more disgraceful resource than
marauding. Sometimes he turned freebooter. Sometimes he contrived, in
defiance of the law, to live by coshering, that is to say, by quartering
himself on the old tenants of his family, who, wretched as was their own
condition, could not refuse a portion of their pittance to one whom they
still regarded as their rightful lord. [154] The native gentleman who
had been so fortunate as to keep or to regain some of his land too often
lived like the petty prince of a savage tribe, and indemnified himself
for the humiliations which the dominant race made him suffer by
governing his vassals despotically, by keeping a rude haram, and
by maddening or stupefying himself daily with strong drink. [155]
Politically he was insignificant. No statute, indeed, excluded him from
the House of Commons: but he had almost as little chance of obtaining
a seat there as a man of colour has of being chosen a Senator of the
United States. In fact only one Papist had been returned to the Irish
Parliament since the Restoration. The whole legislative and executive
power was in the hands of the colonists; and the ascendency of the
ruling caste was upheld by a standing army of seven thousand men, on
whose zeal for what was called the English interest full reliance could
be placed. [156]

On a close scrutiny it would have been found that neither the Irishry
nor the Englishry formed a perfectly homogeneous body. The distinction
between those Irish who were of Celtic blood, and those Irish who
sprang from the followers of Strong-bow and De Burgh, was not altogether
effaced. The Fitzes sometimes permitted themselves to speak with scorn
of the Os and Macs; and the Os and Macs sometimes repaid that scorn with
aversion. In the preceding generation one of the most powerful of
the O'Neills refused to pay any mark of respect to a Roman Catholic
gentleman of old Norman descent. "They say that the family has been
here four hundred years. No matter. I hate the clown as if he had come
yesterday." [157] It seems, however, that such feelings were rare, and
that the feud which had long raged between the aboriginal Celts and
the degenerate English had nearly given place to the fiercer feud which
separated both races from the modern and Protestant colony.

The colony had its own internal disputes, both national and religious.
The majority was English; but a large minority came from the south of
Scotland. One half of the settlers belonged t