cord of
their conscientious effort to obey these instructions may be studied in
any writer of the period, or in any historian, say Mr Froude. For Mr
Froude, in his pursuit of the picturesque, was always ready to resort to
the most extreme measures; he sometimes even went so far as to tell the
truth. The noblest and ablest English minds lent their aids. Sir Walter
Raleigh and Edmund Spenser were both rather circumambulatory on paper;
the work of each is 'a long monotone broken by two or three exquisite
immortalities. But they were both as concise in action as an Elizabethan
headsman. Sir Walter helped Lord Grey, the recognised pattern in those
days of the Christian gentleman, to put to death seven hundred
prisoners-of-war at Smerwick. Spenser, being no soldier, leaned rather
to famine. In his famous book he recommends the destruction of crops,
houses, cattle, and all necessaries of life so that the Irish should
"soon be compelled to devour each other." The Commanders-in-Chief and
the Deputies specialised in poison, as became men whose wealth and
learning enabled them to keep in touch with the Italian Renaissance.
Bluff, straightforward troopers like Mountjoy, Malby, Wilmot, Bagenal,
Chichester, and the rest, not pretending to such refinements, did their
best in the way of hanging, stabbing, and burning. In those days as well
as ours the children had their Charter. "Nits," said the trustees of
civilisation, "will grow to lice." And so they tossed them on the points
of their swords, thus combining work with play, or fed them on the roast
corpses of their relatives, and afterwards strangled them with tresses
of their mother's hair.

I do not recall these facts in order to show that Elizabethan policy was
a riot of blackguardism. That is obvious, and it is irrelevant. I
mention them in order to show that the blackguardism under review was an
unrelieved failure. At one time, indeed, it seemed to have succeeded.

"Ireland, brayed as in a mortar, to use Sir John Davies' phrase," writes
M. Paul-Dubois, "at last submitted. In the last years of the century
half the population had perished. Elizabeth reigned over corpses and
ashes. _Hibernia Pacata_--Ireland is 'pacified.'"

* * * * *

The blunder discloses itself at a glance. Only half the population had
perished; there were still alive, according to the most probable
estimate, quite two hundred thousand Irishmen. The next generation helps
to ill