1513; and things were allowed to continue in
their old course for another five years; when at length Henry VIII.
awoke to the disgrace which the condition of the country reflected upon
him. The report of 1515 was the first step gained; the Earl of Ormond
contributed to the effect produced by the report, with representations
of the conduct of the deputy, who had been fortifying his own castle
with government stores; and the result was a resolution to undertake
measures of real vigour. In 1520, the Earl of Kildare was deprived of
his office, and sent for to England. His place was taken by the Earl of
Surrey, who of all living Englishmen combined in the highest degree the
necessary qualities of soldier and statesman. It seemed as if the old
weak forbearance was to last no longer, and as if Ireland was now
finally to learn the needful lesson of obedience.

[Sidenote: The report had said that the Irish could never be reformed
except by force.]

But the first efforts to cure an inveterate evil rarely succeed; and
Henry VIII., like every other statesman who has undertaken to reform
Ireland, was to purchase experience by failure. The report had declared
emphatically that the Irish chiefs would never submit so long as they
might resist, and escape with their lives; that conciliation would be
only interpreted as weakness; and that the tyrannical lords and
gentlemen must be coerced into equity by the sword freely used.

[Sidenote: The king will not believe it.]

The king, however, was young and sanguine; he was unable to accept so
hard a conclusion; he could not believe that any body of human beings
were so hopelessly inaccessible to the ordinary means of influence as
the Irish gentlemen were represented to be. He would first try
persuasion, and have recourse to extremity only if persuasion failed.

[Sidenote: Lord Surrey is to lecture the chiefs on the principles of
government.]

His directions to the Earl of Surrey, therefore, were that at the
earliest opportunity he should call an assembly of so many of the Irish
chiefs as he could induce to come to him, and to discourse to them upon
the elementary principles of social order and government.

[Sidenote: He is to teach them that realms without justice be but
tyrannies.]

[Sidenote: He is not, however, to threaten,]

[Sidenote: But he is to persuade,]

[Sidenote: And they may obey their own laws if they prefer it, if those
laws be good and reasonable, so only that they