proportions has diminished population without much diminishing poverty; why the disestablishment of the Anglican Church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to England of the Catholic priesthood; or why two Land Acts have not contented Irish farmers.  It is easy enough, in short, and this without having any recourse to theory of race, and without attributing to Ireland either more or less of original sin than falls to the lot of humanity, to see how it is that imperfect statesmanship—­and all statesmanship, it should be remembered, is imperfect—­has failed in obtaining good results at all commensurate with its generally good intentions.  Failure, however, is none the less failure because its causes admit of analysis.  It is no defence to bankruptcy that an insolvent can, when brought before the Court, lucidly explain the errors which resulted in disastrous speculations.  The failure of English statesmanship, explain it as you will, has produced the one last and greatest evil which misgovernment can cause.  It has created hostility to the law in the minds of the people.  The law cannot work in Ireland because the classes whose opinion in other countries supports the actions of the courts, are in Ireland, even when not law-breakers, in full sympathy with law-breakers."[54]

No Home Ruler has described the evils of English misrule in Ireland with such vigour as this.

“Bad administration, religious persecution, above all, a thoroughly vicious land tenure, accompanied by such sweeping confiscations as to make it, at any rate, a plausible assertion that all land in Ireland has during the course of Irish history been confiscated at least thrice over, 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 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 the 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 and witnesses meet with the execration and often with the fate of criminals.  On such a point it is best to take the opinion of a foreigner unaffected by prejudices or passions from which no Englishman or Irishman has a right to suppose himself free.