Let us note, first, that both in America and Ireland the Colonies were bi-racial, with this all-important distinction, that in America the native race was coloured, savage, heathen, nomadic, incapable of fusion with the whites, and, in relation to the almost illimitable territory colonized, not numerous; while in Ireland the native race was white, civilized, Christian, numerous, and confined within the limits of a small island to which it was passionately attached by treasured national traditions, and whose soil it cultivated under an ancient and revered system of tribal tenure.  The parallel, then, in this respect, is slight, and becomes insignificant, except in regard to the similarity of the mental attitude of the colonists towards Indians and Irish respectively.  In natural humanity the colonists of Ireland and the colonists of America differed in no appreciable degree.  They were the same men, with the same inherent virtues and defects, acting according to the pressure of environment.  Danger, in proportionate degree, made both classes brutal and perfidious; but in America, though there were moments of sharp crisis, as in 1675 on the borders of Massachusetts, the degree was comparatively small, and through the defeat and extrusion of the Indians diminished steadily.  In Ireland, because complete expulsion and extermination were impossible, the degree was originally great, and, long after it had actually disappeared, haunted the imagination and distorted the policy of the invading nation.

In America there was no land question.  Freeholds were plentiful for the meanest settlers and the title was sound and indisputable.  In the “proprietary” Colonies, it is true, vast tracts of country were originally vested by royal grants in a single nobleman or a group of capitalists, just as vast estates were granted in Ireland to peers, London companies, and syndicates of “undertakers”; but by the nature of things, the extent of territory, its distance, and the absence of a white subject race, no agrarian harm resulted in America, and a healthy system of tenure, almost exclusively freehold, was naturally evolved.

In Ireland the land question was the whole question from the first.  If the natives had been exterminated, or their remnants wholly confined, as Cromwell planned, to the barren lands of Connaught, all might have been well for the conquerors.  Or if Ireland had been, in Mr. Chamberlain’s phrase, a thousand miles away, all might have come right under the compulsion of circumstances and the healing influence of time.  That the Celtic race still possessed its strong powers of assimilation was shown by the almost complete denationalization and absorption of a large number of Cromwell’s soldier-colonists in the south and south-east under what Mr. Lecky calls the “invincible Catholicism” of the Irish women.  But the Irish were not only numerous, but fatally near the seat of Empire.  The natives—­Irish or Anglo-Irish—­were still more than twice as numerous as the colonists;