Sir John Davies boasts of the benefits received by the natives, by
extending to them the English law, and turning the whole kingdom into
shire ground. But the appearance of things alone was changed. The
original scheme was never deviated from for a single hour. Unheard-of
confiscations were made in the northern parts, upon grounds of plots and
conspiracies, never proved upon their supposed authors. The war of
chicane succeeded to the war of arms and of hostile statutes; and a
regular series of operations was carried on, particularly from
Chichester's time, in the ordinary courts of justice, and by special
commissions and inquisitions,--first under pretence of tenures, and then
of titles in the crown, for the purpose of the total extirpation of the
interest of the natives in their own soil,--until this species of subtle
ravage, being carried to the last excess of oppression and insolence
under Lord Strafford, it kindled the flames of that rebellion which
broke out in 1641. By the issue of that war, by the turn which the Earl
of Clarendon gave to things at the Restoration, and by the total
reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691, the ruin of the native
Irish, and, in a great measure, too, of the first races of the English,
was completely accomplished.
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