England never does an injustice by halves. She is very moderate in the matter of mercy and justice, and things of that nature, but when it comes to robbery and spoliation she knows no middle way. When Elizabeth determined upon occupying Ireland, the orders were to spare neither man, woman nor child. The chiefs were driven out, and the land of the clans was distributed among the favorites of the English court. Sir Walter Raleigh had forty-two thousand acres given him from the estate of the Munster Geraldines, and a proclamation was made through England, inviting "younger brothers of good families" to undertake the planting of the land from which the Irish--the owners and occupiers of the soil--had been killed or driven off, and the repopulation of the country, "none of the native Irish to be admitted." Under this invitation, which the English robbers were not slow to accept, scores of estates were given to the dissolute nobility of England, who were willing enough to take possession of land which they got for nothing, and which would give them means to dodge the primal curse of labor. What they wanted was to live as they wanted, by the sweat of other men's brows, and British bayonets gave the means. It is not possible to detail the outrages perpetrated upon this unfortunate people by the kings and queens of England, but let it suffice to say that a wholesale system of spoliation, robbery, and even extirpation, was inaugurated and most relentlessly and rigorously pursued. Man, woman and child, and even the animals that could not be driven off and sold, were destroyed. There never was, in the history of the world, a record so black with infamy, so red with blood, or so scarlet with injustice. [Illustration: SOME OF THE DUKE OF LEINSTER'S KILDARE TENANTS.] [Sidenote: THE QUESTION OF LEASE.] This is the way England obtained possession of Ireland. This is the title by which My Lord This, and My Lord That, holds the lands he exacts rent for to-day. This is his deed to the property upon which five millions of people are eating two meals of potatoes a day, that he may gamble and keep mistresses in London and Paris. "Why does he sign a lease, the conditions of which he cannot fulfil?"