class; such as at the present moment do more to
prevent real unity between the inhabitants of the two islands making up
the United Kingdom than do unjust laws or vicious institutions. To a
student who regards with philosophic calmness a topic which has mainly
been dealt with by politicians or agitators, it easily becomes apparent
that the crimes or failures of England, no less than the vices or
miseries of England, have to a great extent flowed from causes too
general to be identified with the intentional wrong-doing either of
rulers or of subjects.

One fact thrusts itself upon the attention of any serious student
England and Ireland have from the commencement of their ill-starred
connection been countries standing on different levels or at different
stages of civilization; they have moreover been countries impelled by
the force of circumstances towards a different development. Englishmen
forget, or (more strictly speaking) have never understood, how
exceptional has been the path pursued by English civilization; they do
not realise to themselves that the gradual transformation of an
aristocratic and feudal society into a modern industrial State which
still retains the forms, and in many points of view the spirit of
feudalism is a process which, although owing to the most special
circumstances it has been accomplished with success in England, has
hardly a parallel in any other European country. Ireland on the other
hand has, despite the deviations from her natural course caused by her
connection with a powerful nation, tended to follow the lines of
progress pursued by continental countries, and notably by France. A
foreign critic like De Beaumont finds it far easier than could any
Englishman to enter into the condition of Ireland, and this not only
because he is as a foreigner delivered from the animosities or
partialities which must in one way or another warp every English
judgment, but mainly because the phenomena which puzzle an Englishman,
as for example the passion of Irish peasants for the possession of
land,[10] are from his own experience familiar and appear natural to a
Frenchman. What to the mind of a foreign observer needs explanation is
the social condition of England rather than of Ireland. He at any rate
can see at a glance that the relation between the two countries has
planted and maintained in Ireland an aristocracy, aristocratic
institutions, and above all an aristocratic land law, foreign to the
tra