eir part; but it is the deep-rooted conviction of
priests and people, and hence the utter inadequacy of any enactment
which will not render such a policy impossible, by making the tenure
of the occupiers independent of the will of the landlords. Until such
time the peasantry will continue to offer a bloody resistance to the
legal attempts to crush them out of the country.

In this self-defensive war, they cannot cope with the armed power
of England in the open field; and they are driven upon the criminal
resource of the oppressed in all ages and all lands--secret
combination and assassination. For this crime they feel no remorse;
first, because it is _war_--just as the soldier feels no remorse
for killing the enemy in a battle; and, secondly, because their
conquerors, and the successors of those conquerors, have taught them
too well by repeated examples the terrible lesson of making light of
human life. Poor ignorant creatures, they cannot see that, while
the most illustrious noblemen in England won applause and honours
by shooting down Irish women and children like seals or otters,
the survivors of the murdered people should be execrated as cruel,
barbarous, and infamous for shooting the men that pull down the
rooftrees over the heads of their helpless families and trample upon
their household gods. These convictions of theirs are very revolting
to our feelings, but they are facts; and as facts the legislature must
deal with them. If there be a people, otherwise singularly free from
crime, who regard the assassination of the members of a certain
class with indifference, or approbation, the phenomenon is one which
political philosophy ought to be able to explain, and one which cannot
be got rid of by suspending the constitution and bringing railing
accusations against the nation.

Mr. Trench speaks with something like contempt or pity of 'good
landlords,' a class which he contradistinguishes from 'improving
landlords.' But it should be remembered that by this last phrase he
always means agents of the Trench stamp. For he observes that the
landlord himself cannot possibly do much more than authorize his agent
to do what he thinks best; and it is rather an advantage that the
proprietor should be an absentee, otherwise his good nature might
prompt him to interrupt the work of improvement. Now there is this to
be said of the good landlords, who may be counted by hundreds, and who
are found in all the counties of Ireland.