It is no wonder that Sir Toby was obliged to add to his report this assurance: 'There is not a more discontented people in Christendom.' It is difficult to conceive how any people in Christendom could be contented, treated as they were, according to this account, which the officer of the Government did not deny; for surely no people, in any Christian country, were ever the victims of such flagrant injustice, inflicted by a Government which promised to relieve them from the cruel exactions of their barbarous chiefs--a Government, too, solemnly pledged to protect them in the unmolested enjoyment of their houses and lands. How little this policy tended to strengthen the Government appears from a confession made about the same time by the lord deputy himself. He wrote: 'The hearts of the Irish are against us: we have only a handful of men in entertainment so ill paid, that everyone is out of heart, and our resources so discredited, by borrowing and not repaying, that we cannot take up 1,000 l. in twenty days, if the safety of the kingdom depended upon it. The Irish are hopeful of the return of the fugitives, or invasion from foreign parts.' But the safety of England, do what she might in the way of oppression, lay then, as it lay often since, and ever will lie, in the tendency to division, and the instability of the Celtic character. The Rev. Mr. Meehan, with all his zeal for Irish nationality, admits this failing of the people with his usual candour. He says: 'These traits, so peculiar to the Celtic character, have been justly stigmatised by a friendly and observant Italian (the Nuncio Rinuccini) who, some thirty years after the period of which we are writing, tells us that the native Irish were behind the rest of Europe in the knowledge of those things that tended to their material improvement--indifferent agriculturists, living from hand to mouth--caring more for the sword than the plough--good Catholics, though by nature barbarous--and placing their hopes of deliverance from English rule on foreign intervention. For this they were constantly straining their eyes towards France or Spain, and, no matter whence the ally came, were ever ready to rise in revolt. One virtue, however--intensest love of country--more or less redeemed these vices, for so they deserve to be called; but to establish anything like strict military discipline or organisation among themselves, it must be avowed they had no aptitude.' This, says Mr. Meehan, 'to some extent, will account for the apathy of the Northern Catholics, while the undertakers were carrying on the gigantic eviction known as the plantation of Ulster; for, since Sir Cahir O'Dogherty's rebellion till 1615, there was only one attempt to resist the intruders, an abortive raid on the city of Derry, for which the meagre annals of that year tell us, six of the Earl of Tyrone's nearest kinsmen were put to death. Withal the people of Ulster were full of hope that O'Neill would return with forces to