Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/353

After Limerick building up a large Protestant population. Even the children in the schools, young as they were, seem to have known how to bear hardship and punishment for the sake of their religion. An eyewitness stated that often on Fridays and fast days children would not take their broth, prepared as it was with meat, and how it had to be poured down their throats against their will. Indeed there was practically no conversion to the Protestant religion among the lower class of Catholics. Persecution only drew the Irish more closely to the Catholic Church; it created close ties between them and their priests. All this was bound to be the result of persecution in a country where the particular form of religion practised was particularly suited to the character and temperament of the people.

And so, this period from the Revolution to 1774 is sad reading. It was a time of wholesale coercion, coercion applied to every side of the national life. England held Ireland in the hollow of her hand, and she exercised all the privileges of brute force, softened by no feeling of humanity or sympathy with the wretched people whom she had taken upon herself to govern. The whole relation which existed between England and Ireland at this time is probably unique in history, and the persecution of 341