Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (1 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)Hurlbert, William Henry
History
Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (1 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)
Hurlbert, William Henry
Ireland -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
These masterful Normans, all over Europe from Apulia to Britain, worked
out the problem of "satisfied nationalities" much more successfully and
simply than Napoleon III. in our own day. If Edward Bruce broke down
where Robert succeeded, the causes of his failure may perhaps be worth
considering even now by people who have set themselves the task in our
times of establishing "an Irish nationality." Leaving out the
Cromwellian English of Tipperary and the South, and the Scotch who have
done for Ulster, what he aimed at for all Ireland, they have very much
the same materials to deal with as those which he dismally failed to
fashion.
Drogheda stands beautifully in a deep valley through which flows the
Boyne Water, spanned by one of the finest viaducts in Europe. Here, two
years after the discovery of America, Poyning's Parliament enacted that
all laws passed in Ireland must be subject to approval by the English
Privy Council. I wonder nobody has proposed a modification of this form
of Home Rule for Ireland now. Earl Grey's recent suggestion that
Parliamentary government be suspended for ten years in Ireland, which I
heard warmly applauded by some able lawyers and business men in Dublin,
involves like this an elimination of the Westminster debates from the
problem of government in Ireland. As we passed Drogheda, Father Burke's
magnificent presence and thrilling voice came back to me out of the
mist of years, describing with an indignant pathos, never to be
forgotten, the fearful scenes which followed the surrender of Sir Arthur
Ashton's garrison, when "for the glory of God," and "to prevent the
further effusion of blood," Oliver ordered all the officers to be
knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the
rest shipped as slaves to the Barbadoes. But how different was the
spirit in which the great Dominican recalled these events from that in
which the "popular orators," scattering firebrands and death, delight to
dwell upon them!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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