Page:Confiscation in Irish history.djvu/87

 Complaints still continued. In 1632 Hadsor, an English official who spoke the Irish language, reported that individuals had been unfairly treated and stated that the Irish gentlemen appointed to distribute them helped themselves to the lands which they were to divide amongst others.

I have dealt thus at length with the plantation of Wexford because in it we find all the features of the confiscations carried through under James I. They took place in a time of peace, without any pretext of rebellion; they discriminated against the native Irish, who had, if anything, been rather better treated than the old English under the Tudors; they were founded on old titles for the Crown, based on legal quibbles and raked up out of the obscurity of centuries; they struck at the root of the Tudor policy which had in the main recognized the occupier as the equitable owner of lands: they upset or at least rendered insecure all grants by Elizabeth, or even by James in his early years, based on surrenders by the occupier. And at the same time they show a real desire on the part of the authorities in London to deal fairly with the Irish, a desire frustrated as a rule by the greed and unscrupulous methods of the officials on the spot.

Above all they exasperated the natives far more than any confiscation based on conquest in war could have done. Had the plantations been fairly carried out, it is possible that the Irish would not greatly have resented them. The land available