England, as well as in Ireland. Hence the affairs of both countries were, for the most part, administered under the same forms, forms which were as ill suited to the waywardness of the Celt, as they met exactly the stronger nature of the Saxon. At intervals, when the Government was exasperated by unusual outrages, some prince of the blood was sent across as viceroy; and half a century of acquiescence in disorder would be followed by a spasmodic severity, which irritated without subduing, and forfeited affection while it failed to terrify. At all other times, Ireland was governed by the Norman Irish, and these, as the years went on, were tempted by their convenience to strengthen themselves by Irish alliances, to identify their interests with those of the native chiefs, in order to conciliate their support; to prefer the position of wild and independent sovereigns, resting on the attachment of a people whose affections they had gained by learning to resemble them, to that of military lords over a hostile population, the representatives of a distant authority, on which they could not rely.

This is a partial account of the Irish difficulty. We must look deeper, however, for the full interpretation of it; and outward circumstances never alone suffice to explain a moral transformation. The Roman military colonists remained Roman alike on the Rhine and on the Euphrates. The Turkish conquerors caught no infection from Greece, or from the provinces on the Danube. The Celts in England were absorbed by the Saxon invaders; and the Mogul and the Anglo-Indian alike have shown

his

no tendency to assimilate with the Hindoo. When a marked type of human character yields before another, the change is owing to some element of power in that other, which coming in contact with elements weaker than itself, subdues and absorbs them. The Irish spirit, which exercised so fatal a fascination, was enabled to triumph over the Norman in virtue of representing certain perennial tendencies of humanity, which are latent in all mankind, and which opportunity may at any moment develope. It was not a national spirit-the clans were never united, except by some common hatred; and the normal relation of the chiefs towards each other was a relation of chronic war and hostility. It was rather an impatience of control, a deliberate preference for disorder, a determination in each individual man to go whether it was a good way or a bad, and a reckless hatred of industry. The result was the inevitable one-oppression, misery, and wrong. But in detail faults and graces were so interwoven, that the offensiveness of the evil was disguised by the charm of the good; and even the Irish vices were the counterfeit of virtues, contrived so cunningly that it was hard to distinguish their true texture. The fidelity of the clansmen to their leaders was faultlessly beautiful; extravagance appeared like generosity, and improvidence like unselfishness: anarchy disguised itself under the name of liberty; and war and plunder were decorated by poetry as the honourable occupation of heroic natures. Such were the Irish with whom the Norman conquerors found themselves in contact; and over them all was thrown a peculiar ima

own way,

ginative grace, a careless atmosphere of humour, sometimes gay, sometimes melancholy, always attractive, which at once disarmed the hand which was raised to strike or punish them. These spirits were dangerous neighbours. Men who first entered the country at mature age might be fortified by experience against their influence, but on the young they must have exerted a charm of fatal potency. The foster-nurse first chanted the spell over the cradle in wild passionate melodies.1 It was breathed in the ears of the growing boy by the minstrels who haunted the halls, and the lawless attractions of disorder proved too strong for the manhood which was trained among so perilous associations.

2

For such a country, therefore, but one form of government could succeed-an efficient military despotism. The people could be wholesomely controlled only by an English deputy, sustained by an English army, and armed with arbitrary power, till the inveterate turbulence of their tempers had died away under repression, and they had learnt in their improved condition the value of order and rule. This was the opinion of all statesmen who possessed any real knowledge of Ireland,

1 Some sayeth that the English | 'danes,' their extortions, robberies, noble folk useth to deliver their and abuses as valiantness; which children to the King's Irish enemies rejoiceth them in their evil doings, to foster, and there with maketh and procures a talent of Irish dispos bands.-State Papers, vol. ii. p. 13. ition and conversation in them.'— Cowley to Cromwell: Ibid. vol. ii. p. 450. There is a remarkable passage to the same effect in SPENSER'S View of the State of Ireland.

* Harpers, rhymers, Irish chroniclers, bards, and ishallyn (ballad singers) commonly go with praises to gentlemen in the English pale, praising in rhymes, otherwise called

If

from Lord Talbot under Henry VI. to the latest viceroy who attempted a milder method and found it fail. the King were as wise as Solomon the Sage,' said the report of 1515, 'he shall never subdue the wild Irish to his obedience without dread of the sword and of the might and strength of his power. As long as they may resist and save their lives, they will not obey the King." Unfortunately, although English statesmen were able to see the course which ought to be followed, it had been too inconvenient to pursue that course. They had put off the evil day, preferring to close their eyes against the mischief instead of grappling with it resolutely; and thus, at the opening of the sixteenth century, when the hitherto neglected barbarians were about to become a sword in the Pope's hands to fight the battle against the Reformation, the 'King's Irish enemies' had recovered all but absolute possession of the island, and nothing remained of Strongbow's conquests save the shadow of a titular sovereignty, and a country strengthened in hostility by the means which had been used to subdue it.

The events on which we are about to enter require for their understanding a sketch of the position of the various chiefs, as they were at this time scattered over the island. The English pale, originally comprising 'the four shires,' as they were called, of Dublin, Kildare, Meath, and Uriel, or Louth, had been shorn down to half its old dimensions. The line extended from

State of Ireland, and plan for its reformation: State Papers, vol. ii.

Dundalk to Ardee; from Ardee by Castletown to Kells; thence through Athboy and Trim to the Castle of Maynooth; from Maynooth it crossed to Claine upon the Liffey, and then followed up the line of the river to Baltimore Eustace, from which place it skirted back at the rear of the Wicklow and Dublin mountains to the forts at Dalkey, seven miles south of Dublin. This narrow strip alone, some fifty miles long and twenty broad, was in any sense English. Beyond the borders the common law of England was of no authority; the King's writ was but a strip of parchment; and the country was parcelled among a multitude of independent chiefs, who acknowledged no sovereignty but that of strength, who levied tribute on the inhabitants of the pale as a reward for a nominal protection of their rights, and as a compensation for abstaining from the plunder of their farms. Their swords were their sceptres; their codes of right, the Brehon traditions-a convenient system, which was called law, but which in practice was a happy contrivance for the composition of felonies.3

2

1 Report on the State of Ireland: | English men . . . . State Papers, vol. ii. p. 22.

not to the in

tent that they should escape harm

the

2 Baron Finglas, in his sug-less; but to the intent to devour gestions for a reformation, urges them, as the greedy hound delivereth that no black rent be given ne heep from the wolf.'-State paid to any Irishman upon any of Papers, vol. ii. pp. 16, 17. the four shires from henceforward.' -HARRIS, p. 101. Many an Irish captain keepeth and preserveth the King's subjects in peace without hurt of the enemies; inasmuch as some of those hath tribute yearly of

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3 EUDOXUS-What is that which you call the Brehon Law? It is a word unto us altogether unknown.

IRENEUS-It is a rule of right, unwritten, but delivered by tradition from one to another, in which often