This is, in my judgment, true even of such federations as the United States or the Swiss confederacy.
Froude's 'English in Ireland,' vol. 3, pp. 581, 582.
See especially on this subject 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande,' Partie Historique, pp. 15-207.
"On ne saurait considérer attentivement l'Irlande, étudier son histoire et ses révolutions, observer ses moeurs et analyser ses lois, sans reconnaître que ses malheurs, auxquels ont concouru tant d'accidents funestes, ont eu et ont encore de nos jours, pour cause principale, une cause première, radicale, permanente; et qui domine toutes les autres; cette cause, c'est une mauvaise aristocratie." 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande,' deuxième partie, p. 228. The only objection which may be fairly taken to De Beaumont's language, though not to his essential meaning, is, that the words he uses occasionally suggest the idea that he attributes some special vice of nature, so to speak, to the landed classes in Ireland, whilst there is, of course, no reason to suppose that the original Norman invaders of Ireland were a whit worse than the Normans they left behind them in England, or that the Cromwellian settlers did not possess the virtues which distinguished Puritan soldiers. What De Beaumont really means is that the aristocracy, or landed gentry, have been from first to last placed in a false position, which has led to their exhibiting the vices, with few of the virtues, of aristocratic government.