ity, 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]

Fourthly,--To the same source as religious persecution are due the whole
crop of difficulties connected with the tenure of land.

When James I. determined that the old Brehon law was to be abolished,
and an appeal to the law of England to be brought within the reach of
every Irishman, he and his ministers meant to introduce a beneficial
reform. They hoped that out of the old tribal customs a regular system
of landowning according to the English tenure would be developed. In
forcing on this change, English statesmen felt convinced not only that
they were reformers, but that they were promoters of justice. To a
generation trained under the teaching of lawyers like Coke, and
accustomed to regard the tenure which prevailed in England as good in
itself, it must have appeared that to pass from the irregular dominion
of uncertain customs to the rule of clear, definite law, was little less
than