On Local Disturbances in Ireland
by George Cornewall Lewis (9781458837219)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: disturbances; and 2nd, their character and objects, the means used for accomplishing these objects, and the effects produced by them; and lastly, to inquire what measures are likely to prevent their recurrence. Causes Of Disturbances In Ireland. In order to ascertain the causes of the local disturbances which have now prevailed in Ireland to a greater or less extent for more than seventy years, it is necessary to consider the state of the occupying tenantry and the labouring classes in that country, at the time when these disturbances began. The treatment of the native Irish, as an incurably barbarous race, before the Reformation, and the various civil wars and confiscations which took place after the Reformation, had, at the period of the Revolution, when King William's power was finally established in Ireland, so completely broken up the framework of society, and so loosened men's notions as to the obligations of law and morality, that it would have been a difficult task for the wisest and most beneficient government to raise the mass of the Irish people to the general level of European civilization. Instead, however, of attempting a course of policy which, if it did not effect everything, was at least sure of partial success, the Government, alarmed at the strength of the Pretender's party, arid acting on the persecuting maxims which were then still current in Europe, introduced the penal code against the Catholics, and treated the majority of the Irish people as outlaws. According to this system (which has to a greater or less extent been acted on nearly up to the present day) eveiy Irish Catholic was presumed to be disaffected to theState, and vas treated as an open or concealed rebel: the entire government was carried on by the Protestants and for their benefit; ...

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