Dr. Lynch, author of Cambrensis Eversus, expresses his astonishment at the great number of ancient Irish kings, most of whom were cut off by a violent death, each hewing his way to the throne over the body of his predecessor.  But upon applying his mind to the more profound consideration of the matter, he found nothing more wonderful in the phenomenon ’than that the human family should proceed from one man—­the overflowing harvest from a few grains of seed, &c.’  His learned translator, the Rev. Matthew Kelly, of Maynooth, sees proof of amendment in the fact that between 722 and 1022 twelve Irish kings died a natural death.  This candid and judicious writer observes in a note—­’It appears from the Irish and English annals that there was perpetual war in Ireland during more than 400 years after the invasion.  It could not be called a war of races, except perhaps during the first century, for English and Irish are constantly found fighting under the same banner, according to the varying interests of the rival lords and princes of both nations.  This was the case even from the commencement.’[1]

[Footnote 1:  Vol. i. p.216.]

Many persons have wondered at the success of small bands of English invaders.  Why did not the Irish nation rise en masse, and drive them into the sea?  The answer is easy.  There was no Irish nation.  About half a million of people were scattered over the island in villages, divided into tribes generally at war with one another, each chief ready to accept foreign aid against his adversary—­some, perhaps, hoping thereby to attain supremacy in their clans, and others, who were pretenders, burning to be avenged of those who had supplanted them.  It was religion that first gave the Irish race a common cause.  In the very year of the English invasion (1171) there were no fewer than twenty predatory excursions or battles among the Irish chiefs themselves, exclusive of contests with the invaders.  Hence the Pope said—­’Gens se interimit mutua caede.’  The Pope was right.

The clergy exerted themselves to the utmost in trying to exorcise the demon of destruction and to arrest the work of extermination.  Not only the Bashall Isa, or ‘the staff of Jesus,’ but many other relics were used with the most solemn rites, to impress the people with a sense of the wickedness of their clan-fights, and to induce them to keep the peace, but in vain.  The King of Connaught once broke a truce entered into under every possible sanction of this kind, trampling upon all, that he might get the King of Meath into his clutches.  Hence the Rev. Mr. Kelly is constrained to say—­’It is now generally admitted by Catholic writers that however great the efforts of the Irish clergy to reform their distracted country in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the picture of anarchy drawn by Pope Adrian is hardly overcharged.’  Indeed, some Catholic writers have confessed that the anarchy would never have been terminated except by foreign conquest establishing