licy. Yet Father Meehan
writes: 'But no; not even the dint of that manifesto, _with the ring
of true steel in its every line_, could strike a spark out of their
hearts, for they were chalky.'[1]

[Footnote 1: Page 34.]

It was very natural that the English Government should act upon the
same principle of intolerance, especially when they had the plea
of state necessity. They did not yet go the length of exterminating
Catholicity by the means with which the O'Neill threatened his
peaceable and industrious co-religionists in the towns.

All they required was that the Catholics should cease to harbour
their priests, and that they should attend the Protestant churches.
Remarking upon the proclamation of Chichester to this effect Mr.
Meehan says:--'Apart from the folly of the king, who had taken into
his head that an entire nation should, at his bidding, apostatise from
the creed of their forefathers, the publishing such a manifesto
in Dungannon, in Donegal, and elsewhere was a bitter insult to
the northern chieftains, whose wars were _crusades_,--the natural
consequence of faith,--stimulated by the Roman Pontiffs, assisted
by Spain, then the most Catholic kingdom in the world.' Does not Mr.
Meehan see that crusading is a game at which two can play? And if
wars which were crusades were the natural consequence of the Catholic
faith, were stimulated by the Roman Pontiffs, and assisted by Spain,
for the purpose of destroying the power of England, everywhere as well
as in Ireland, and abolishing the Reformation,--does it not follow
as a necessary consequence that the English Government must in sheer
self-defence have waged a war of extermination against the Catholic
religion, and have regarded its priests as mortal enemies? No better
plea for the English policy in Ireland was ever offered by any
Protestant writer than this language, intended as a condemnation, by
a very able priest in our own day. It was no doubt extreme folly for
King James I. to expect that a nation, or a single individual, should
apostatise at his bidding; but it was equal folly in the King of Spain
to expect Protestants to apostatise at his bidding; and if possible
still greater folly for O'Neill to expect the Catholic citizens of
Munster to join him in the bloody work of persecution. It was, then,
the Spanish policy stimulated by the Sovereign Pontiff that was the
standing excuse of the cruel intolerance and rancorous religious
animosity which have cont