sloth, treachery, and disorder.
But there does not appear a trace of consideration for what the Irish
might feel or desire or resent. He is sensible indeed of English
mismanagement and vacillation, of the way in which money and force were
wasted by not being boldly and intelligently employed; he enlarges on
that power of malignity and detraction which he has figured in the
Blatant Beast of the _Faery Queen_: but of English cruelty, of English
injustice, of English rapacity, of English prejudice, he is profoundly
unconscious. He only sees that things are getting worse and more
dangerous; and though he, like others, has his "plot" for the
subjugation and pacification of the island, and shrinks from nothing in
the way of severity, not even, if necessary, from extermination, his
outlook is one of deep despair. He calculates the amount of force, of
money, of time, necessary to break down all resistance: he is minute and
perhaps skilful in building his forts and disposing his garrisons; he is
very earnest about the necessity of cutting broad roads through the
woods, and building bridges in place of fords; he contemplates restored
churches, parish schools, a better order of clergy. But where the spirit
was to come from of justice, of conciliation, of steady and firm
resistance to corruption and selfishness, he gives us no light. What it
comes to is, that with patience, temper, and public spirit, Ireland
might be easily reformed and brought into order: but unless he hoped for
patience, temper, and public spirit from Lord Essex, to whom he seems to
allude as the person "on whom the eye of England is fixed, and our last
hopes now rest," he too easily took for granted what was the real
difficulty. His picture is exact and forcible, of one side of the
truth; it seems beyond the thought of an honest, well-informed, and
noble-minded Englishman that there was another side.

But he was right in his estimate of the danger, and of the immediate
evils which produced it. He was right in thinking that want of method,
want of control, want of confidence, and an untimely parsimony,
prevented severity from having a fair chance of preparing a platform for
reform and conciliation. He was right in his conviction of the
inveterate treachery of the Irish Chiefs, partly the result of ages of
mismanagement, but now incurable. While he was writing, Tyrone, a
craftier and bolder man than Desmond, was taking up what Desmond had
failed in. He was playin