The statistics of ordinary crime are (it is
said) no higher in Ireland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. A
pickpocket or a burglar is as easily convicted in Ireland as elsewhere;
the persons who lamentably enough are either left unpunished, or if
punished may count on popular sympathy, are criminals whose offences,
atrocious and cruel as they constantly are, are connected in popular
opinion with political, and at bottom, it must be added, with agrarian
questions. For more than a century there has existed an hereditary
conspiracy against the rights of the landowners. The White Boys of 1760,
the Steel Boys of 1772, the Right Boys of 1785, the Rockites of a few
years later, the Thrashers of 1806, the White Boys who re-appear in
1811, 1815, 1820, the Terralts of 1831, the White Feet of 1833, the
Black Feet of 1837;[18] later Ribbon men under different names, the
Boycotters or the assassins who have added a terrible sanction to the
commands of the Land League or of the National League, have each and
all been, in most cases avowedly and in every case in fact, the
vindicators or asserters of the just or unjust popular aversion to the
rights of landlords given by the law and enforced by the courts of the
land. It would be folly to assert that all popular opposition to the law
in Ireland had been connected with agrarian questions. But if we look
either to the experience of past generations, or to the transactions
passing before our eyes, we can hardly be mistaken in holding that the
main causes of disaffection have been either questions connected with
religion, or rather with the position of Roman Catholics, or disputes
connected with the possession of land.

The feeling of nationality has played a very subordinate part in
fomenting or keeping alive Irish discontent. The Repeal agitation, in
spite of O'Connell's legitimate influence, collapsed. No one can read
Sir Gavan Duffy's most interesting account of the Young Ireland movement
without perceiving that just because it was strictly a nationalist
movement it took very little hold upon the people. The Home Rule
movement never showed great strength till it became avowedly a Land
League, of which the ultimate result should be, by whatever means, to
make the tenants of Ireland owners of their land. To this add that in
the judgment of foreign critics, and of thinkers like Mill, the popular
protest against the maintenance in Ireland of a tenure combining the
evils both of la