The Worthington advance., 1900-01-05
THE ULSTER REBELLION.

THE ULSTER REBELLION.
An Uprising That Led to the slaugn.
ter "t Half Million Irish in
Eleven Years.
In his study of Oliver Cromwell, John
Morley characterizes the Ulster rebel
lion as "tbe mist barbarous and inhu-
man chapter that stains the domestic
history of the kingdom"
After many weeks of strange still
ness, in an instant the storm burst. The
Irish in Ulster suddenly October %,
1641) fell upon the English colonists,
the invaders of their lands. The fury
soon spread, and the country was en-
veloped in the flames of confagration
fed by concentrated sense of ancient
wrong and all the savage passions of
an oppressed people suddenly broken
loose upon its oppressors. Agrarian
wrong, religious wrong, insolence of
race, now brought forth their poison
GUS fruit. A thousand murderous
atrocities were perpetuated on one
side, and they were avenged by atroci-
ties as hideous on the other. Every
tale of horror in the insurgents can be
matched by horror as diabolic in the
soldiery. What happened in 1641 was
in general features very like what hap
pened in 1898, for the same things come
to pass in every conflict where fero-
cious hatred in a prosecuted caste meets
the ferocious pride and contempt of it's
prosecutors. The main points are rea-
sonably plain. There is no question by
whom the sanguinary work was first
begun. There is little question that
it was not part of a. premeditated and
organized design of findiscriminate mas
sacre, but was inevitably attendant
upon a violent rising against foreign
despoilers. There is no question that
though in the beginning agrarian or
territorial, the rising soon drew after
it fierce struggle between the two
rival Christian factions. There is little
question that, after the first shock,
Parsons and his allies in authority
acted on the cynical anticipation that
the worse the rebellion, the richer
would be the forfeitures. There is no
question that the enormity of crime
was the subject of exaggeration, part
ly natural and inevitable, partly in
cendiary and deliberate. Nor is there
any question that, even without ex-
aggeration, it is the most barbarous
and irhuman chapter that stains the
domestic history of the kingdom. The
total number of Protestants slain in
cold blood at the outbreak of the re-
bellion has been fixed at various fig
ures from 1000 to 100000, and the latest
serious estimate puts it at $4,000 dur
ing the first three or four years. The
victims of the retaliatory slaughter by
Protestants upon Catholics were count
less, but Sir William Petty thinks that
more than half million Irish perished
between 1641 and 1852.
The fated international antipathy
between English and Irish, that like a
volcano is sometimes active, sometimes
smoldering and sullen, now burst forth
in liquid fire. The news threw Eng
land into frenzy. 1t has been compared
to the fury with which the American
co1onists regarded the use of red In
dians by the government of King George.
It was like the rage of horror that
swept over the country for moment
when the tidings of Cawnpore arrived,
and I need not describe it. The air
was thick, as is the way in revolutions,
with frantic and irrational suspicion.
The catastrophe in Ireland fitted in
with the governing moods of the hour,
and we know only too we'll how simple
and summary are the syllogisms of a
rooted distrust. Ireland was papist,
and this was a papist rising. The
queen was papist, surrounded at
Somerset house by the same black
brood as those priests of Baal who on
the other side of St. Georges channel
were described as standing by while
their barbarous flock slew old men and
women wholesale and, in cold blood,
dashed out the brains of infants against
the walls in sight of their wretched
parents, ran their skeans like red In
dians into the flesh of little children,
and flung helpless Protestants by
scores at time over the bridge at
Portadown. Such was the reasoning,
and the damning conclusion was clear.
This was the queens rebellion, and the
king must be her accomplice. Sir
Phelim O'Neil, the first leader of the
Ulster rebellion, declared that he held
a commission from the king himself,
and the story took quick root. 1t is
now manifest that Charles was at least
as much dismayed as any of his SUBJ
jects; yet for the rest of his life he
could not wipe out the fatal theory of
his guilt.-Century.