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]