After Limerick
1691—1774.
The period with which this paper has to deal is the saddest of the many sad periods of Irish history. Throughout the prevailing note is one of gloom; there is little relief in the way of brilliant figures or dramatic situations. It is all one long tale of wrong-doing; wrong-doing by the English, or wrong-doing by the Protestant ascendancy. For this three quarters of a century the history of Ireland is little more than a history of political dependence, commercial restrictions, administrative corruption, and religious persecution. We see at work a long train of causes blighting the prosperity, crushing the genius, and degrading the character of the Irish people, and we realize clearly all those forces which were inevitably leading them into a hatred of England and distrust of the law.
From one point of view the revolution of 1689 may be regarded as the final conquest of Ireland by the English. It was, from the standpoint of the Irish, not a struggle between two dynasties,
291
