Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/303

 157*-] STATE OF IRELAND. 383 is neither fear nor love of God, nor regard for faith nor oaths. They murder, ravish, spoil, burn, commit whore- dom, break wedlock, change wives without grudge of conscience.' The bridges, the especial charge of the religious orders, were broken down. The chiefs took possession of the Church lands, the churches fell in and went to ruin, and the unfortunate country seemed lapsing into total savagery. Colonization, once the remedy from which Tremayne had formed such brilliant hopes, he now, after a year's experience, utterly abandoned. The English settlers, he found everywhere, became worse than the Irish, in all the qualities in which the Irish were most in fault. No native Celt hated England more bitterly than the transported Saxon. The forms of English justice might be introduced, but juries com- bined to defeat the ends for which they were instituted, and every one in authority, English or Irish, preferred to rule after the Irish system. 'None,' Tremayne said, 'will govern after English law that may be suffered to rule after the other sort ; for it doth not only draw to the captains the obedience of the people, but the gains of all forfeitures almost after his own judgment ; and in this kind of govern- ment our own nation is grown so perfect, as if any do attain the rule of a country, he frameth himself by these means to attend his profit and authority. Such as have any settling are made the unfitter for all reformation, so much they regard their own particular beyond the general.'