Confiscation in Irish History. By W. F. T. Butler. (T.
Fisher Unwin. 7s. 6d. net.)—This is a good and useful piece of historical research, free from the passion and bias that spoil so many books on Irish history. Mr. Butler has tried to define the nature and extent of the successive confiscations of Irish land undor the Tudors, the Stuarts, and William III. He dispels many legends. Elizabeth did not as a rule confiscate the lands of a clan whose chief had rebelled. The Cromwellian alternative of " To Hell or Connaught " did not mean that Connaught was the most barren part of Ireland, for Ulster was far poorer then. Moreover, only the rebellious landowners and armed rebels were to be banished across the Shannon ; the mass of the peasantry of Munster and Leinster remained on their holdings. The six Plantation Counties of Ulster were Derry, Donegal, Tyrone, Armagh, whore the chiefs had deprived the clansmen of their legal titles to the land, and Cavan and Fermanagh, whero the clansmen had been recognized as free- holders. Mr. Butler rebukes the Spectator for " habitually " including Down and Antrim in the Plantation, and says that in these, the most "thoroughly British" counties of Ireland, " colonisation was founded not on force or confiscation so much as on peaceful penetration."
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