52 THE IRISH PEOPLE. 



together until they may do us a mischief in Ireland. 

 It is hinted here that the King of Poland, having 

 gotten Moscow and Smolensko, may in short time 

 become master of the whole Dukedom of Muscovia 

 and Russland." (Reports in Hist, MSS. in 1885; 

 Digby MSS., p. 529). 



32. 1612 ? Lord Bacon writes of Ireland :" For 

 this island, it is endowed with so many dowries of 

 nature, considering the fruitfulness of the soil, the 

 ports, the rivers, the fishings, the quarries, the 

 woods, and other materials, and especially the race 

 and generation of men, valiant, hard, and active, as 

 it is not easy, no not upon the Continent, to find 

 such confluence of commodities, if the hand of man 

 d'd join with the hand of nature." 



33. In 1614, Carew, Lord President of Munster 

 and Earl of Totnes, says : " The Irish have the 

 same bodies they ever had, and therein they had and 

 have the advantage of us. From their infancies 

 they have been and are exercised in the use of arms. 

 That they are better soldiers than heretofore their 

 continual employment in the wars abroad assures 

 us ; and they do conceive that their men are better 

 than ours." 



34. In 1615, an English anonymous writer, quoted 

 by Mr. Prendergast, in his Cromwellian Settlement, 

 from an English MS. of Trinity College Library, 



