of historical experience in cases
where property is suddenly given to one class by an arbitrary act. Care
for what one possesses, forethought to avoid its loss, come only with
habits of acquisition. The Irish farmer was confessedly careless in the
past, because, it was said, providence could be of so little use to him
in the then state of the law, but his prosperity under the legislation
of 1881 was not the result of his own industry. It was due to a long
course of agrarian outrage in Ireland and of Parliamentary outrage at
Westminster. A favourite commonplace of Land Reformers is the
conservatism of the French peasant, turned into a proprietor by the
decrees of the Legislative Assembly of 1791. We are reminded of his
industry, his self-denial, his distrust of the revolutionary spirit
which rages in the towns, but we forget the date at which this sober,
assiduous, conservatism made its appearance in history. The immediate
result of the change made in 1791 was a savage orgie of bloodshed and
outrage, nor was the wild fury, once let loose, sated by the blood of
Frenchmen. It was nearly a generation before the fire of Revolution
burnt itself out. The French peasantry of 1815 only came to value the
land they acquired, to devote their lives to its cultivation, after
twenty-three years of savage warfare had strewed the bones of their
fathers and their brothers over every battlefield from Salamanca to
Borodino, after Teuton and Cossack and Saxon had traversed French
territory from end to end.

Nor does the work of revolution produce other effects among the backward
turbulent British population, whom Irish rhetoric describes as the Irish
nation. Whatever we might hope from the children or grandchildren of
those farmers who profited by the change which Mr. Parnell had already
brought about, to suppose that prudence and a judicious spirit of
self-interest would come to them as rapidly as the reduction of their
rents, was to ignore all the facts of human nature. The desire for
further winnings possessed them, as the passion of a gambler. Mr.
Parnell's triumphant personality was the first thought in their minds.
He had already taken 20 per cent. off their rents. Next time they were
confident he would take off 50 per cent. or abolish rent altogether.

The Liberals who had been dreaming complacently about the happy results
of Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy awoke to find Ireland in possession of
the powerful, well-organized, hostile, c