was large, the population scanty[1]; if some lands were taken from the Irish, yet, as compensation, the rest was legally secured to them, the uncertain exactions of the chiefs were done away with, peace was secured. But the capital mistake was made of absolutely suppressing the small landowner, a mistake apparently honestly founded on the doctrine that "the multitude of small freeholders beggars a country." The result was that while the more influential clansmen were discontented, the smaller men, deprived of their all, lost all confidence in the justice of the administration, a loss that has never up to now been made good.
The plantation of Longford shows most of the features mentioned above. The territory of the O'Ferralls, the ancient Annaly, the modern County Longford, had been for nearly a generation the subject of controversy. First, under Elizabeth, the two chiefs O'Ferrall Boy and O'Ferrall Bane, seem to have endeavoured to "grab" the lands of the clansmen. These efforts had been successfully resisted; and the clansmen were recognised as the owners of the lands not comprised in the demesnes of the chiefs.
Next the Baron of Delvin and his mother had got a grant to be satisfied out of any forfeited lands in Longford which might have come to the Crown during Tyrone's rebellion; and during the early days of James I. a violent controversy was
- ↑ Some of the Irish asserted that 100,000 people were affected by the plantation. This figure is quite impossible: the baronies in question had in 1901 about 45,000 inhabitants. The Commissioners apparently give the population as about 15,000. Even if it numbered 20,000 there was ample room for new settlers.
