We might be listening to the voice of the _Fortnightly Review_ of yesterday.

"The English are making great efforts to bring about a peace, offering excellent terms, and for this purpose the Viceroy sent messengers twice to O'Neill, saying among other things, that Your Majesty is making peace with the Queen, and that his condition will be hopeless.

At other times he says that no greater misfortune could happen to the country than to bring Spaniards into it, because they are haughty and vicious and they would destroy and ruin the country." The Irish princes were no fools.

"To all this they reply most honourably that they will hold out as long as they have one soldier or there remains a cow to eat." Hugh O'Neill saw clearly that all compromise between Ireland and England was futile, and that the way of escape was by complete separation and lay only through Europe.

He again and again begged the Spanish King to sever Ireland and erect it into an allied State.
He offered the crown of Ireland to a Spanish prince, just as three centuries earlier another and a great O'Neill offered the crown of Ireland to Edward Bruce in 1315.
The coming of the Bruce saved Gaelic Ireland for three centuries.