The crises called revolutions are the ultimate and desperate cures for the fundamental disorganisation of society. The issue of a revolutionary struggle shows what is the true sovereign power in the revolutionised state. So strong is the interest of mankind, at least in any European country, in favour of some sort of settled rule, that civil disturbance will, if left to itself, in general end in the supremacy of some power which by securing the safety, at last gains the attachment, of the people. The Reign of Terror begets the Empire; even wars of religion at last produce peace, albeit peace may be nothing better than the iron uniformity of despotism. Could Ireland have been left for any lengthened period to herself, some form of rule adapted to the needs of the country would in all probability have been established. Whether Protestants or Catholics would have been the predominant element in the State; whether the landlords would have held their own, or whether the English system of tenure would long ago have made way for one more in conformity with native traditions; whether hostile classes and races would at last have established some modus vivendi favourable to individual freedom, or whether despotism under some of its various forms would have been sanctioned by the acquiescence of its subjects, are matters of uncertain speculation. A conclusion which, though speculative, is far less uncertain is, that Ireland if left absolutely to herself would have arrived like every other country at some lasting settlement of her difficulties. To the establishment of such a reign of order the British connection has been fatal; revolution has been suppressed at the price of permanent disorganisation, the descendants of colonists and natives have not coalesced into a nation, and a country which has never known independence has never borne the burdens or learnt the lessons of national responsibility. Disastrous as this result has been, it is impossible to say who it was that at any given point was to blame for it. Had France been attached to and dependent upon a powerful neighbour, this sovereign state must have checked the cruelties and the injustice of the Reign of Terror. But the forcible extinction of Jacobinism by an external power would, we can hardly doubt, have arrested the progress and been fatal to the prosperity of France. Ireland, in short, which under English rule has lacked good administration, has by the same rule been inevitably prevented from attempting the cure of deeply rooted evils by the violent though occasionally successful remedy of revolution.
Thirdly,—From the original flaw in the connection between the two countries has resulted, almost as it were of necessity, the religious oppression, which, recorded as it has been in the penal laws, has become the opprobrium of English rule in Ireland.
The monstrosity of imposing Anglican Protestantism upon a people who had not reached the stage of development which is essential for even the understanding of Protestant dogma, and who if left to themselves would have adhered to Catholicism, conceals from us the strength of the pleas to be urged in excuse of a policy which to critics of the nineteenth century seems at least as absurd as it was iniquitous. Till towards the close of the seventeenth century all the best and wisest men of the most civilised nations in Europe, believed that the religion of a country was the concern of the Government, and that a king who neglected to enforce the "truth"—that is, his own theological beliefs—failed in his obligations to his subjects and incurred the displeasure of Heaven. From this point of view the policy of the Tudors must appear to us as natural as to themselves it appeared wise and praiseworthy. That the people of England should have been ripe for Protestantism at a time when the people of Ireland had hardly risen to the level of Roman Catholicism was to each country a grievous misfortune. That English Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries should in common with the whole Christian world have believed that the toleration of religious error was a sin, and should have acted on the belief, was a cause of immense calamities. But inevitable ignorance is not the same thing as wickedness.[[14]]
Fourthly,—To the same source as religious persecution are due the whole crop of difficulties connected with the tenure of land.
When James I. determined that the old Brehon law was to be abolished, and an appeal to the law of England to be brought within the reach of every Irishman, he and his ministers meant to introduce a beneficial reform. They hoped that out of the old tribal customs a regular system of landowning according to the English tenure would be developed. In forcing on this change, English statesmen felt convinced not only that they were reformers, but that they were promoters of justice. To a generation trained under the teaching of lawyers like Coke, and accustomed to regard the tenure which prevailed in England as good in itself, it must have appeared that to pass from the irregular dominion of uncertain customs to the rule of clear, definite law, was little less than a transition from anarchy and injustice to a condition of order and equity. They acted in precisely the spirit of their descendants, who are absolutely assured that the extension of English maxims of government throughout India must be a blessing to the population of the country, and shape their Egyptian policy upon their unwavering faith in the benefits which European control must of necessity confer on Egyptian fellahs. If, however, it is probable that King James meant well to his Irish subjects, it is absolutely certain that his policy worked gross wrong. His scheme only provided for the more powerful members of the tribes, and took no account of the inferior members, each of whom in their degree had an undeniable if somewhat indefinite interest in the tribal land. Sir John Davis, who carried out the plan, seems to have thought that he had gone quite far enough in erecting the sub-chiefs into freeholders. It never occurred to him that the humblest member of the tribe should, if strict justice were done, have received his allotment out of the common territory; and the result of his settlement accordingly was that the tribal land was cut up into a number of large freehold estates which were given to the most important personages among the native Irish, and the bulk of the people were reduced to the condition of tenants at will.[[15]] An intended reform produced injustice, litigation, misery, and discontent. The case is noticeable, for it is a type of a thousand subsequent English attempts to reform and improve Ireland. The rulers of the country were influenced by ideas different from those of their subjects. Ignorance and want of sympathy produced all the evils of cruelty and malignity.
Bad administration, religious persecution, above all a thoroughly vicious system of land tenure, accompanied by such sweeping confiscations as to make it at any rate a plausible assertion that all the land in Ireland has during the course of Irish history been confiscated at least thrice over,[[16]] are admittedly some of the causes, if they do not constitute the whole cause, of the one immediate difficulty which perplexes the policy of England. This is nothing else than the admitted disaffection to the law of the land prevailing among large numbers of the Irish people. The existence of this disaffection, whatever be the inference to be drawn from it, is undeniable. A series of so-called Coercion Acts passed both before and since the Act of Union give undeniable evidence, if evidence were wanted, of the ceaseless, and as it would appear almost irrepressible, resistance in Ireland offered by the people to the enforcement of the law. I have not the remotest inclination to underrate the lasting and formidable character of this opposition between opinion and law, nor can any jurist who wishes to deal seriously with a serious and infinitely painful topic question for a moment that the ultimate strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at lowest the acquiescence, of the mass of the population. Judges, constables and troops become almost powerless when the conscience of the people permanently opposes the execution of the law. Severity produces either no effect or bad effects, executed criminals are regarded as heroes or martyrs, and jurymen or witnesses meet with the execration, and often with the fate, of criminals. On such a point it is best to take the judgment of a foreigner unaffected by prejudices or passions, from which no Englishman or Irishman has a right to suppose himself free:
"Quand vous en êtes arrivés à ce point, croyez bien que dans cette voie de rigueurs tous vos efforts pour rétablir l'ordre et la paix seront inutiles. En vain, pour réprimer des crimes atroces, vous appellerez à votre aide toutes les sévérités du code de Dracon; en vain vous ferez des lois cruelles pour arrêter le cours de révoltantes cruautés; vainement vous frapperez de mort le moindre délit se rattachant à ces grands crimes; vainement, dans l'effroi de votre impuissance, vous suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaires, proclamerez des comtés entiers en état de suspicion légale, violerez le principe de la liberté individuelle, créerez des cours martiales, des commissions extraordinaires, et pour produire de salutaires impressions de terreur, multiplierez à l'excès les exécutions captiales."[[17]]
No advocate of Home Rule can find a clearer statement of the condition of things with which on his view the Imperial Parliament is morally incompetent to deal than in these words of De Beaumont's; but before we hastily draw any inference from an undoubted fact, let us examine into the exact nature of the fact. The opposition of Irish opinion to the law of the land is undoubted, but the opposition is not now, and if we appeal (as under the present argument we are appealing) to the teaching of history never has been general opposition to law, or even general opposition to English law. The statistics of ordinary crime are (it is said) no higher in Ireland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. A pickpocket or a burglar is as easily convicted in Ireland as elsewhere; the persons who lamentably enough are either left unpunished, or if punished may count on popular sympathy, are criminals whose offences, atrocious and cruel as they constantly are, are connected in popular opinion with political, and at bottom, it must be added, with agrarian questions. For more than a century there has existed an hereditary conspiracy against the rights of the landowners. The White Boys of 1760, the Steel Boys of 1772, the Right Boys of 1785, the Rockites of a few years later, the Thrashers of 1806, the White Boys who re-appear in 1811, 1815, 1820, the Terralts of 1831, the White Feet of 1833, the Black Feet of 1837;[[18]] later Ribbon men under different names, the Boycotters or the assassins who have added a terrible sanction to the commands of the Land League or of the National League, have each and all been, in most cases avowedly and in every case in fact, the vindicators or asserters of the just or unjust popular aversion to the rights of landlords given by the law and enforced by the courts of the land. It would be folly to assert that all popular opposition to the law in Ireland had been connected with agrarian questions. But if we look either to the experience of past generations, or to the transactions passing before our eyes, we can hardly be mistaken in holding that the main causes of disaffection have been either questions connected with religion, or rather with the position of Roman Catholics, or disputes connected with the possession of land.
The feeling of nationality has played a very subordinate part in fomenting or keeping alive Irish discontent. The Repeal agitation, in spite of O'Connell's legitimate influence, collapsed. No one can read Sir Gavan Duffy's most interesting account of the Young Ireland movement without perceiving that just because it was strictly a nationalist movement it took very little hold upon the people. The Home Rule movement never showed great strength till it became avowedly a Land League, of which the ultimate result should be, by whatever means, to make the tenants of Ireland owners of their land. To this add that in the judgment of foreign critics, and of thinkers like Mill, the popular protest against the maintenance in Ireland of a tenure combining the evils both of large estates and of minute subdivision of farms is founded upon justice. De Beaumont at any rate teaches that to transform Irish tenants into peasant proprietors would be the salvation of the country:—