The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

To prove that the desperate resolution of leaving their country did not originate with the Irish, notwithstanding what some have written to the contrary, it is enough to remark that their expatriation was made a necessary condition of their surrender by the new government. For instance, Lord Clanrickard, according to Matthew O'Connor, "deserted and surrounded, could obtain no terms for the nation, nor indeed for himself and his troops, except with the sad liberty of transportation to any other country in amity with the Commonwealth."

To prove, if necessary, still further that the expatriation of the Irish troops was part of a scheme already resolved upon, it is enough to remember the indisputable fact that from the surrender at Kilkenny in 1652, until the open announcement in the September of 1653, that the Parliament had assigned Connaught for the dwelling-place of the Irish nation, whither they were to be "transplanted" before the 1st of May, 1654, the various garrisons and small armies which had fought so gallantly for Ireland and the Stuarts were successively urged (and urged by Cromwell meant compelled) to leave the country; and it was only when the last of the Irish regiments had departed that the doom of the nation was boldly and clearly announced.

But these forced exiles were not restricted to the warrior class. "The Lord Protector," says Prendergast, "applied to the Lord Henry Cromwell, then major-general of the forces of Ireland, to engage soldiers . . . . and to secure a thousand young Irish girls to be shipped to Jamaica. Henry Cromwell answered that there would be no difficulty, only that force must be used in taking them; and he suggested the addition of fifteen hundred or two thousand boys of from twelve to fourteen years of age. . . . The numbers finally fixed were one thousand boys and one thousand girls."

The total number of children disposed of in the same way, from 1652 to 1655, has been variously estimated at from twenty thousand to one hundred thousand. The British Government at last was compelled to interfere and put a stop to the infamous traffic, when, the mere Irish proving too scarce, the agents were not sufficiently discriminating in their choice, but shipped off English children also to the Tobacco Islands.

At last the island was left utterly without defenders, and sufficiently depopulated. It is calculated that, when the last great measure was announced and put into execution, only half a million of Irish people remained in the country, the rest of the resident population being composed of the Scotch and English, introduced by James I., and the soldiers and adventurers let in by Cromwell.

The main features of the celebrated "act of settlement" are known to all. It was an act intended to dispose quietly of half a million human beings, destined certainly in the minds of its projectors to disappear in due time, without any great violence— to die off —and leave the whole island in the possession of the "godly."

Connaught is famed as being the wildest and most barren province of Ireland. At the best, it can support but a scanty population. At this time it had been completely devastated by a ten years' war and by the excesses of the parliamentary forces. This province then was mercifully granted to the unhappy Irish race; it was set apart as a paradise for the wretched remnant to dwell in all Connaught, except a strip four miles wide along the sea, and a like strip along the right bank of the Shannon. This latter judicious provision was undoubtedly intended to prevent them from dwelling by the ocean, whence they might derive subsistence or assistance, or means of escape in the event of their ever rising again; and, on the other hand, from crossing the Shannon, on the east side of which their homes might still be seen. This cordon of four miles' width was drawn all around what was the Irish nation, and filled with the fiercest zealots of the "army of the Lord" to keep guard over the devoted victims.

Surely the doom of the race was at last sealed!

But let all justice be done to the Protector. The act was to the effect that, on the first day of May, 1654, all who, throughout the war, had not displayed a constant good affection to the Parliament of England in opposition to Charles I., were to be removed with their families and servants to the wilds of a poor and desolated province, where certain lands were to be given them in return for their own estates. But, who of the Irish could prove that they had displayed a "constant good affection" to the English Parliament during a ten years' war? The act was nothing less than a proscription of the whole nation. The English of the Pale were included among the old natives, and even a few Protestant royalists, who had taken of the cause of the fallen Stuarts. The only exception made was in favor of "husbandmen, ploughmen, laborers, artificers, and others of the inferior sort." The English and Scotch—constituted by this act of settlement lords and masters of the three richest provinces of Ireland— could not condescend to till the soil with their own hands and attend to the mechanical arts required in civil society. Those duties were reserved for the Irish poor. It was hoped that, deprived of their nobility and clergy, they might be turned to any account by their new masters, and either become good Protestants or perish as slaves. Herein mentita est iniquitas sibi.

The heart-rending details of this outrage on humanity may be seen in Mr. Prendergast's "Cromwellian Settlement." There all who read may form some idea of the extent of Ireland's misfortunes.