Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

The following extract from a most virulent book, published in London, anno 1647, affords a full display of the infernal spirit of rancour and malice that then prevailed in England against the Irish; and will serve, in some measure, to account for the butcheries of the St. Legers, the Monroes, the Cootes, the Iretons, and the Cromwells, as exhibited in the present chapter. It is quoted in the North American Review, Vol. I. p. 305.

"The Simple Cobler of Aggavvam in America. Willing to help 'mend his Native Country, lamentably tattered, both in the upper-Leather and sole, with all the honest stitches he can take. And as willing never to bee paid for his work, by Old English wonted pay. It is his Trade to patch all the year long, gratis. Therefore I pray Gentlemen keep your purses. By Theodore de la Guard. In rebus arduis ac tenui spe, fortissima quæque consilia tutissima sunt.-Cic. In English,

When bootes and shoes are torne up to the lefts,
Coblers must thrust their awles up to the hefts.
This no time to feare Apelles gramm:

Ne Sutor quidem ultra crepidam.

London, printed by J. D. & R. I. for Stephen Bowtell, at the sign of the Bible in Popes Head-Alley, 1647.

"A Word of Ireland: Not of the Nation universally, nor of any man in it, that hath so much as one haire of Christianity or Humanity growing on his head or beard, but onely of the truculent Cut-throats, and such as shall take up Armes in their Defence.

"These Irish, anciently called Anthropophagi, man-eaters : Have a Tradition among them, That when the Devill shewed our Saviour all the kingdomes of the Earth and their glory, that he would not show him Ireland, but reserved it for himself: it is probably true, for he hath kept it ever since for his own peculiar; the old Fox foresaw that it would eclipse the

glory of all the rest: he thought it wisdome to keep it for a Boggards for himself, and all his unclean spirits imployed in this Hemisphere, and the people, to doe his Son and Heire, I mean the Pope, that service for which Lewis the eleventh kept his Barber Oliver, which makes them so blood-thirsty. They are the very Offall of men, Dregges of Mankind, Reproache of Christendome, the Bots that crawle on the Beasts taile. J wonder Rome it self is not ashamed of them.

"J begge upon my hands and knees, that the Expedition against them may be undertaken while the hearts and hands of our Souldiery are hot, to whom I will be bold to say briefly: Happy is he that shall reward them as they have served us: and Cursed be he that shall doe that work of the Lord negligently! Cursed be he that holdeth back his Sword from blood!!! yea, Cursed be he that maketh not his Sword starke drunk with Irish blood!!! that doth not recompence them double for their hellish treachery to the English! that maketh them not heaps upon heaps!! and their country a dwelling place for Dragons, an Astonishment to Nations! Let not that eye look for pity, nor that hand to be spared, that pities or spares them! and let him be accursed, that curseth them not bitterly! ! ! !”

This work was received with such approbation, that it passed through several editions. When such Luciferian doctrines were fulminated, coolly and deliberately, from the press, it is not wonderful that they were carried into ferocious and sanguinary practice, in the field of battle; and that "the nits" and "the lice" were slaughtered in one

common mass.

CHAPTER XXI.

Means by which subjugated countries are held in chains. Protestant ascendency. Code of demoralization, tyranny, oppression, rapine, and murder. Robbery of father, mother, sister, and brother, invited by acts of Parliament. Prohibition of education. Horse thieves excited and protected by law.

IN every subjugated country, there is always a small body of the natives, who make a regular contract, not written, but well understood, and duly carried into effect, by which they sell the nation to its oppressors, and themselves as slaves, for the sorry privilege of tyrannizing over their fellow slaves. This has ever been the surest foundation on which the dominion of one country over another is perpetuated. The base and miserable oligarchs who subserve the interests of the ruling nation, indemnify themselves for the chains which they drag about, by the superior weight and pressure of those they impose.

When the English Henrys overran and subdued France; had the crown placed on their heads, in Paris; and enjoyed a flattering prospect of permanently securing its descent to their posterity,

it was not by any means through the force of English skill or English valour, though both were of the highest grade at that period, that they achieved the conquest. They had at all times in their armies hosts of traitorous Frenchmen, who paved the way for the conquest and slavery of their country. Such, too, was the Roman policy, --such the means whereby that all-grasping and devastating government extended its empire over the then known world.

But the case of Ireland is probably among the most forcible illustrations of this maxim that history affords. A herd of wretched oligarchs have for centuries existed there, who have bartered their country's dearest rights and interests, for the privilege of trampling down their countrymen, over whom they have exercised the most galling tyranny that the mind of man can conceive.

Whenever an attempt has been made to shake off the yoke of foreign power, to emancipate the nation, this oligarchy has always had its spies, and pimps, and informers, among the friends of their country, by whose agency the attempt was baffled, and the patriots betrayed to the gallows.

"Oh for a tongue to curse the slave,
Whose treason, like a deadly blight,
Comes o'er the councils of the brave,

And blasts them in their hour of might!

May life's unblessed cup for him

Be drugg'd with treacheries to the brim,
With hopes, that but allure to fly,

With joys, that vanish while he sips,

Like Dead-Sea fruits, that tempt the eye,
But turn to ashes on the lips!
His country's curse, his children's shame,
Outcast of virtue, peace, and fame,
May he, at last, with lips of flame,
On the parch'd desert thirsting die,-
While lakes, that shone in mockery nigh,
Are fading off, untouch'd, untasted,
Like the once glorious hopes he blasted!
And, when from earth his spirit flies,
Just Prophet, let the damned one dwell
Full in the sight of Paradise,

Beholding heaven, and feeling hell !"'560

This oligarchy now styles itself, as we have more than once stated, "the Protestant ascendency;" and is composed of the professors of the established religion. Its oppression has always extended over the Protestant dissenters, as well as over the Roman Catholics; but with very great disparity of effect. The principal grievance of the Protestant dissenter, which he bears in common with the Catholic, is, that he is obliged to support the ministers of two different religions,his own and the dominant one. In other respects, he stands on nearly the same ground as the professor of the established religion.

The tyranny exercised by this oligarchy over the Catholics, has displayed itself in the form of a barbarous code of laws, the professed object of which was "to prevent the growth of Popery ;" but the real one, to plunder those on whom they were to operate, of their property, and to divest

560 Lalla Rookh.

« ForrigeFortsæt »