Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/237

 1567. ] STA TE OF IRELAND. 2 1 7 of uncertainties elsewhere, Cecil indeed, as well as every other minister who had attempted so far to deal with the Irish difficulty, had found the task too hard for him. The ' kingdom ' was one which had yielded no fruit to its owners except expense and perplexity ; and the qualities in the people from which alone improve- ment could be expected were terribly slow in appear- ing. Nevertheless, there were times and places where happier symptoms prevented absolute despair. As with the great central morasses the bog in some capricious humour for a while recedes, and the margin dries and meadow grass takes the place of the rushes and the peat, so with the Irish people a disposition to industry displaced sometimes for brief intervals the usual ap- petite for disorder, and the administration would flatter itself that the new era was commencing. Such a fal- lacious period succeeded on the fall of Shan O'Neil, and in the harbour towns in Cork, Waterford, Youghal, Limerick, to some extent even in Galway, trade began to grow, and with trade a sense of the value of order and law. The steady hand of Sidney had made itself < felt especially in the South ; the pretended right of the chiefs to levy tribute on the citizens had been abolished ; and for a circuit of a few miles about the walls the farmers were cultivating the ground on some better terms than as being sheep to be periodically shorn by the or Mac of the adjoining castle. ' God be praised/ wrote the Mayor of Waterford to Cecil, ' the poor people which were so miserably over- haled, begin to savour what it is to live under a most