THE HOME RULE FIVE
So much for the one century of Union. What about the five of Home Rule?
"Were there no black centuries before 1800? Had Ireland no grievances?
What of the 'curse of Cromwell,' the broken 'Treaty of Limerick,' and
the penal laws?"
Thus I shall be challenged.
There were, indeed, black centuries before 1800, and black events.
Ireland endured a special share of the agony inflicted upon Europe by
the great religious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. She suffered, perhaps, more than any other country from the
divisions of Christian Europe following on the revolt of Luther against
Rome in 1520. The statutory limitations of the Irish Parliament during
that period led to many interferences from England, and the gradual
exclusion of Catholics divided the Parliament from the Irish nation.
The artificial infusion of a fanatical Protestant population by James
I. and Cromwell produced a terrible embitterment of the struggle. There
were crimes on both sides, and calamities beyond telling. But, with all
that, it is still to be doubted whether any of those centuries presents
such a picture of national decay, both industrial and social, as is
presented by the Ireland of the nineteenth century.
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