Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/536

$i6 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 62. the garrison at a strength too low to support her authority, even while the chiefs were disunited and quarrelling among themselves. She defeated her imme- diate object. Her thriftiness was more wasteful in the end than her father's expenditure. For the revenue of the country could not rise till rebellion was suppressed, and the suppression of rebellion cost more than the sus- tained police garrisons which would have prevented it. At the same time, she made impossible the forbearance which she enjoined : she talked of mercy, and she made violence inevitable. Her Deputies and her Presidents, too short-handed to rule with justice, were driven to cruelty in spite of themselves. It was easier to kill than to restrain. Death was the only gaoler which their finances could support ; while the Irish in turn lay in wait to retaliate on their oppressors, and atrocity begat atrocity in hopeless continuity. When the failure of the intended settlement of the Earl of Essex in Ulster was known in London, it produced as usual, in Elizabeth, ' a great misliking of the whole matter/ She blamed Burghley and Leicester ' for having advised it.' She drew directions to Essex to compose his differences with the chief of the O'Neils, to apologize for it could mean nothing else for having attempted to dispossess them of their lands ; to withdraw any English holders or colonists out of the Northern Provinces, except a handful who were to be left in the castle at Knockfergus, and then to return to England. 1 1 Burghley to Essex, March 30, 1574: MSS. Ireland.