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niSTOET OF ENGLAND.
cinp. would have been unnecessary and unjustifiable in a well—governed country. The law. was altogether without force in thehighlands which lie on the south of the vale of Tralee. Noofficer of justice willingly ventured into those parts. One pur-suivant who in 1680 attempted to execute a warrant there wasmurdered. The people of Kenmare seem however to have beensufficiently secured by their union, their intelligence and theirspirit, till the close of the year 1688. Then at length theeffects of the policy of Tyrconnel began to be felt even in thatremote corner of Ireland. In the eyes of the peasantry of Mun-ster the colonists were aliens and heretics. The buildings, theboats, the machines, the granaries, the dairies, the furnaces,were doubtless contemplated by the native race with thatmingled envy and contempt with which the ignorant naturallyregard the triumphs of knowledge. Nor is it at all improbablethat the emigrants had been guilty of those faults from whichcivilised men who settle among an uncivilised people are rarelyfree. The power derived from superior intelligence had, wemay easily believe, been sometimes'displayed with insolence,and sometimes exerted with injustice. Now therefore, whenthe news spread from altar to altar, and from cabin to cabin,that the strangers were to be driven out, and that them housesand lands were to be given as a booty to the children of the soil,a predatory war commented. Plunderers, thirty, forty, seventyin a troop, prowled round the town, some with firearms, somewith pikes. The barns were robbed. The horses were stolen.In one foray a hundred and'forty cattle were swept away anddriven off through the ravines of Glengariff. In one night sixdwellings were broken open and pillaged. At last the colonists,driven to extremity, resolved, to die like men rather than bemurdered in their beds. The house built by Petty for his agentwas the largest in the place. It stood on a rocky peninsularound which the waves of the bay broke. Here the whole