allowed to dictate to us. A
population, vicious in character as unnatural in immediate origin (for
it has been called into birth by short-sighted landlords, set upon
adding to the number of votes at their command, and by priests who for
lucre's sake favour the increase of marriages), is held forth as
constituting a claim to political power strong in proportion to its
numbers, though in a sane view that claim is in an inverse ratio to
them. Brute force indeed wherever lodged, as we are too feelingly taught
at present, must be measured and met--measured with care, in order to be
met with fortitude.

The chief proximate causes of Irish misery and ignorance are Papacy--of
which I have said so much--and the tenure and management of landed
property, and both these have a common origin, viz. the imperfect
conquest of the country. The countries subjected by the ancient Romans,
and those that in the middle ages were subdued by the Northern tribes,
afford striking instances of the several ways in which nations may be
improved by foreign conquest. The Romans by their superiority in arts
and arms, and, in the earlier period of their history, in virtues also,
may seem to have established a moral right to force their institutions
upon other nations, whether under a process of decline or emerging from
barbarism; and this they effected, we all know, not by overrunning
countries as Eastern conquerors have done, and Bonaparte in our own
days, but by completing a regular subjugation, with military roads and
garrisons, which became centres of civilisation for the surrounding
district. Nor am I afraid to add, though the fact might be caught at as
bearing against the general scope of my argument, that both conquerors
and conquered owed much to the participation of civil rights which the
Romans liberally communicated. The other mode of conquest, that pursued
by the Northern nations, brought about its beneficial effects by the
settlement of a hardy and vigorous people among the distracted and
effeminate nations against whom their incursions were made. The
conquerors transplanted with them their independent and ferocious spirit
to reanimate exhausted communities, and in their turn received a
salutary mitigation, till in process of time the conqueror and
conquered, having a common interest, were lost in each other. To neither
of these modes was unfortunate Ireland subject, and her insular
territory, by physical obstacles, and still more by mora