continuation of the barbarous policy of extermination by fire and
sword which we have seen pursued so ruthlessly in the seventeenth
century. It is still the land-war, conducted according to modern
tactics, aiming with deadly effect at the same object, the slow but
sure destruction of a nuisance called the 'Celtic race.' This may be
a delusion on their part; but it is the deep-rooted conviction of
priests and people, and hence the utter inadequacy of any enactment
which will not render such a policy impossible, by making the tenure
of the occupiers independent of the will of the landlords. Until such
time the peasantry will continue to offer a bloody resistance to the
legal attempts to crush them out of the country.

In this self-defensive war, they cannot cope with the armed power
of England in the open field; and they are driven upon the criminal
resource of the oppressed in all ages and all lands--secret
combination and assassination. For this crime they feel no remorse;
first, because it is _war_--just as the soldier feels no remorse
for killing the enemy in a battle; and, secondly, because their
conquerors, and the successors of those conquerors, have taught them
too well by repeated examples the terrible lesson of making light of
human life. Poor ignorant creatures, they cannot see that, while
the most illustrious noblemen in England won applause and honours
by shooting down Irish women and children like seals or otters,
the survivors of the murdered people should be execrated as cruel,
barbarous, and infamous for shooting the men that pull down the
rooftrees over the heads of their helpless families and trample upon
their household gods. These convictions of theirs are very revolting
to our feelings, but they are facts; and as facts the legislature must
deal with them. If there be a people, otherwise singularly free from
crime, who regard the assassination of the members of a certain