stocks to the English territory, where a Papist, though he had to endure much restraint and much humiliation, was allowed to put his own price on his goods, and received that price in silver.  Those traders who remained within the unhappy region were ruined.  Every warehouse that contained any valuable property was broken open by ruffians who pretended that they were commissioned to procure stores for the public service; and the owner received, in return for bales of cloth and hogsheads of sugar, some fragments of old kettles and saucepans, which would not in London or Paris have been taken by a beggar.

As soon as a merchant ship arrived in the bay of Galway or in the Shannon, she was boarded by these robbers.  The cargo was carried away; and the proprietor was forced to content himself with such a quantity of cowhides, of wool and of tallow as the gang which had plundered him chose to give him.  The consequence was that, while foreign commodities were pouring fast into the harbours of Londonderry, Carrickfergus, Dublin, Waterford and Cork, every mariner avoided Limerick and Galway as nests of pirates.75

The distinction between the Irish foot soldier and the Irish Rapparee had never been very strongly marked.  It now disappeared.  Great part of the army was turned loose to live by marauding.  An incessant predatory war raged along the line which separated the domain of William from that of James.  Every day companies of freebooters, sometimes wrapped in twisted straw which served the purpose of armour, stole into the English territory, burned, sacked, pillaged, and hastened back to their own ground.  To guard against these incursions was not easy; for the peasantry of the plundered country had a strong fellow feeling with the plunderers.  To empty the granary, to set fire to the dwelling, to drive away the cows, of a heretic was regarded by every squalid inhabitant of a mud cabin as a good work.  A troop engaged in such a work might confidently expect to fall in, notwithstanding all the proclamations of the Lords justices, with some friend who would indicate the richest booty, the shortest road, and the safest hiding place.  The English complained that it was no easy matter to catch a Rapparee.  Sometimes, when he saw danger approaching, he lay down in the long grass of the bog; and then it was as difficult to find him as to find a hare sitting.  Sometimes he sprang into a stream, and lay there, like an otter, with only his mouth and nostrils above the water.  Nay, a whole gang of banditti would, in the twinkling of an eye, transform itself into a crowd of harmless labourers.  Every man took his gun to pieces, hid the lock in his clothes, stuck a cork in the muzzle, stopped the touch hole with a quill, and threw the weapon into the next pond.  Nothing was to be seen but a train of poor rustics who had not so much as a cudgel among them, and whose humble look and crouching walk seemed to show that their spirit was thoroughly broken to slavery.  When the peril was