four years' unpaid service in Ireland, 
 and seeing nothing on the horizon but 
 the accession of the Roman Catholic Duke 
 of York thousands of these sturdy non- 
 conformists emigrated to America, there 
 to found that remarkable New England 
 society so famous in romance and verse. 
 
 Although the Cromwellian Settlement 
 may be said to have failed of its full 
 intention, its effect on the ultimate 
 Ulster question, i.e., the relations existing
 
 The Cromwellian Settlement 69 
 
 between the native Irish and the British 
 Colonists, was very far reaching. The 
 Calvinistic tendencies of the new Settlers 
 accentuated more than ever the im- 
 passable social and religious barrier be- 
 tween the two races. Intermarriage with 
 the natives had always been forbidden 
 by law from the earliest days of British 
 colonization in Ireland. In 1367 the law 
 was so strict that any colonist marrying 
 a native Irish woman was liable to be 
 hanged, drawn and quartered. Ireton 
 himself pronounced the direst penalties 
 against any who should so offend. But, 
 however much such stern measures may 
 have been called for in Munster and 
 Leinster, there was no need for them in 
 Ulster. Here there were Protestant girls 
 in plenty, and there was no disposition 
 on the part of such Ironsides as remained
 
 70 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 and settled to look beyond these. 
 Prendergast quotes a stanza which well 
 illustrates the mental attitude of the 
 seventeenth century settlers, and, indeed, 
 of their descendants to-day in the 
 twentieth century. 
 
 " rather than turne 
 
 From English principles would sooner burne, 
 
 And rather than marrie an Irish wife, 
 
 Would batchellars remain for tearme of life." 
 
 On the side of the natives there was 
 no such prejudice. Intermarriage had 
 been the admitted cause of the failure of 
 all previous attempts to implant British 
 ideas and British customs in Ireland by 
 means of colonization. Intermarriage 
 was, therefore, the obvious weapon with 
 which to defeat the intended effect of the 
 Cromwellian Settlement. By the laws of 
 the Roman Catholic Church the children 
 of mixed marriages must always be
 
 The Cromwellian Settlement 71 
 
 brought up as Catholics, so that the 
 interests of the priests lay very palpably 
 in that direction. A standing testimony 
 to the stern resistance of the colonists to 
 the allurements of the native girls is to 
 be found in present-day Ulster's 800,000 
 Protestants, all of whom would to-day 
 be profitable members of the Church of 
 Rome, had their forbears at any time 
 through the centuries yielded to the 
 charms of the native daughters of Erin.
 
 THE CIVIL WAR
 
 modern Ulster question may 
 be said to have germinated on 
 the 23rd of October, 1641, a date solemnly 
 commemorated for many years afterwards 
 among the natives. Prior to this la- 
 mentable outbreak, religious antagonism 
 had been merely clerical; from that date 
 on it became political. Evidence of this 
 changed spirit was soon forthcoming. 
 
 The wholesale emigration of the Ironsides 
 under the heavy burden of the Restora- 
 tion, though a serious blow to the fighting 
 power of the settlers, still left them 
 sufficiently strong to be safe from open 
 attack; but there were other means 
 
 75
 
 76 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 open to the natives by which they could 
 make life unprofitable and unpalatable. 
 The Rapparees had made their appear- 
 ance as early as the first allotment of 
 forfeited lands in 1655, but, till the 
 accession of James II., they could hardly 
 be said to have constituted a real menace 
 to the settlers. These were armed and 
 well capable of self-defence. But with 
 the last of the Stuarts on the throne 
 there came drastic and ominous changes, 
 eloquent to future generations of the 
 basic principles of Home Rule. The Pro- 
 testant settlers were deprived of all civil 
 and executive offices, and, at the instance 
 of the national councils, were forbidden 
 under pain of death to carry or possess 
 arms. The native Roman Catholics were 
 not disarmed, and the boldness of the 
 Rapparees increased in exact ratio to
 
 The Civil War 77 
 
 the helplessness of the settlers to defend 
 themselves. These were now harassed 
 and persecuted in every conceivable way. 
 Their stock was mutilated or carried off, 
 their crops destroyed. Men were executed 
 for having in their houses arms which 
 the search parties had themselves con- 
 cealed there. There can be no doubt 
 that had James' short (two and a half 
 years) reign been prolonged by so much 
 as one year, the scenes of 1641 would 
 have been re-enacted. All the native 
 interests, religious and political, were 
 working up to that pious end, when the 
 deus ex machina suddenly burst on the 
 scene in the person of William of Orange, 
 son-in-law to James and claimant to his 
 throne. 
 
 The worst possibilities of the situation 
 were now averted, but the trials of the
 
 78 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 settlers were by no means at an end. 
 The Rapparees were strong in numbers 
 and fully armed, and their suppression 
 was a slow process. They were finally 
 extirpated by the primitive device of 
 putting a price on their heads. The 
 effect was instantaneous. The receiving 
 stations were almost embarrassed by the 
 numbers of heads that daily arrived on 
 the scene. "The Irish bring them in;" 
 reported Major Morgan, who was re- 
 sponsible for the idea; "brothers and 
 cousins cut one another's throats." The 
 plan was not a pretty one, but it worked. 
 Within twelve months of the posting of 
 the notice, the bulk of the Rapparees 
 were no more, and the survivors were 
 correspondingly prosperous. 
 
 The appearance of William of Orange 
 on the political horizon of Ulster was
 
 The Civil War 79 
 
 sensational in its results. In the eyes of 
 the Protestants he was from the first 
 the lawful king, and organized resistance 
 without treason was now for the first 
 time possible. The armed bands of James 
 were, however, still very much in the 
 ascendant. Tyrconnell had a force of 
 40,000 well-equipped men, and there was 
 no organized army on the other side 
 with which to oppose him. The dis- 
 armament of the Protestants had been 
 thorough, and their re-equipment was 
 necessarily a gradual process. 
 
 The first collective stand of the per- 
 secuted settlers was of a highly dramatic 
 nature. The city of Derry, or London- 
 derry, as it was now called, had always 
 been prominent in Ulster politics. It 
 had been very conspicuous as a Pro- 
 testant stronghold during O'Dogherty's
 
 80 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 1608 rebellion; and during the massacres 
 of 1641 and 1642 it had proved a safe 
 and sure sanctuary for all the scattered 
 settlers from the surrounding district; 
 and now, in 1689, it was destined to make 
 itself famous for ever by a defence which 
 stands out as one of the most gallant and 
 stirring achievements in the history of 
 the world. 
 
 On December 9th James' forces were 
 seen approaching the city from across the 
 Foyle, and the Town Council, meeting in 
 hasty conclave, decided that the city was 
 indefensible and must be surrendered. 
 Some apprentice boys of the town, how- 
 ever, thought differently, and, taking the 
 matter into their own hands, shut the 
 gates in the very faces of James' aston- 
 ished troops, who thereupon marched off 
 to Coleraine without firing a shot. This
 
 The Civil War 81 
 
 act on the part of the " 'Prentice Boys" 
 is still commemorated in Derry on each 
 successive 9th December, and the name of 
 Crookshanks, Spike, Campsis and Sher- 
 rard are still, and ever will be, famous in 
 the Maiden City. 
 
 The consequences of this daring defiance 
 of James II. were not long in falling on 
 the little town, which four months later 
 found itself invested by James himself 
 with an army of 25,000 men, including 
 5,000 French under de Rosen. 
 
 In the meanwhile the inhabitants had 
 been making such preparations as lay in 
 their power, and a defence was now set 
 up which stands out to this day as the one 
 episode of military heroism in the history 
 of Ireland. The Governor, Lundy, was 
 suspected of treachery and expelled from 
 the city, and a clergyman named George
 
 82 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 Walker was elected to take his place. 
 Under his leadership the gallant little 
 town held out for three months, under 
 circumstances of appalling hardship. 
 Famine and sword reduced the effective 
 garrison from 7,500 to 3,000; 10,000 of 
 the civil population (two-thirds of the 
 total number) died of hunger or disease, 
 but "no surrender" was still the watch- 
 word of the gaunt skeletons that manned 
 the walls. Finally, on July 30th, when 
 the few survivors were at their very last 
 gasp, Kirk with three store ships and a 
 frigate broke the boom across the Foyle, 
 and Derry was relieved. 
 
 Derry and Enniskillen, so far, had been 
 the only towns in Ireland which had 
 refused submission to James II., but, with 
 the firm establishment of William on the 
 English throne, the work of recovering
 
 The Civil War 83 
 
 Ireland was promptly taken in hand. 
 Schomberg landed at Carrickfergus with 
 an army of 20,000, composed of French 
 mercenaries and raw English levies, and, 
 marching south, cleared the country as 
 far as Dundalk, where he entrenched 
 himself. Here he lay inactive for the rest 
 of the autumn, and in November withdrew 
 with his army to Belfast. William, greatly 
 incensed by this laxity on the part of 
 Schomberg, now resolved to take the field 
 in person, and in June of the following 
 year he crossed the channel and took over 
 command. James was in Dublin at the 
 time, and, moving north with his army to 
 the Boyne, he took up a strong defen- 
 sive position on the right bank of that 
 river, about a mile above the town of 
 Drogheda. 
 
 Here, on July 1st, the rival monarchs
 
 84 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 met. The opposing forces were about 
 equal in number, but the advantage in 
 position was greatly in favour of the Irish, 
 who acted solely on the defensive. 
 William, however, forded the river, scaled 
 the heights opposite, and easily dislodged 
 the native army, which, after the feeblest 
 show of resistance, fled to the south. 
 William now returned to England, and 
 Ginkel assumed command of his army in 
 place of Schomberg, who had fallen at 
 the Boyne. The Irish army, retreating 
 southwards, took up a strong position on 
 the hill of Aughrim, near Ballinasloe, a 
 hill surrounded on all sides by bogs, and 
 difficult of approach. They numbered 
 25,000 and were commanded by St. Ruth, 
 a French general of high repute. Ginkel 
 had only 18,000 troops, but he attacked 
 the hill with complete confidence and
 
 The Civil War 85 
 
 totally routed the defenders, who scattered 
 and took to flight in all directions. 
 This victory was shortly followed by the 
 surrender of the Irish garrison at 
 Limerick, and the war was at an end. 
 
 The Irish war between William and 
 James can hardly be classed as a religious 
 war. It is true that, with hardly any 
 exceptions, the Protestants were on the 
 side of William and the native Roman 
 Catholics on that of James, but the real 
 cause of quarrel lay in no question of 
 doctrine, but in a dispute between two 
 Princes as to the right to the English 
 throne. The effect of the war, however, 
 was undoubtedly to heighten the barrier 
 already existing, and to increase the 
 bitterness between the two races living 
 side by side in the one island. Open 
 hostilities, at no time congenial to the
 
 86 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 native temperament, were at an end, but 
 in their wake followed the stealthy mid- 
 night houghings and burnings which have 
 always played so conspicuous a part in 
 the Irish struggle for independence. The 
 Rapparees had been put down by 
 methods which have already been de- 
 scribed, but their place was taken by 
 various patriotic Societies organized on 
 the same lines. In 1711 a secret society 
 known as the "Houghers" appeared in 
 Connaught, with the usual programme 
 of maiming and mutilation of farm stock. 
 All the victims were Protestants, and 
 no convictions could be obtained. In 
 1761 the "Whiteboys" appeared in 
 Tipperary. This was a purely Roman 
 Catholic Society, organized and officered 
 by priests. Like all similar societies in 
 Ireland, it worked solely by night, and
 
 The Civil War 87 
 
 it perhaps excelled all others in the 
 hideous cruelty which characterized its 
 outrages. For five and twenty years it 
 terrorized the entire country.
 
 THE 1798 REBELLION
 
 TN 1791 was founded the United Irish- 
 -* men's League. Its prima facie in- 
 spiration was the French Revolution, 
 which at the time was supposed to be 
 setting the world a practical example of 
 the potentialities of oppressed humanity 
 against organized tyranny. 
 
 The movement in its opening stages 
 was as its name indicates non-sectarian. 
 The Presbyterians of Ulster, at that time, 
 numbered some 100,000, and under an 
 intolerant Episcopalianism, their griev- 
 ances as loyal and law-abiding subjects 
 were very real. They could also, with 
 perfect justice, complain of other most 
 substantial grievances, both agrarian and 
 
 91
 
 92 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 commercial; so that, what with one thing 
 and another, they were in a perilously ripe 
 state for any justifiable agitation against 
 authority. 
 
 The ostensible aim of the movement 
 was to bring these Northern Presbyterians, 
 greatly discontented at the moment, into 
 line with the Roman Catholic natives 
 who were always discontented, and so 
 present a common face to the English 
 Government. But there was more in it 
 than this, as very soon became apparent. 
 In those days a very definite gap separated 
 the Presbyterians from the members of 
 the Church of Ireland. At the present 
 day both denominations are loosely 
 bracketted together as "Protestants," but 
 it was far otherwise at the end of the 
 eighteenth century; and the primary 
 design of the native Roman Catholics
 
 The 1798 Rebellion 93 
 
 was to utilize the Presbyterian strength 
 against the Episcopalian Protestants; 
 after which the Presbyterians themselves 
 could have been dealt with easily enough. 
 
 This simple scheme was naturally not 
 made public. The United Irishmen 
 orators were as Irishmen always are 
 impassioned, eloquent and even plausible, 
 and it was some time before the sinister 
 designs behind their smooth utterances 
 began to be suspected. In the mean- 
 while many Home County Protestants 
 of good family joined the League, which 
 for a time presented all the appearance 
 of a national movement. 
 
 In the Irish Parliament the situation 
 was much debated, many well-meaning 
 Protestant members taking the line that 
 the movement was genuine and justifiable, 
 and, in fact, all that it represented itself
 
 94 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 to be. To these the usual words of 
 warning were given by those who were 
 more clear-sighted. During the dis- 
 cussion in 1793 on the bill for the removal 
 of Catholic disabilities, Dr. Duigenan 
 made a statement which considering the 
 source from which it came may be taken 
 as the most momentous pronouncement 
 on the Irish question which has ever been 
 uttered. Dr. Duigenan was of the 
 humblest origin. Born in a cabin, of a 
 native Roman Catholic family, he was 
 reared and educated like all those around 
 him as a Catholic, but later on, for 
 political reasons, adopted Protestantism. 
 "The Irish Catholics," he said, "to a 
 man esteem all Protestants as usurpers 
 of their estates. To this day they settle 
 those estates on the marriage of their 
 sons and daughters. They have accurate
 
 The 1798 Rebellion 95 
 
 maps of them. They have lately published 
 in Dublin a map of this kingdom can- 
 toned out among the old proprietors. 
 They abhor all Protestants and all English- 
 men as plunderers and oppressors, 
 exclusive of their detestation of them as 
 heretics. If the Parliament of this country 
 can be so infatuated as to put the Irish 
 Catholics on a better footing than the 
 English Catholics, and if the English 
 nation shall countenance such a frenzy, 
 either this Kingdom will be for ever 
 severed from the British Empire, or it 
 must be again conquered by a British 
 Army. The Protestants of Ireland are 
 but the British garrison in an enemy's 
 country, and if deserted by the parent 
 state must surrender at discretion. 
 English ministers are simply blind. I 
 tell them they are greatly deceived if
 
 96 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 they have been induced to believe that 
 an Irish Catholic is, ever was, or ever will 
 be, a loyal subject of a British Protestant 
 King, or a Protestant Government." 
 
 The extraordinary educational value of 
 this utterance lies in the fact that it is a 
 disclosure from within, by one of the 
 natives, of the secret soul of the Irish 
 people. 
 
 It was not long before there was 
 further confirmation of Dr. Duigenan's 
 warning. Later on in the same year 
 the entire south-west corner of Ireland 
 rose simultaneously, and a number of 
 outrages were committed on Protestant 
 farmers and clergymen. The rising was 
 easily quelled, and at Carrick a number of 
 prisoners were taken. These volunteered 
 the information that, when matters were 
 rather more ripe, all the Protestants and
 
 The 1798 Rebellion 97 
 
 Presbyterians in Ireland were to be killed 
 in one night. Disclosures such as these 
 began to open the eyes of the Ulster 
 Presbyterians to the precipice towards 
 which they had been drifting. There 
 were other disquieting signs, too, in the 
 firmament. For some time past bands 
 of midnight ruffians, describing themselves 
 as Defenders, had been terrorizing the 
 agriculturists of Ulster. So far these had 
 not been identified with the United 
 Irishmen, but that was shortly to come. 
 In January, 1791, they broke into the 
 house of Mr. Alexander Barclay, a school- 
 master at Forkhill, near Dundalk. They 
 tightened a cord round his neck till his 
 tongue protruded, which they then cut 
 out. They cut off the four fingers and 
 thumb of his right hand, after which they 
 proceeded to treat his wife in exactly the
 
 98 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 same way. Her brother, a boy of thir- 
 teen, had arrived that morning from 
 Armagh on a visit. They cut out his 
 tongue and the calf of his right leg, and 
 left them all in that condition. 
 
 This outrage was entirely unprovoked. 
 Barclay was not only inoffensive but 
 philanthropic, for he taught thirty chil- 
 dren in the village gratis. His supposed 
 offence was teaching in a school of which 
 the Defenders i.e., Defenders of the 
 Roman Catholic faith did not approve. 
 All the native Irish in the village ex- 
 ulted openly over this hideous act, as 
 though it had been some glorious feat of 
 arms. 
 
 The Defenders continued their depreda- 
 tions for some time before they were 
 finally identified with the United Irish- 
 men. The moment this identity was
 
 The 1798 Rebellion 99 
 
 established, and it became generally 
 known that the United Irishmen by day 
 became Defenders by night, outraging 
 the persons and property of those with 
 whom they were nominally "united," the 
 movement was dead, as far as the Ulster 
 Presbyterians were concerned. The name, 
 however, was still retained on account of 
 its plausible sound. 
 
 The outrages perpetrated by the De- 
 fenders soon became so unendurable that, 
 in self-defence, the Ulstermen started a 
 counter-organization, known as "Peep-o'-' 
 Day Boys," mainly composed of Presby- 
 terians. The relations between Protestant 
 and Catholic were now at the breaking- 
 point, and in September, 1795, matters 
 may be said to have culminated in a 
 miniature battle which was fought at a 
 village in Tyrone, known as the Diamond.
 
 100 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 The Catholics, who were the aggressors, 
 outnumbered the Protestants by more 
 than two to one, but they were completely 
 routed, leaving 48 of their number dead 
 upon the field. 
 
 On the same night the Orange Lodge 
 was instituted. This Society was a purely 
 defensive organization, which was called 
 into being out of a most acute necessity 
 for some combined front to be shown, by 
 a persecuted minority, to those whose 
 avowed object and boast now was their 
 total extermination. It was not long 
 before it had enrolled 20,000 sturdy and 
 determined men, and there can be very 
 little doubt that it was the existence of 
 this body, ready at any time to face and 
 defeat more than double their number, as 
 they had at the Diamond, that alone 
 deterred the natives from an attempt to
 
 The 1798 Rebellion 101 
 
 repeat the scenes of 1641. Later on, 
 when the rebellion actually did break out, 
 the Orangemen served as yeomanry, and 
 were of incalculable service to a govern- 
 ment which at the time hardly knew 
 which way to turn for reliable troops. 
 
 The Orange Lodge took its name in 
 honour of William III., and the adoption 
 of the colour naturally followed on the 
 adoption of the name. It is, however, 
 interesting to bear in mind that, at the 
 battle of the Boyne, William's colours had 
 been green, and James's white. There is 
 something peculiarly Hibernian in the 
 thought that the wearing of the green was 
 instituted by the man whose name no 
 good Catholic ever mentions without some 
 pious expression of hope as to the tem- 
 perature of his present surroundings. 
 
 The rebellion which had been smoulder-
 
 102 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 ing for seven years actually broke into 
 flame in 1798. 
 
 To the student of Irish Politics who 
 looks below the surface, there is no episode 
 in the history of the island more in- 
 structive, or that holds up a more minatory 
 hand to the half-informed, than this 
 rebellion. 
 
 The initial success of the movement was 
 due in great part to the organizing energies 
 and influence of such Protestant gentlemen 
 as Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Bagenal 
 Harvey. No sooner, however, was the 
 rebellion on the apparent high-road to 
 success, than the mask was thrown off, a 
 holy war was proclaimed, priests assumed 
 the command of the rebel army, and the 
 extermination of the Protestants became 
 the avowed aim of the victorious in- 
 surgents. Roman Catholic ceremonies
 
 The 1798 Rebellion 103 
 
 preceded all actions. The murder of 
 Protestants was solemnly blessed as an 
 act pleasing to God. 
 
 For one whole month in Wexford, Wick- 
 low and Kildare the rebellion ran riot. 
 The insurgent army could boast 30,000 
 well-armed men. Vinegar Hill was made 
 its Headquarters. Here, day after day, 
 batches of unoffending Protestants were 
 brought in, tried before a mock tribunal, 
 and butchered in cold blood. The scenes 
 enacted on this hill recall the worst 
 episodes of the French Revolution. In 
 France the victims were butchered because 
 they were aristocrats; at Vinegar Hill 
 they were butchered because they were 
 Protestants, or, in other words, foreigners. 
 Everything was done to a fitting accom- 
 paniment of prayers, genuflections, and 
 holy water. But there were worse deeds
 
 104 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 even than the deeds done on Vinegar Hill. 
 In Kildare Mr. Crafford and one of his 
 young children were impaled on pikes 
 and roasted alive before a slow fire. One 
 hundred and eighty-four men, women and 
 children were imprisoned in a barn at 
 a village known as Scullabogue. When 
 news came on June 4th that the fight at 
 Ross was going against the rebels, orders 
 were issued to at once kill all the 
 prisoners. This was done by setting fire 
 to the barn, and all within it perished 
 miserably. Two or three of the native 
 Catholics who protested against the horrid 
 act were themselves tossed into the flames 
 on the points of pikes. This deed forcibly 
 recalls similar acts at Lisgool, Kilmore, 
 and Langale one hundred and fifty years 
 earlier. There is a further striking analogy 
 between the butcheries on the Bann at
 
 The 1798 Rebellion 105 
 
 Portadown in 1641 and that at Wexford 
 Bridge in 1798. The latter showed a 
 distinct advance in brutality. At Port- 
 adown the bridge had been broken down 
 in the middle and the victims were simply 
 forced by pike-points into the water. At 
 Wexford Bridge two men in front and two 
 behind thrust their pikes into the victim's 
 body and, lifting it up, held it writhing on 
 the points till the arms of the executioners 
 wearied and the body was tossed over the 
 parapet. Ninety-seven met their death 
 in this way on June 20th. The pro- 
 ceedings were then mercifully cut short 
 by a report that Vinegar Hill was being 
 attacked, whereupon the butchers made 
 off. 
 
 At the end of a month the triumphant 
 career of the rebels was cut short by 
 General Lake, who collected an army of
 
 106 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 very mixed elements and utterly defeated 
 the rebels within a stone's throw of their 
 headquarters. The leaders were hanged, 
 and Ireland settled down once more 
 to a state of apparent tranquillity. Irish 
 Roman Catholics and Anglo-Saxon Pro- 
 testants dug the fields side by side, but 
 in each there was an inherent and in- 
 eradicable distrust of the other a distrust 
 born of different temperament, different 
 race, different interests and different 
 religion, but before all else, born of 
 historical facts. '98 and '41 were not 
 forgotten.
 
 ULSTER TO-DAY
 
 above brief historical sketch 
 brings us to the Ulster of to-day, 
 and broadly explains the political attitude 
 of the two sections of the population in 
 that little understood Province. The 
 Protestant attitude is often stigmatized 
 as being uncompromising. It is un- 
 compromising. There is probably no 
 community in the world where political 
 sentiment is more united and more deeply 
 rooted. It may also be claimed that 
 there is no community in the world where 
 the political opinions held are more 
 logically justified by anyone who takes 
 the trouble to investigate the facts. Few 
 
 109
 
 110 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 people do. The fundamental idea at the 
 back of the Ulster-man's attitude is that 
 what has once happened may well happen 
 again. It is argued that when, through- 
 out a period of several hundred years, 
 certain occurrences have invariably suc- 
 ceeded the opportunity for such occur- 
 rences, it is not unreasonable to assume 
 that given the same opportunities the 
 same occurrences will again make 
 appearance. 
 
 When such occurrences invariably take 
 the form of systematic attempts to rid 
 the country of the British element by any 
 and every means, it is only natural that 
 those chiefly interested should be strongly 
 opposed to the introduction of any fresh 
 opportunities for such attempts. It is a 
 pity that English politicians, who think 
 to settle the Irish question with smirks
 
 Ulster To-day 111 
 
 and smiles, do not in the first instance 
 make study of the historical facts which 
 govern the situation. Through these they 
 might then get not only a truer sense of 
 values but an illuminating glimpse into 
 the soul of the Irish people. They might 
 ultimately arrive at the great truth that 
 the soul of the native Irish has not at 
 the present day changed by the width of 
 a hair from what it was in 1641, and again 
 in 1798. They would then understand 
 why all their smirks and smiles are thrown 
 away; why all conciliatory measures fail 
 to conciliate, or to elicit the faintest 
 spark of gratitude. The reason is that 
 they do not so much as touch the fringe 
 of the real grievance, which is briefly the 
 existence on Irish soil of a million and a 
 quarter of British colonists. This million 
 and a quarter are variously known in
 
 112 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 England as the Irish Loyalists, the Irish 
 Unionists, or the Irish Protestants; some- 
 times as Ulstermen, or even more vaguely 
 as "Orangemen." But to the native 
 Irish mind they simply represent the one 
 unspeakable evil, that is to say, the British 
 Usurper. 
 
 The only attraction of Home Rule to 
 the inner soul of the Irish (especially in 
 Ulster) is the hope that it will provide 
 the machinery by which the British 
 colonists can be got rid of and Irish soil 
 revert once more to the Irish. 
 
 Even a partial realization of this salient 
 fact must make clear the utter fatuity of 
 the pretty pictures which represent Carson 
 and Redmond as shaking hands and 
 crying, "Irishmen all." As well draw a 
 picture of Von der Goltz and King Albert 
 embracing in Brussels and crying, "Bel-
 
 Ulster To-day 113 
 
 gians all." Residence is not nationality; 
 and when residence is forcible and un- 
 welcome residence, it is the very antithesis 
 of nationality. It is the accursed thing 
 against which nationality revolts. 
 
 In the Northern Province of Ireland 
 we find two races living side by side, 
 between whom is little sympathy, little 
 temperamentally in common, and between 
 whom there has never been any inter- 
 mixture of blood. These two races are 
 on the one side the original natives, 
 on the other, the British colonists. The 
 former are exclusively Roman Catholic, 
 the latter are almost exclusively Pro- 
 testant, but not quite. However, for 
 general purposes of distinction, it may 
 be taken as an undeviating rule that the 
 Roman Catholics are the natives, and 
 the Protestants the British colonists. The
 
 114 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 second half of the rule, in any case, holds 
 good without exception. The existence of 
 these doctrinal divisions often leads the 
 half-informed into the error of supposing 
 that Ulster is the seat of a bitter but 
 suppressed religious strife. Technically 
 speaking, this is not the case at all. It 
 is true the Protestants have little good 
 to say of the Roman Catholics and vice 
 versa, but the mutual antipathy is racial 
 and not religious, only as has already 
 been explained the religion marks the 
 race, so much so, in fact, that religion 
 actually stands for nationality. The Pro- 
 testant, therefore, looks askance at the 
 Catholic, not because of doctrinal differ- 
 ences, but because he recognizes in the 
 Catholic an inveterate foe nursing a 
 deathless grievance. Similarly, the 
 Roman Catholic scowls on the Pro-
 
 Ulster To-day 115 
 
 testants not because of their supposed 
 prejudice against the triple mitre at the 
 Vatican, but because their Protestantism 
 stamps them as usurping British colonists 
 who have wrested from them the best of 
 their lands. This is the Ulster question 
 as it stands to-day under the Imperial 
 Government. 
 
 The Ulster question under a native 
 Irish Government would be a very much 
 more serious affair. We should then be 
 faced with all the potential tragedies 
 behind a situation in which one race 
 tries, by every known means, to get rid 
 of another race which does not mean 
 going. An exact parallel would be fur- 
 nished if the Red Indians outnumbered 
 the Canadians by five to three, and if the 
 Government of the Dominion were to be 
 placed in the hands of the former. The
 
 116 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 parallel, too, would hold good, not only 
 politically but also as to the more practical 
 developments which would inevitably 
 follow. 
 
 To benevolent but Boeotian politicians, 
 with a knowledge of Ireland gleaned from 
 patriotic fiction, or to the casual visitor 
 with a judicial sense warped by flattery, 
 these views may appear extravagant. To 
 the Ulster Protestant they will seem such 
 threadbare truths as to be hardly worth 
 reciting. To him they are the A B C of 
 a creed which has been handed down 
 from father to son during three hundred 
 years of residence in a foreign land, and to 
 which the experience of each successive 
 generation adds force. But the Pro- 
 testant will seldom, even to his own 
 brother-Protestant, draw aside the curtain 
 of his soul, and show to the world the root
 
 Ulster To-day 117 
 
 matter of the whole question. That root- 
 matter, though it is known to all, is rarely 
 bared to the eye perhaps because all 
 know that behind it lurks an ominous 
 cloud, the colour of which is blood-red. 
 It is, therefore, the thing which is not 
 written, and not said even in whisper; 
 but written here it must be, for the 
 understanding of the aforesaid politician 
 and casual visitor. 
 
 When the native Irish say, "Ireland 
 for the Irish," they mean what they say. 
 In the South and West the cry has little 
 meaning, for the Irish have Ireland. The 
 foreign element is a negligible quantity, 
 but a negligible quantity which scatters 
 money, and is therefore not unwelcome. 
 In Ulster we have a very different state 
 of things. Here we find half the Province 
 in the occupation of settlers who are not
 
 118 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 Irish at all. The tourist, the politician, 
 and many others East of the Irish Sea 
 would call them Irish. They speak a 
 half-Scotch lingo with an Irish brogue; 
 their forbears have been in Ireland for 
 over three hundred years, but for all 
 that, they have not a drop of Irish blood 
 in their veins. If they had, they would 
 for reasons already shown be Roman 
 Catholics. In the eyes of the natives 
 they are foreigners, land-grabbers and 
 enemies in a word, the "English 
 Garrison." 
 
 In Ulster, then, the cry of "Ireland for 
 the Irish" is not the mere innocent 
 expression of a laudable patriotism; it 
 has a deeper and a far more sinister 
 meaning. It means the expulsion from 
 Ireland of the Protestant colonists, and 
 is so understood clearly by both sections
 
 Ulster To-day 119 
 
 of the population. There are no senti- 
 mental illusions in Ulster, whatever 
 there may be in England. 
 
 Among the Irish of the South and West, 
 the popular conception of Ireland under 
 Home Rule may be said to be, and, in 
 fact, is, nebulous. The aspirations of the 
 peasant, when reduced by persuasive 
 inquiry to concrete form, will generally 
 be found to stop short at a kind of Pan- 
 Celtic Arcadia, where all will be rich on 
 a minimum of work and a maximum of 
 whisky supplied by American millionaires. 
 The picture stimulating though it is 
 excites no real enthusiasm. It is believed 
 in much as a favourite fairy tale is believed 
 in by a boy of eight. Get your peasant 
 alone well out of earshot of his fellows 
 and as likely as not he will blast the 
 pretty picture (and, incidentally, those who
 
 120 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 draw it) with a torrent of picturesquely 
 obscene scorn. 
 
 In Ulster, however, a very different 
 spirit broods over the land. Here Home 
 Rule holds out to the native Irish, not the 
 elusive mirage of the south, but a coveted 
 and substantial prize which lies under 
 their very hand to pluck, and faces them 
 enticingly at every turn of their daily 
 labour. Half the lands of Ulster, and 
 these the best and the richest, are in the 
 hands of the stranger within the gates. 
 It matters nothing that the lands, when 
 originally granted, were waste, and that 
 the industry of the colonists has made 
 them rich. It matters nothing that 
 Ulster was then a sink of murder, misery 
 and vice, and that now it is a land of 
 smiling prosperity. The natives know 
 none of these things; they are not politi-
 
 Ulster To-day 121 
 
 cally educated on these lines. All they 
 know is that the lands were once theirs, 
 and that now they are occupied by 
 colonists of another race and another 
 religion. And so they cry, or, rather, 
 they mutter under their breath, "Ireland 
 for the Irish," a cry which, under the 
 expanding influence of J. Kinahan, 
 becomes freely translated into "to hell 
 or to the sea with every bloody 
 Protestant." 
 
 There is not a Roman Catholic in 
 Ulster to whom the promise of Home 
 Rule does not mean the promise of the 
 recovery of forfeited lands. In some 
 districts the lands of the Protestant 
 farmers have already been officially 
 allotted among the native popula- 
 tion. 
 
 Out of a consideration of such a state
 
 122 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 of society, two prima facie questions 
 arise : 
 
 (1) Are the aspirations of the native 
 Irish for a restitution of their forfeited 
 lands justified? 
 
 (2) Would Home Rule give practical 
 expression to such aspirations? 
 
 The first question obviously opens up 
 problems which reach far beyond the 
 case of Ulster. It touches, more or less, 
 the whole civilized world. Should Eng- 
 land be evacuated in favour of the Welsh, 
 the relics of the ancient Britons? Canada 
 in favour of the Red Indians? New 
 Zealand in favour of the Maoris? Should 
 the French clear out of Algiers, the 
 British out of Uganda, the Spanish out 
 of the Argentine? We can extend the 
 problem even further. Has any race on 
 the globe a direct charter from God to
 
 Ulster To-day 123 
 
 be where it now is? Where, for instance, 
 are the Firbolgs of Ireland, according to 
 the Four Masters overthrown and super- 
 seded by the Milesians? 
 
 All will agree that this first question 
 can be summarily dismissed. It does not 
 call for serious attention. Two wrongs 
 have never yet made a right. Even 
 assuming of the purpose of argument 
 that the original act of plantation was 
 an injustice, the dispossession of the 
 colonists, after three hundred and ten 
 years of exemplary occupation, would be 
 an act of tenfold greater injustice. The 
 colonists were neither pirates nor 
 marauders. Their deportation was not 
 even of their own doing. By a State 
 measure they were willy-nilly taken 
 from their own surroundings and dropped 
 down in a strange land. In that strange
 
 124 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 land they have an unbroken record of 
 industry and loyalty. They can and do 
 claim that every good thing, civil or 
 military, that has ever come out of Ire- 
 land, has come from the side of the 
 colonists. On the reflected glory glancing 
 off these achievements of the British 
 colonists are built up all Ireland's claims 
 to honourable mention in history. While 
 in Irish home politics the Protestants are 
 branded as foreigners, land-grabbers and 
 interlopers, or, in local parlance, as the 
 "English Garrison," on British platforms, 
 or in the British Press, the deeds of the 
 same "English Garrison" are proudly 
 pointed to by Nationalist patriots as 
 home products. It may truly be said 
 that there is no race in the world which 
 confers its nationality with a more 
 generous hand on all successful and dis-
 
 Ulster To-day 125 
 
 tinguished men. This, however, is for 
 foreign consumption, and is a form of 
 advertisement which is perhaps legiti- 
 mate, and which is certainly successful. 
 The point is that, as such successful and 
 distinguished men eagerly claimed for 
 Ireland are invariably of the race im- 
 ported from England or Scotland, it may 
 fairly be argued, even on the Nationalist 
 showing, that the colonization of part of 
 Ireland with men of another race has 
 not proved an unmixed evil for the 
 country. 
 
 The second question at once raises more 
 practical issues than the first. Would 
 Home Rule result in attempts to dispossess 
 the Protestant settlers of their footing 
 in Ireland, and, if so, how? The first 
 part of the question can be shortly dis- 
 posed of. The attempt would be made;
 
 126 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 it has been made on every occasion in the 
 history of Ireland on which the native 
 element has been in the ascendancy, and 
 it would be made again. The intention, 
 moreover, is tacitly admitted in the 
 native shibboleth of "Ireland for the 
 Irish;" it is more than tacitly admitted 
 in moments of alcoholic or electioneering 
 excitement. 
 
 The attempt would not be made by 
 methods of open violence. Of such de- 
 velopments the Protestants have no fear. 
 They are of a combative race; the natives 
 are essentially non-combative in the 
 British sense, that is to say, face-to-face 
 fighting does not appeal to them. 
 
 However, there is no question of face- 
 to-face fighting. Every Protestant knows 
 that this is so, and registers the knowledge 
 without exultation. The attempt to rid
 
 Ulster To-day 127 
 
 Ireland of the foreign element would be 
 made by more characteristic methods, 
 of which the more conspicuous would be 
 as follows: 
 
 (1) Petty injustices and persecu- 
 tions which may be further sub- 
 divided as follows: 
 
 (a) Faking the Parliamentary re- 
 presentation ; 
 
 (6) Establishing native officials in 
 every executive and remunera- 
 tive post in the country. 
 
 (2) Agrarian outrages. 
 
 (3) Tammany methods. 
 
 As the success and impunity of (2) 
 would depend on (1) we will take the 
 latter first. 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION 
 In Ulster, Parliamentary elections are
 
 128 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 not won, as in England, by persuasive 
 oratory, by house to house canvassing, or 
 by the proclamation through artistic 
 posters of the candidates' views on social 
 questions. Here no pictorial posters 
 decorate derelict walls and gateways, no 
 announcements of public meetings meet 
 the eye of the wanderer through streets 
 or country roads, no fervid exhortations 
 to the public to vote for this or that candi- 
 date; no ribbons, no party colours. 
 During an election in which it is known 
 that the majority one way or the other 
 will be represented by single figures, and 
 where the intensity of feeling is infinitely 
 deeper than anything of which England 
 has knowledge, there are no outward 
 signs in the streets or market-places that 
 anything outside of the ordinary daily 
 routine is in progress.
 
 Ulster To-day 129 
 
 To the eye experienced in local signs, 
 there is something significant in the slightly 
 furtive movements of the good citizens as 
 they pass up and down the streets. They 
 wear an air of mild conspiracy; at street 
 corners they whisper eager inquiries as 
 to the health of certain electors whose 
 appearance at the poll is doubtful, accom- 
 panied by pious expressions of hope for a 
 change for the better (or for the worse, as 
 the case may be) in the health of the 
 patient concerned. Priests and members 
 of the Royal Irish Constabulary are more 
 in evidence than is usual, but otherwise 
 there is no external sign that an election 
 of consuming interest is in full swing. 
 Meetings are held, but they are attended 
 more as a sign of respect to the candidate 
 than for educational purposes. The candi- 
 date, for his part, dispenses ancient but
 
 130 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 congenial party maxims rather than argu- 
 ment. Argument indeed would be thrown 
 away, seeing that no Nationalist ever 
 attends a Unionist meeting, or vice versa. 
 Why should they? 
 
 Operations, in fact, between the day of 
 nomination and the poll have little effect 
 on the result of the election, except in so 
 far as the organization of the party 
 machinery for getting voters to the poll 
 is concerned. The real election is won or 
 lost at a tedious and wordy function 
 known as the Revision Sessions. In 
 English politics this operation has an 
 entirely secondary importance, as political 
 views are apt to change according to the 
 humour of the moment, or the mis- 
 demeanour of this or that government, so 
 that party zeal at the Revision Sessions 
 may, in the event, prove to have been in
 
 Ulster To-day 131 
 
 the interests of the other side. In Ulster 
 no such danger exists. There is only one 
 issue Home Rule or no Home Rule and 
 as to this, one race votes one way and the 
 other race votes the other way, and so 
 will to the end of time. 
 
 The Revising Barrister, specially selected 
 for the occasion, sits daily in the Court 
 House over a period sometimes extending 
 into weeks, during which he decides as 
 to who is to be entitled to vote during the 
 next twelve months. In the hands of 
 this functionary lies the fate of the con- 
 stituency. From seven to eight thousand 
 names are paraded seriatim before him. 
 The right of each name to be on the register 
 is contested with much volubility and a 
 good deal of earnest but conflicting per- 
 jury. Dead men are sworn to be alive, 
 live men are sworn to be dead. The
 
 132 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 national lack of originality in nomencla- 
 ture adds to the difficulties of judicial 
 decision. One townland has been known 
 to produce as many as forty men with 
 the same Christian and surnames, these 
 being domestically distinguished from one 
 another by such descriptive terms as 
 "Red," "Black," "The Pig," "Fire the 
 Thatch," etc. It will easily be understood 
 then, that, in a country where the imagina- 
 tive faculty flourishes, the perplexities 
 of the honest Revising Barrister are con- 
 siderable, and he may have to sit daily for 
 a month before the new register is officially 
 stamped. However, he is well paid and 
 content. 
 
 The moment it is so stamped, the result 
 of any election which may take place 
 within the next twelve months becomes an 
 ascertained quantity. Even the majority
 
 Ulster To-day 133 
 
 of the Unionist or the Nationalist candi- 
 date can be calculated with a truly sur- 
 prising accuracy. A complete stranger 
 to the district with a leaning towards 
 ethnology could do it. The Celtic names 
 are the Roman Catholics, the British names 
 are the Protestants. The former will vote 
 to a man (dead or alive) for the Nationalist 
 candidate, the latter will vote for the 
 Unionist candidate, but not to a man. 
 Some will abstain owing to personal 
 grievances, and some such as the Coven- 
 anters will abstain owing to religious 
 scruples, the exact nature of which no one 
 who is not a Covenanter has ever been able 
 accurately to gauge. But the conclusion 
 of the whole matter is that the Revising 
 Barrister, with a few strokes of his pen, 
 can knock off a couple of hundred voters 
 from one side and put on a couple of
 
 134 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 hundred (new voters) to the other. 
 There would be few seats in Ulster repre- 
 sented by Protestants under Home Rule. 
 (2) A Home Rule Parliament sitting 
 in Dublin would probably be remarkable 
 (among other things) for the appointment 
 of more highly-paid and incompetent 
 officials than any other institution of the 
 same size in the world. But these good 
 things which Ireland (at the cost of great 
 sacrifice to the country generally) will 
 provide for the upper stratum of patriots, 
 will not come the way of the Protestants. 
 The Law, the Police, the Post Office, 
 Land Valuation, Inland Revenue and 
 Excise will all be in the hands of the native 
 Irish party, and they will push their 
 advantage to the utmost limits. Senti- 
 mental regard for a fallen foe is not one 
 of their weaknesses.
 
 Ulster To-day 135 
 
 This brings us to the point of (1) seeing 
 the Protestants defrauded of their proper 
 parliamentary representation by a mani- 
 pulation of the register, and, in other 
 cases, no doubt, by a manipulation of 
 the geographical boundaries of the con- 
 stituency, and (2) seeing them excluded 
 from all official appointments under the 
 Government in favour of native com- 
 petitors. These two steps will be a 
 necessary preliminary to carrying out (3) 
 with impunity. 
 
 No. 3, or, in other words, the third 
 method which will be made use of to make 
 Ulster unendurable to the Protestant 
 settlers will be the time-honoured method 
 of midnight prowlings and agrarian out- 
 rages. The prevalence of such outrages 
 in Ireland has always been in inverse 
 ratio to the power of the law to deal with
 
 136 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 them. They have, from the very back of 
 history, been the favourite national 
 weapon for inflicting injury on obnoxious 
 persons, whom it might be dangerous to 
 attack openly. With the entire machinery 
 of the law and the police (as then consti- 
 tuted) in sympathy with the "National" 
 movement, it needs no profound student 
 of Irish character to predict that outrages 
 would advance in popularity with a leap. 
 The hoisting of the green flag would be the 
 signal for a vigorous revival of the stock 
 programme of ham-stringing of horses, 
 houghing of cattle, burning of rickyards, 
 and last but not least clandestine 
 attacks by armed groups upon solitary 
 men returning home at night. Such have 
 been the native methods from time 
 immemorial. We have, in rhythmical 
 succession in the annals of Ireland, the
 
 Ulster To-day 137 
 
 Rapparees, the Houghers, the White-boys, 
 the Defenders, the Molly Maguires, the 
 Ribbonmen, the Moonlighters, and the 
 Land-Leaguers, stretching over two and a 
 half centuries, but all identical as to their 
 methods; and that such methods will 
 whenever opportunity offers continue 
 to be identified with the Nationalist 
 clamour for independence, or, in other 
 words, freedom from the "English Garri- 
 son," no sane man can doubt. They 
 are the fighting methods of the race, to 
 which the fear of conviction and punish- 
 ment have always been the only deterrent; 
 and under Home Rule neither convictions 
 nor punishment would follow. Magis- 
 trates, constables, judge and jury would 
 be on the side of the perpetrators. The 
 context is familiar. Blind policemen, deaf 
 neighbours, witnesses with no memory,
 
 138 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 are they not written in the book of the 
 Chronicles of the Land of Erin? 
 
 In such cases, where law and justice 
 fail him, the Ulster Protestant will in- 
 fallibly take his own measures for his 
 protection. He is built that way. His 
 resolution and his courage are unshakable. 
 He has all the unflinching determination 
 of his Border ancestors and by a question 
 of principle he will stand to his last gasp. 
 
 There is, at the moment of writing, no 
 such mutual protection organization in 
 Ulster, except the Orange Society. This 
 society contrary to the common belief 
 in England is at present a comparatively 
 small organization, embracing quite an 
 insignificant proportion of the total Pro- 
 testant population; nor is it probable that 
 it could ever form even the nucleus of a 
 more comprehensive movement, many of
 
 Ulster To-day 139 
 
 the most determined anti-Home-Rulers 
 being out of sympathy with its way of 
 expressing itself. Recent activities, how- 
 ever, though they produced no universal 
 protective league, have given evidence of 
 very considerable organizing power, and 
 of a unanimity of purpose which leaves 
 little doubt but that an absolutely united 
 front will be turned to the common danger 
 when it arises.
 
 MOONLIGHT OUTRAGES
 
 fTlHE psychology of moonlight out- 
 * rages, and of their invariable asso- 
 ciation, through the centuries, with all 
 Irish political movements, is worth a 
 moment's consideration by the student 
 of the Ulster question, because it (the 
 psychology, that is) is a factor in the 
 situation of the very first importance. 
 
 The amiable tourist, or the occasional 
 visitor to Ireland, with about as true a 
 grasp of the Irish question as he (or she) 
 has of the Zenda-Vesta, finds a constant 
 difficulty in associating the good-humoured 
 Paddies or Micks, who minister to their 
 wants, with the inhuman cruelty to man 
 and beast which so often characterizes 
 
 143
 
 144 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 agrarian outrages in Ireland. The peasant 
 appears such a pleasant, light-hearted 
 fellow, so appreciative of the visitor's 
 personal appearance, so sceptical as to 
 his, or her, revealed age, and so fiercely 
 denunciatory of the dirty villains who 
 recently perpetrated the outrage at this 
 or that farm, that it seems difficult to 
 associate him and his kind with such 
 cold-blooded brutality. But that he is 
 associated with it, and closely too, is 
 undeniable. The explanation lies in the 
 domination of the "bad man." 
 
 Every district in Ireland has its "bad 
 man," and sometimes its "bad men." 
 This is not peculiar to Ireland, but the 
 terrorizing influence of the bad man over 
 an entire district is peculiar to Ireland. 
 If the bad man has the support of the 
 parish priest, the state of that district
 
 Moonlight Outrages 145 
 
 will be bad indeed. If as is very often 
 the case he is opposed by the parish 
 priest, but supported by his curate, the 
 latter combination will win the day, for 
 they will threaten while the parish priest 
 can only persuade, and intimidation is a 
 weapon to which the Irish peasant will 
 always yield. He does not by any means 
 love the role of cut-throat into which he 
 is pressed. He is at bottom as the 
 tourist rightly judges a pleasant fellow 
 enough. He has many gentlemanly char- 
 acteristics to which his counterpart in 
 England is a stranger; his instinct is to 
 be courteous and even sycophantic to his 
 social superiors. In the absence of whisky 
 he is essentially non-aggressive, with a 
 keen nose for danger and no quixotic 
 prejudices. He has a protean genius for 
 adapting his own views for the moment
 
 146 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 to those of his interviewer, and, though 
 weak, he is by no means inherently 
 wicked; nor is his apparent friendliness 
 by any means all a pose. There is a good 
 deal of pose in it, but at the back of the 
 pose there is a genuine desire to live and 
 let live all round. 
 
 What is it, then, that transforms this 
 pleasant fellow into a demon capable of 
 Balkan atrocities? Alas! it is the "bad 
 man" backed up by bad whisky. In 
 other countries the bad man is a pariah, 
 hunted out of society and shunned by 
 the decent. In Ireland he is cock of the 
 walk. His rule is wholly one of terror. 
 The peasants hate him, but they will not 
 stand up to him; it is not in their nature; 
 it is easier and safer to toady him and to 
 go the way he points. 
 
 And so it happens that any devil with
 
 Moonlight Outrages 147 
 
 a glib tongue and a gallon of potheen can 
 sway the proletariat as he wills. Potheen, 
 it may be explained, is raw spirit distilled 
 mainly from potatoes. It emanates from 
 secret stills in the mountains, and pays no 
 duty, but its effect on human nature is 
 bad maddening and brutalizing and, 
 taken in quantities, it quickly transforms 
 kindly, peaceable men into fully-equipped 
 fiends. Then the bad man preaches his 
 crusade. This limb of Satan is gifted, like 
 all his race, with the complete equipment 
 of the mob-orator; he knows the material 
 he has to deal with from A to Z. He 
 knows that his following is weak, timid, 
 and lamentably lacking in a thirst for 
 blood. That is where the potheen comes 
 in. It pays no duty, and he can afford 
 to dispense it with a free hand. And so, 
 in due course, he leads forth his maddened
 
 148 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 band to their bloody work. He himself, 
 as the head and brain of the enterprise, 
 takes care to drink no more than will fill 
 him with the military ardour necessary 
 for the enterprise; but his following are 
 primed up to any devilry. 
 
 In the morning comes repentance, as 
 it ever has done, and ever will as long 
 as the sun sets and rises again. To some 
 come also a sickening horror of deeds 
 only dimly remembered, and a hatred of 
 the leaders who have organized and 
 engineered such devilries. 
 
 Out of these mixed feelings is evolved 
 the informer. The Irish are often stig- 
 matized as a race of informers. This 
 fallacy for it is strictly speaking a fallacy 
 arises from a misconception of the real 
 motives which so often lead to the giving 
 of information from inside. The truth is
 
 Moonlight Outrages 149 
 
 that it frequently happens that an asso- 
 ciate in a conspiracy becomes an informer, 
 not from motives of treachery, or greed, 
 or even fear, but because he really loathes 
 at heart the business into which he has 
 been drawn. 
 
 The curse of Ireland is, and always has 
 been, lack of moral courage. The native 
 Celt will do anything rather than incur 
 the unpopularity of his fellows, and so, 
 from inability to say no, he is dragged 
 into a conspiracy which he loathes. His 
 ineradicable desire to be on good terms 
 with all parties leads him, for a time, to 
 attempt the complicated manoeuvre of 
 running with the hare and hunting with 
 the hounds, till in the end he finds the 
 double role an impossibility, forsakes the 
 conspiracy and becomes an informer. But 
 it is important to bear in mind that he
 
 150 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 becomes an informer, not out of deliberate 
 treachery, but rather from the promptings 
 of an over-charged conscience. The first 
 cause of trouble is the moral weakness 
 which prevents him from standing up to 
 the insinuating overtures of the bad 
 man; the second cause of trouble is the 
 potheen. 
 
 In all forecasts of the possibilities and 
 probabilities which may follow on the 
 administration of Home Rule; in all 
 analyses of the national temperament, and 
 of the prospects of brotherly harmony 
 between the two conflicting elements 
 living side by side in Ireland, potheen is 
 a factor to be reckoned with. It is the 
 one certain intervener in the debate. 
 
 From the earliest days of stills in Ire- 
 land, the administration of potheen has 
 been an indispensable preliminary to all
 
 Moonlight Outrages 151 
 
 native excursions under arms. Every 
 horrid act in the long red list of Irish 
 atrocities has been perpetrated under the 
 spur of this fiery stimulant. And as long 
 as potheen is distilled, or as long as cheap 
 fusil-oil whisky can be bought, the march 
 of events in Ireland will be largely shaped 
 out of its fumes.
 
 THE RED HAND OF ULSTER
 
 rflHE red hand of Ulster, as its motto 
 * makes clear, is a friendly and not 
 a threatening hand. Its sinister colour, 
 founded on legend, was painted many 
 hundred years before Ulster was planted 
 with British colonists, and must not be 
 taken as indicative of its habits or designs. 
 It was adopted by Ulstermen ready- 
 painted, and red as it is it is the hand 
 of good will, and never yet has it been 
 raised by them against a neighbour, 
 except in self-defence. In order to sub- 
 stantiate this statement by statistics, the 
 rest of Ireland's Protestants must be 
 taken into partnership. Then the per- 
 sistent good will of this much-hated colony 
 
 155
 
 156 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 towards those who so hate them may be 
 partially understood. 
 
 It will be generally admitted that when 
 an expanding race encroaches upon the 
 lands of weaker nationalities, and estab- 
 lishes itself in their midst, there is a 
 tendency on the part of the invaded races 
 to disappear. 
 
 In the vast territories of the United 
 States, Canada, Australia and New Zea- 
 land the native populations have almost 
 reached vanishing point. We do not look 
 too closely into the cause. In Ireland 
 the reverse has been the case. In 1650 
 the native Roman Catholic population 
 was reckoned at 750,000. To-day it 
 numbers three and a quarter millions. 
 Although the Nationalists openly pro- 
 claim that their ultimate aim is to regain 
 "Ireland for the Irish;" although in
 
 The Red Hand of Ulster 157 
 
 moments of alcoholic expansion they make 
 the same announcement in more expressive 
 terms; although on two historic occasions 
 they have attempted the wholesale exter- 
 mination of the Protestant settlers, there 
 has never been any corresponding attempt 
 on the part of the settlers to exterminate 
 the natives. The bloody raids of the 
 soldiery in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries cannot be laid at the door of the 
 settlers; they were essentially military 
 raids, carried out by paid soldiers, of 
 whom many were themselves native 
 Roman Catholic Irish. A settler is a 
 farmer, or a trader, and his ways are for 
 peace. 
 
 Again, agrarian outrages, the foremost 
 of the stock weapons employed for regain- 
 ing Ireland for the Irish, have always 
 been exclusively associated with Nation-
 
 158 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 alist or native tactics. The Protestants 
 are not built that way. 
 
 Let us turn to another dark chapter in 
 Ireland's history, which the English 
 Government and the "English Garrison" 
 in Ireland had they been so evilly dis- 
 posed might have used as a weapon put 
 into their hands by Providence with 
 which to rid Ireland of the native ele- 
 ment. In the great famine which followed 
 the potato rot of 1846, many thousands 
 of the Irish died. If it had not been for 
 the intervention of the British Govern- 
 ment, and the British Protestant residents 
 in Ireland, the mortality would have 
 been incomparably greater. The Govern- 
 ment voted 10,000,000. The further con- 
 tributions of the resident settlers can 
 never be assessed in actual figures, as no 
 formal records were kept; but this much,
 
 The Red Hand of Ulster 159 
 
 at least, is on record that they gave 
 with an unstinting hand, and of their 
 best, in money, in kind and in charitable 
 labour, for which they received the usual 
 guerdon of curses. 
 
 Mr. W. Stewart Trench, one of the 
 most active workers throughout the 
 famine, in his famous book, "Realities of 
 Irish Life," says: "Presentment Sessions 
 were held, relief committees organized, 
 and the roads were tortured and cut up; 
 hills were lowered and hollows filled, and 
 wages were paid for half or quarter work 
 but still the people died. Soup kitchens 
 and stirabout houses were resorted to. 
 Free trade was partially adopted. Indian 
 meal poured into Ireland; individual 
 exertions and charity abounded to an 
 enormous extent but still the people died. 
 Many of the highest and noblest in the
 
 160 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 land, both men and women, lost their 
 lives or contracted diseases from which 
 they never afterwards recovered in their 
 endeavours to stay this fearful calamity 
 but still the people died." 
 
 The clearances which followed (favourite 
 theme of the Nationalist tub-orator), 
 viewed through any other medium than 
 those of green spectacles, were a plain 
 work of charity. The population was 
 greater than the resources of the country. 
 Nature had for the moment adjusted this 
 discrepancy with her usual callous bru- 
 tality, but the adjustment was only 
 temporary. The prolificity of the native 
 element was proverbial and was openly 
 encouraged by the priests. A recurrence 
 of the disaster sooner or later was in- 
 evitable; all the circumstances of the 
 case were clamouring for it.
 
 The Red Hand of Ulster 161 
 
 An enfeebled, but recklessly fruitful, 
 population, with no genius for agriculture, 
 was, by the irony of fate, densely packed 
 in a land where no employment offered 
 but agriculture. A merciful considera- 
 tion of these desperate conditions led to 
 what are locally known as the "clear- 
 ances." In the more congested districts, 
 families were financially assisted to 
 migrate to the newer world, where they 
 and their descendants have since reaped 
 prosperity, with wider elbow-room, and 
 in more congenial urban pursuits. 
 
 Lord Lansdowne alone made a free 
 gift of 17,000 to assist emigration from 
 his Kerry estate. In England a man who 
 opens his purse-strings for such a purpose 
 would be hailed as a philanthropist. In 
 Ireland he is shot at from behind walls. 
 Here again the bed-rock grievance is
 
 162 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 clerical. The "clearance" crime lay in 
 helping to remove from the country large 
 blocks of the native Irish, who might 
 more profitably have been engaged in 
 paying dues to their respective soggarths. 
 It might be admitted that they could not 
 have stayed where they were under 
 existing conditions, but they could have 
 stayed had the lands in occupation of the 
 foreign Protestants been at their disposal. 
 Here we come down once more to the 
 one and only root of the Irish question. 
 There is method and very systematic 
 method behind the apparent unreason- 
 ableness of Irish political agitation. 
 
 Nearly seventy years have passed since 
 the Clearances, and for the benefit of 
 the third generation knowing nothing of 
 the real circumstances it is easy for the 
 agitator to draw up a moving picture of
 
 The Red Hand of Ulster 163 
 
 injustice. But however bitter his words 
 may be (and he is nothing if not bitter) 
 it is never so much as suggested that the 
 primary object of the Clearances was the 
 extermination of the native population. 
 The venom of the speaker is rather 
 directed against landlords and rent-paying 
 in general; "pheasants have taken the 
 place of peasants," and so on. The 
 English Garrison qua Garrison is not 
 attacked nor even directly associated with 
 the Clearance grievance. All this has 
 a value as evidence of the non-aggressive 
 character of the militant Protestants in 
 Ireland. In view of the very wrong im- 
 pression which has gained ground among 
 the half-informed in England, it is im- 
 portant that this should be understood. 
 The policy of the Protestants towards 
 the natives is, and always has been,
 
 164 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 honestly pacific. They have no wish to 
 interfere with anyone's possessions, re- 
 ligion or liberties. They only want to 
 live and let live. Their parades, their 
 drills, their "no surrender" resolutions 
 are neither aggressive nor even pro- 
 vocative in intention. They are simply 
 precautionary measures against dangers, 
 the reality of which Ulstermen know, 
 and England will not be persuaded of. 
 
 THE SINN FEIN MOVEMENT 
 
 This organization was originally started 
 by a few ecstatic cranks whose aim was 
 the revival of bombastic native poetry, 
 and of ancient dresses which had never 
 existed. Highland kilts and Highland 
 pipes were frankly pirated, and ante-dated 
 as native products. All this was perfectly
 
 The Red Hand of Ulster 165 
 
 harmless as far as it went, but it goes 
 without saying that a society started on 
 such lines would not retain its original 
 character for long. A fruitful recruiting 
 ground was soon found among hooligans, 
 corner-boys and loafers generally, to whom 
 any form of pageantry and torn-foolery 
 was preferable to work. Gradually came 
 the inevitable playing at soldiers, which 
 culminated in April, 1916, in the abortive 
 attempt to seize Dublin by force of arms. 
 As an act of militarism the attempt was 
 the most dismal of failures. A number of 
 inoffensive citizens and some wounded 
 soldiers were shot by the "rebels," but as 
 soon as bullets began to fly in the opposite 
 direction, the rebellion collapsed. A few 
 a very few of the ringleaders were tried 
 by Martial Law and executed, and at 
 once entered the ranks of Irish Martyrs.
 
 166 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 This was quite in keeping with recognized 
 procedure, and illustrates very in- 
 structively the absolute immutability of 
 native Irish aspirations, and the distorted 
 perspective which is created by the sanctity 
 of those aspirations. 
 
 In this perspective all persons executed 
 for taking part in rebellions are ipso facto 
 martyrs. It matters not in the least what 
 barbarities they may or may not have 
 committed; it matters not to what extent 
 they may have violated all recognized 
 laws of God and man. These things 
 count for nothing, because they were done 
 in the sacred cause of ridding Ireland of 
 the British resident element (i.e., the 
 Protestants). Not only does the end in 
 this case justify the means; it actually 
 sanctifies them. 
 
 Whether that end is a legitimate one
 
 The Red Hand of Ulster 167 
 
 or not is a matter of opinion, but it must 
 be remembered that to the native mind it 
 is par excellence the one sacred cause for 
 which they have struggled for seven hun- 
 dred years, and therefore any acts what- 
 soever committed in furtherance of that 
 sacred cause become themselves sacred. 
 Thus, when we hear Napper Tandy 
 pathetically complaining after the 1798 
 rebellion that "they're hanging men and 
 women for the wearing of the green," it 
 cannot but occur to the ordinarily- 
 balanced mind that the hangings in 
 question were not for the wearing of the 
 green, but for a succession of particularly 
 brutal and cold-blooded murders. But 
 to the native mind they were not murders 
 at all, but justifiable and even glorious 
 acts of war, because in furtherance of 
 the sacred cause.
 
 168 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 It must be remembered, before wholly 
 condemning such a point of view as 
 extravagant, that the native mind has for 
 centuries been trained to the idea that 
 the art of war lies in the attack of the 
 defenceless and the avoidance of the 
 strong. This fixed idea is reflected 
 throughout the history of the country. 
 We search in vain for Bannockburns and 
 Floddens. They are not there. In their 
 place we find Lisgools and Scullabogues. 
 
 It is not surprising then, that, where 
 such a baffling confusion of ideas, as 
 between murder and fighting, is traditional, 
 there should be a general outcry among 
 the natives when the murder penalty is 
 exacted for that which, in their perspec- 
 tive, amounts to no more than an ordinary 
 act of war. They see no ethical difference 
 between the killing of a hundred enemy
 
 The Red Hand of Ulster 169 
 
 soldiers in battle and the killing of a hun- 
 dred enemy neighbours in cold blood, 
 except that the latter is the safer and 
 therefore the preferable course. It there- 
 fore arouses, not simulated, but honest 
 and genuine surprise and indignation 
 when those convicted of unprovoked 
 murders are not treated as honourable 
 prisoners of war. 
 
 Though defeated in the field, the Sinn 
 Fein organization gained strength instead 
 of losing it. Its exact aim in its new 
 military character was obscure, but this 
 did not affect its popularity. Sinn Fein 
 means "ourselves alone," and it may 
 safely be said that an aim so commendable 
 would receive the active support of every- 
 one east of the Irish Sea were it not for 
 the existence of thirteen hundred thousand 
 solid objections. At present the fact that
 
 170 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 these thirteen hundred thousand are in 
 existence puts any such proposal out of 
 court, for reasons which the foregoing pages 
 have tried to make clear. It is quite 
 possible, however, that the Sinn Fein, in its 
 ultimate development, may alter all this, 
 and may, in fact, in another generation 
 or two even bring about the long-sought 
 solution of the Irish problem. 
 
 The colossal possibilities of the move- 
 ment towards an ultimate settlement lie 
 in its anti-clerical character. In this 
 respect it constitutes a wholly new de- 
 parture in the history of Ireland. The 
 rebellion of 1798, it is true, started on non- 
 sectarian lines, but all parties concerned 
 retained their distinctive religions, merely 
 joining hands temporarily to defeat or 
 paralyse the executive forces of the 
 moment. We know now how during the
 
 The Red Hand of Ulster 171 
 
 short period when this object was effected, 
 the native population of Wexford and 
 Wicklow merely took advantage of the 
 paralysis of the law to attempt the ex- 
 termination of their Protestant neighbours. 
 The clerical element was throughout the 
 preponderating influence. 
 
 The Sinn Fein, on the other hand, 
 acknowledges no standardized religion. 
 Its numbers include both native Celts and 
 British settlers, the former being, of course, 
 in a very large majority; and it is not only 
 a non-sectarian body but a non-religious 
 one. Herein lie its limitless potentialities. 
 It is true the old racial boundaries are still 
 clearly defined by the names, but in 
 another generation if the Sinn Fein move- 
 ment continues to spread these boun- 
 daries will be far vaguer, for Celt and 
 Anglo-Saxon will, for the first time for
 
 172 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 three hundred years, intermarry and so 
 mix the races. The bar to intermarriage 
 so far has always been that the offspring 
 must be brought up Roman Catholic. 
 To the trained Protestant mind this is a 
 contingency so detestable as to be outside 
 of contemplation. The Sinn Feiner, how- 
 ever, has no such prejudices. His or her 
 children will be brought up free of alle- 
 giance to any fixed creed. The religious 
 boundaries will disappear, names will no 
 longer be an infallible indication of race, 
 and the bridgeless chasm between the 
 native and the colonist will be a thing of 
 the past. 
 
 The building up in this way of a new 
 breed, cleansed of traditional prejudices, 
 and educated on broad and liberal lines, 
 cannot fail to revolutionize political aspira- 
 tions in Ireland. The probability is that
 
 The Red Hand of Ulster 173 
 
 the clamour for Home Rule, being (outside 
 of predatory politicians) based on a foun- 
 dation of ignorance, will die a natural 
 death, and that its place will be taken by 
 a vigorous internal socialism. The swing 
 of the pendulum, after centuries of clerical 
 bondage, will probably be to its limit, and 
 iconoclasm of all sorts will run riot. For 
 this reason the movement is feared by 
 both priests and politicians. These see 
 their long-coveted control of the exchequer 
 seriously threatened, and would gladly 
 see the movement and all its supporters 
 at the bottom of the Atlantic, but for 
 prudential reasons think it wisest to 
 simulate sympathy. 
 
 How far this enforced pose will serve 
 then remains to be seen, but it is a matter 
 of little general interest. The interest 
 lies in the possible transfiguration of the
 
 174 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 Irish question by the spread of Sinn- 
 Feinism. A cry will arise which will be 
 a genuine national cry, not the screech of 
 threadbare party saws. On the great 
 crucial question of Home Rule or no Home 
 Rule, Ireland will become of one mind. 
 The strong probability is that the verdict 
 will be against Home Rule. When the 
 priests can no longer cherish their dream 
 of seeing the surface of Ireland peopled 
 with Irish Roman Catholics, who pay dues, 
 in place of British Protestants, who do 
 not, all the driving force will be out of the 
 Home Rule crusade. As in the case of 
 many other movements decorated with a 
 picturesque veneer, the bed-rock motive 
 is purely sordid. 
 
 In the almost inconceivable contingency 
 of the verdict, under such conditions, 
 being in favour of Home Rule, the British
 
 The Red Hand of Ulster 175 
 
 Government will be able, without com- 
 punction, to cut adrift an island which is 
 valueless as an asset, and the considera- 
 tion of whose affairs ceaselessly clogs the 
 wheels of Parliament. This is always 
 supposing that by the disappearance of 
 religious obstacles consequent on an anti- 
 clerical campaign the race distinctions 
 which have always divided Ireland become 
 so blurred that native is indistinguish- 
 able from colonist, and that therefore no 
 persecution of the latter will be possible. 
 If Sinn Feinism prospers, such a state of 
 things is within reach of imagination. A 
 generation hence and Hugh O'Kane may 
 have had an Anglo-Saxon mother, and 
 David Baird a Celtic one both impossible 
 contingencies at the present day. 
 
 While, from the pacificist point of view, 
 there is much to be said in favour of such
 
 176 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 a removal of the religious distinctions 
 which at present advertise the racial origin 
 of every Ulsterman, it is doubtful whether 
 the Province as a whole would be a gainer. 
 The experience of the other three Pro- 
 vinces in the past goes to show that the 
 effect of mixing the two races is not always 
 elevating, but rather the reverse. In any 
 case, it is safe to predict that in Ulster 
 any such revolutionary ideas will take hold 
 very slowly. The religious habit, whether 
 it be Protestant or whether it be Catholic, 
 is too firmly rooted. A mixed breed may, 
 and probably will, arise; but its spread 
 will be slow, and the true Ulsterman will 
 relinquish his birthright reluctantly, and 
 only by the pressure of very gradual 
 processes.
 
 CONCLUSION
 
 WHEN a de novo inquirer has 
 gained a glimpse into the secret 
 soul of Ulster, so carefully screened from 
 public gaze by both parties (though for 
 widely different reasons), he is only nearer 
 a solution of the general problem by this 
 much that he can clear his mind of 
 current fallacies. Unfortunately, how- 
 ever, this clearance highly necessary as 
 it may be as a preliminary step to con- 
 structive experiment only leaves the 
 difficulties greater than they were before. 
 This is quickly realized, and with the 
 realization comes the gradual conviction 
 that legislative overtures are powerless 
 to deal with the situation, and that no 
 
 179
 
 180 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 lasting removal of existing conflicts, or 
 of bitter party friction is possible, except 
 by a mergement of the two antagonistic 
 races into one homogeneous mass. The 
 root matter of the antagonism is too 
 real. If it were sentimental, traditional 
 or merely religious, as many people in 
 England still suppose, a gradual incline 
 towards tolerance from both sides might 
 be hoped for. But as long as our race, 
 clearly ear-marked by its religion, occupies 
 lands belonging by tradition to another 
 race, also clearly ear-marked by its 
 religion, harmony is no more possible 
 than it is between the dog with the bone 
 and the dog without it. 
 
 The situation is sublimely simple in its 
 general outline. On the one side we have 
 the Roman Catholic natives, an emotional 
 and a credulous people, dispossessed of
 
 Conclusion 181 
 
 lands which have since become responsive 
 and profitable a people happily ignorant 
 of the horrid circumstances which justi- 
 fied the dispossession, and wholly lacking 
 in the judicial sense to weigh those cir- 
 cumstances, even if known. As a con- 
 sequence, they waste the centuries in 
 nursing an eternal grievance which, 
 though real in substance, is easily weighed 
 down by the other side of the Balance 
 Sheet, but which from its very nature is 
 capable of being magnified to any extent 
 by a skilful distortion of facts. This 
 they get in plenty. 
 
 On the other side we have the Pro- 
 testants British Colonists occupying half 
 the lands of Ulster, but, in their occupa- 
 tion, conscious of having done no man 
 wrong. The vexed question of right and 
 wrong lies between the native proprietors
 
 182 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 and the English Government. It is no 
 concern of the Ulster Protestants. Their 
 lands at least have been honestly come 
 by, either by direct dealings with the 
 English Government, or with those hold- 
 ing under the English Government. If 
 the title of the Government was faulty, 
 then the immorality of transfer lies at the 
 door of the Government, not of the 
 unhappy transferees. A man is not re- 
 sponsible for the back history of every 
 Chippendale chair he buys. 
 
 But in the eyes of the natives the 
 Ulster Protestants are the practical ex- 
 pression of a systematic policy of dis- 
 possession, and as such they are the very 
 abomination of desolation standing in 
 the holy place. Even if not principals, 
 they are looked upon as agents, and it 
 must not be forgotten that in Ireland
 
 Conclusion 183 
 
 agents are shot, not because they are 
 themselves cruel or bad men, but because 
 they are representative of a system. 
 
 And so, in the native privy councils, 
 the Protestants are doomed to be returned 
 to their own shores, or, at any rate, 
 eliminated from Irish soil whenever the 
 opportunity may offer. Of this impend- 
 ing doom the Protestants are profoundly 
 aware, but they do not anticipate its 
 easy fulfilment. They are a strong race, 
 brave and true, and with a clean con- 
 science, and to the position which they 
 have built up for themselves in the 
 country they will cling with the last gasp 
 of their bodies. 
 
 In the conflict between these two points 
 of view, it would be easy for a lawyer to 
 argue hotly and convincingly on either 
 side. The main Irish case, however,
 
 184 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 strong as it can be made on public plat- 
 forms by a careful selection of cir- 
 cumstances, seems hopelessly prejudiced, 
 from the strictly judicial standpoint, by 
 the one initial fact that the English 
 originally came over to Ireland, not as 
 invaders, but on the express invitation 
 of Dermot McMurrough, King of Leinster, 
 in order to expel the Danes, who were 
 then over-running the land. Henry II., 
 who in the following year (1171) landed 
 at Waterford, was solemnly received as 
 a deliverer and named supreme King of 
 Ireland. 
 
 Roger Hoveden, the historian of the 
 day, says: 
 
 "All the Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots 
 of all Ireland came to the King of England 
 at Waterford, and received him for King 
 and Lord of Ireland; swearing fealty
 
 Conclusion 185 
 
 to him and his heirs, and the power of 
 reigning over them for ever; and then 
 they gave him their instruments and 
 after the example set them by the clergy, 
 the aforesaid Kings and Princes of 
 Ireland (namely, the Kings of Cork, 
 Limerick, Ossory, Meath, and Reginald 
 of Waterford), who had been summoned 
 by King Henry's command to appear in 
 his presence, and almost all the nobles of 
 Ireland (except the King of Connaught) 
 did in like manner receive Henry, King 
 of England, for Lord and King of Ire- 
 land, and they became his men, and 
 swore fealty to him and his heirs against 
 all men." Roderick O'Connor, King of 
 Connaught, followed suit in 1175, he being 
 the last of the native Princes to come in. 
 
 Here, then, we have the whole of Ireland, 
 through its Church and State representa-
 
 186 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 lives, acknowledging the King of England 
 as their King for ever, on account of 
 military services rendered, by which Ire- 
 land had been saved from the invader. 
 In the light of this one starting-point, 
 subsequent rebellions in Ireland do not 
 stand out as noble struggles for liberty 
 on the part of a conquered people, but 
 as treacherous repudiations of a solemn 
 covenant which had been entered into 
 at the instigation of the Irish themselves. 
 It follows logically that all confiscations 
 of land consequent upon such rebellions 
 were not acts of oppression, but perfectly 
 just and proper penalties imposed for 
 disloyal conduct. If this standpoint can 
 be maintained, the entire "confiscation" 
 grievance falls to the ground. 
 
 In this connection it is useful to bear 
 in mind that the material aims of the
 
 Conclusion 187 
 
 native proletariat, and of the priests who 
 educate them, are in widely different 
 directions. The priests, quite naturally, 
 aim at seeing Ireland entirely peopled 
 by Catholics who would be a source of 
 profit to them; the proletariat aims at 
 the re-occupation of forfeited lands now 
 in the hands of the Protestants. But 
 the latter aim, which is necessarily ill- 
 defined in detail, and at the best is a 
 somewhat far-off cry, is only kept alive 
 by constant hard work on the part of 
 the priests, backed up sporadically but 
 not very effectively by politicians. The 
 anti-Protestant land agitation is merely 
 the lever by which these two associates 
 in patriotism hope to arrive at their own 
 ends, which are perfectly well-defined, 
 though likely in the case of success to be 
 somewhat conflicting.
 
 188 The Soul of Ulster 
 
 The present barrier to the mergement 
 of the two races, which alone can solve 
 the Ulster question, is the Roman Catholic 
 Church, which interposes impassable 
 barriers of moral barbed-wire between 
 the native population and the Protestant 
 colonists. 
 
 It is possible that for reasons already 
 given the Sinn Fein movement may 
 ultimately remove that barrier. When 
 that takes place, hatred of England, with 
 all its convenient accessories in the way 
 of conscientious objection to service in 
 time of war, will die a natural death. It 
 is a manufactured article, and the driving- 
 power of the factory will give out. 
 
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