All the Irish armies, and particularly that under O’Neill, occupied excellent strategic positions, and the hopes of the military chiefs and the nation rose high when, suddenly, there came a blight upon those hopes in the shape of a cessation of hostilities—in other words, a prolonged armistice—agreed to between the Anglo-Catholic majority in the National Council on the one side, and the Marquis of Ormond, representing the King of England, on the other. The Anglo-Catholics were again duped by pretences of liberality toward their religion, as their fathers had been in the days of Elizabeth; and this ill-considered truce wrested from Ireland all the advantages won in the war—which had already lasted two years—by the ability of her generals and the courage of her troops. Vain was the protest of O’Neill, of Preston, of Burke, of Barry, of the Papal Nuncio, of the majority of the Irish nation. Charles was in straits in England, fighting the Parliamentary forces arrayed against his acts of despotism, and Ormond promised everything in order to end the war in Ireland, temporarily at least, and so be enabled to send needed succor to a sovereign whom he loved and served much better than he did God and country. With incredible fatuity, the Anglo-Catholic majority in the National Council listened to the voice of Ormond, and voted men and money to support the cause of the bad king who had let Strafford loose upon Ireland! We are glad to be able to say that the “Old Irish” element, represented by the brave and able O’Neill, was in nowise responsible for this act of weakness and folly. O’Neill saw into futurity, and frightful must have been that vision to the patriot-hero, for it included the horrors of Drogheda and Wexford, where the thirsty sword of Cromwell bitterly avenged on Ireland the foolish and fatal “truce of Castlemartin”; another lesson to nations, if indeed another were needed, to avoid mixing up in the quarrels of their neighbors. Ireland invited ruin on that dark day when she voted to draw the sword for the ungrateful Charles Stuart against the Parliament of England. The temporary concession of Catholic privileges—designed to be withdrawn when victory perched on the royal banner—was poor compensation for the loss of advantages gained at the price of the blood of brave men, and the sowing of a wind of vengeance which produced the Cromwellian whirlwind. If King Charles had ever done a fair or manly act by Ireland—even by the Anglo-Catholics of Ireland—the folly of that country might be, in a measure, excusable, but his whole policy had been, on the contrary, cold-blooded, double-faced, and thoroughly ungrateful. In this instance, the Anglo-Irish Catholics brought all their subsequent misfortunes on themselves. As if to emphasize its imbecility, the National Council placed Lord Castlehaven, an English Catholic, in supreme command over O’Neill in Ulster. Owen Roe was, of course,