om ever uniting.

A great many provisions are laid down by this Act, all bearing the same
aim. Marriage and fosterage between the English and Irish are forbidden,
and declared to be high treason. So, too, is the supply of all horses,
weapons, or goods of any sort to the Irish; monks of Irish birth are not
to be admitted into any English monastery, nor yet Irish priests into
any English preferment. The Irish dress and the Irish mode of riding are
both punishable. War with the natives is inculcated as a duty binding
upon all good colonists. None of the Irish, except a certain number of
families known as the "Five Bloods" (_Quinque sanquines_), are to be
allowed to plead at any English court, and the killing of an Irishman is
not to be reckoned as a crime. In addition to this, speaking the
language of the country is made penal. Any one mixing with the English,
and known to be guilty of this offence, is to lose his lands (if he has
any), and his body to be lodged in one of the strong places of the king
until he learns to repent and amend.

The original words of this part of the Act are worth quoting. They run
as follows: "Si nul Engleys ou Irroies entre eux memes encontre c'est
ordinance et de cei soit atteint soint sez terrez e tenez s'il eit
seizez en les maines son Seignours immediate, tanque q'il veigne a un
des places nostre Seignour le Roy, et trove sufficient seurtee de
prendre et user le lang Englais."

One would like--merely as a matter of curiosity--to know what appliances
for the study of that not easiest of languages were provided, and before
what tribunal the student had to prove his proficiency in it. When, too,
we remember that English was still, to a great degree, tabooed in
England itself; that the official and familiar language of the Normans
was French, that French of which the Statutes of Kilkenny are themselves
a specimen, the difficulty of keeping within the law at this point must,
it will be owned, have been considerable.

"In all this it is manifest," says Sir John Davis, "that such as had the
government of Ireland did indeed intend to make a perpetual enmity
between the English and the Irish, pretending that the English should in
the end root out the Irish; which, the English not being able to do,
caused a perpetual war between the two nations, which continued four
hundred and odd years, and would have lasted unto the world's end, if in
Queen Elizabeth's reign the Irish had not been broken and co