And the use which the English Government made of the Irish Parliament was as disgraceful as their treatment of Irish industries.  Miserably poor though the country was, it was burdened by the payment of pensions of a nature so scandalous that the English Parliament even of that period would not have tolerated them.

The conditions of land tenure also added to the miseries of the country.  It is often said that the land belonged to wealthy English absentees, and the unfortunate occupiers, who had no security of tenure, were ground down by the payment of exorbitant rents.  This is literally true; but, like most partial statements, misleading.  Much of the land was owned by wealthy Englishmen—­which of itself was a serious evil; but they let it in large farms at low rents on long leases, in the hope that the occupiers would execute their own improvements.  Instead of that, however, their tenants sublet their holdings in smaller lots to others; and these subtenants did the same again; thus there were sometimes three or four middlemen, and the rent paid by the actual occupier to his immediate landlord was ten times the amount the nominal owner received.  As the rate of wages was miserably low, and the rent of a cabin and a plot of ground scandalously high, how the wretched occupiers managed to keep body and soul together is a mystery.  Much has been written about the useless, dissipated lives of these middlemen or “squireens”; and no doubt it is to a great extent true, although, like everything else in Ireland, it has been exaggerated.  Travellers have told us of some landlords who resided on their estates, did their utmost to improve them, and forbade subletting (in spite of the unpopularity caused by their doing so).  And one of the remarkable features of later Irish history is that whenever there was a period of acute difficulty and danger there were always country gentlemen to be found ready to risk their lives and fortunes or to undertake the thankless and dangerous duties of county magistrates.

It is curious how close a parallel might be drawn between the way in which Norman Ireland was Ersefied and that in which Cromwellian Ireland was Catholicized.  Many of those who became large landowners by the Cromwellian confiscations, having no religious prejudices (some might say, no religious or humane feelings), when the leases of their tenants fell in, put the farms up to auction regardless of the feelings of the occupiers.  As the Roman Catholics were content with a simpler manner of life than the Protestants, they generally offered higher rents; the dispossessed Protestants, driven from their homes, joined their brethren in America.  Then in the South, the poorer of Cromwell’s settlers, in some cases, neglected by their own pastors, joined the religion of the majority; in others, intermarrying with the natives, allowed their children to be brought up in the faith of their mothers.  Hence we arrive at the curious fact that at the present day some of the most ardent Romanists and violent Nationalists, who are striving to have the Irish language enforced all over the country, and pose as the representatives of ancient Irish septs, are really the descendants of Cromwell’s soldiers.