The three "German Earls" with letters from the Queen who visited Dublin in 1572 were prevented by the Lord Deputy from seeing for themselves anything beyond the walls of the city.[2] [Footnote 2: This time-honoured British precept--that foreigners should not see for themselves the workings of English rule in Ireland--finds frequent expression in the Irish State Papers.

In a letter from Dublin Castle of August, 1572, from the Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam to Burghley Elizabeth's chief Minister, we are told that the "three German Earls" with "their conductor," Mr.Rogers, have arrived.

The Viceroy adds, as his successors have done up to the present day: "According to Your Lordship's direction they shall travell as little way into the cuntry as I can."] To represent the island as a poverty striken land inhabited by a turbulent and ignorant race whom she has with unrewarded solicitude sought to civilise, uplift and educate has been a staple of England's diplomatic trade since modern diplomacy began.

To compel the trade of Ireland to be with herself alone; to cut off all direct communication between Europe and this second of European islands until no channel remained save through Britain; to enforce the most abject political and economic servitude one people ever imposed upon another; to exploit all Irish resources, lands, ports, people, wealth, even her religion, everything in fine that Ireland held, to the sole profit and advancement of England, and to keep all the books and rigorously refuse an audit of the transaction has been the secret but determined policy of England.
We have read lately something of Mexican peonage, of how a people can be reduced to a lawless slavery, their land expropriated, their bodies enslaved, their labour appropriated, and how the nexus of this fraudulent connection lies in a falsified account.

The hacenade holds the peon by a debt bondage.