The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1868-03-29
MORNING STAR AND CATHOLIC MESSENGER,
NEW ORLEANS, SUNDAY, MARCH g. 1893.
CROMWELL IN IRELAND.

NEW ORLEANS. SUNDAY, MARCH %. 1893.
CROMWELL IN IRELAND. a So.
At no period of her history has Ireland
concentrated the attention Of the world as
at present. Formerly, when convulsed with
civil war, the policy of England was to stitle
inquiry, and by distorted accounts repre-
sent to foreign nations that it was the mere
ebullition of apeople afflicted with an I'M
reasoning chronic desire to throw off the
restraints Of humane government, which
accorded all the liberty it was capable of
enjoying. But the time for such platitudes
areNover. To-day, England feels that she is
alnenable to a just public opinion. She can
neither stifle nor peryert it, and hence
grudgingly doles out morsels Of justice, ex
torted, of course, more from her fears than
a sense of equity. Catholic emancipation
is a case in point. The correspondence
which passed between Peel and Wellington
in the celebrated contested election of
Clare, when O'Connell ran against Vesy
Fitzgerald, gives us the animus which led
to that concession. Then these statesmen
concluded to throw a sop to the Irish
Year after year since that period, the at
titude Of England as the champion of free
dom par excellence, the world over, has be-
come more glaringly inconsistent in her
treatment of Ireland. On both continents,
her malversations have provoked the indig
nation of all right-thinking people. Per-
sons of all shades of politics, of all religions
and no religion, join the cry that the nation
which, by the mouth of Mr.. Gladstone SO
glowingly depicted the so-called atrocities
of the Neapolitan government, should, in
common humanity, mete out n measure of
justice to her Irish subjects. Under this
pressure -Disraeli, the Prime Minister of
England, depIores the fate which compe1s
him, even though the language be ironical,
to right the wrongs of seven hundred years
of misrule.
At the present moment it may not be I'M
interesting to glance at one phase of this
unhappy country, that of the Cromwellian
settlement of Ireland. 1t is furnished to
our hands by an impartial and reliable
Protestant historian, John p. Prendergast,
barrister, whose work is thus commented
on by the Edinburgh Recier. 1t is proper
, to states<that the critic, while combating
some of the deductions of the author, does
not question the accuracy of the facts or
the general faithfulness of the narrator
while detailing the unparalleled atrocities
committed by Cromwell and his followers
in Ireland. We condense as follows:
The work of Mr.. Prendergast, an Irish
Protestant barrister, on the CrOmwellian
settlement, throws much interesting light
upon a portion of Irish history which has
been hitherto little examined or understood
in detail. DR.. Leland makes the remark
that Ireland has never yet had her philo-
sophie historian, but it is equally true that
. none of her writer's seem even to have made
any considerable Use OF the accessible ma
terials for such q; wefk, that are lying in the
record room of the Tower of Dublin Castle,
or slowed away in the archives of Trinity
College.
Mr.. Prendergast spent whole days and
weeks in the obscure and mouldy recesses
of the record room in Dublin Castle, porlng
over series of order books of the Com
: issienerso of the Parliament of the Com
monwealth of England in the affairs of Ire
land, together with domestic correspond
- ence and books of establishments from 1850
to 1859" He is evidently laborious in
= vestigator of facts, and his book speaks in
every page of that toilsome and obscure
industry, without which no standard his
tory can be prepared or be expected to
maintain its authority with the public.
We can certainly make some allowance
for that national feeling which prompts
him to do justice to Irish bravery and kind
ness, and to reflect so severely upon the
policy and practices of the Cromwellian
spoilers.
= Oliver Cromwell landed near Dublin on
August IA, 1919; Drogheda was stormed
and the garrison put to the sword on Sep
TENDER 10th the principal towns of the
kingdom Immediately submitted; and in
nine months he returned to England, leaving
the management of the war in the hands of
his generals. The country was now q
dreadful waste after a dozen years of war.
Three-fourths of the stock of cattle were
destroyed. The growing crops round the
Irish had been cut down by the soldiers to