Page:Confiscation in Irish history.djvu/262

 With it might have come as in Scotland the gradual adoption of the language and ideals of England. But with confiscation and accompanying colonisation came the introduction of a new element, alien in blood, in religion, in ideals, bringing a disturbing factor into the nation's life, preventing the steady development among the older element of such a feeling of loyalty and of content with the regime finally set up under James I.

It is so hard for us nowadays to realise this spirit of loyalty, that modern writers often altogether overlook or deny its existence. But that it did exist, in spite of everything, among the bulk of the landowning classes the whole proceedings of the Confederate Catholics both clergy and laity from 1641 to 1652 shows. Their professions of devotion to the Crown appear to us moderns abject; but they redeemed their professions by the sacrifice of their lives and their property.

That the "new interest" prevailed at the Restoration, that the second Charles and the second James were persuaded that the interests of England demanded the sacrifice of the Irish did not shake their loyalty. But unluckily for them it was loyalty to a dynasty rejected by the majority of the British.

Every fresh confiscation had increased the number of those who, though they may have been loyal to the dynasty, were disaffected to the system by which that dynasty governed. The new dynasty had but little claim on the sympathies of the Irish Catholics, yet we find very soon an acceptance of the House of Hanover by practically all of them