of Irish history most of all is the anarchy
of the old clan system, the everlasting alternation of outrages
and avenging reprisals. One faction, when it felt strong and had a
favourable opportunity, made a sudden raid upon another faction, taken
at a disadvantage, plundering and killing with reckless fury. The
outraged party treasured up its anger till it had power to retaliate,
and then glutted its vengeance without mercy in the same way. When
this fatal propensity to mutual destruction was restrained by law, it
broke out from time to time in other ways. What was wanted to cure it
effectually was a strong, steady, central government, such as England
enjoys herself. But the very system which is most calculated to foster
factiousness is the one which has reigned for centuries in Dublin
Castle. The British sovereign knows no party, and, whatever other
sovereigns have done, Queen Victoria has never forgotten this
constitutional principle. But the Irish lord-lieutenant is always a
party-man, and is always surrounded by party-men. They were Whigs or
Tories, Liberals or Conservatives, often extreme in their views and
violent in their temper. The vice of the old clan system was its
tendency to unsettle, to undo, to upset, to smash and destroy. Instead
of counteracting that vice (which still lingers in the national
blood), by a fixed, unchanging system of administration, based on
principles of unswerving rectitude, which knows no distinction
of party, no favouritism, England ruled by the alternate sway of
factions.

_The Times_, referring to the debate on the Irish Church, remarked
that the viceroyalty was more and more 'a mere ornament.' It is
really nothing more. The viceroy has no actual power, and if he has
statesmanship, it is felt to be out of place. He can scarcely give
public expression to his sentiments on any political questions without
offending one party or the other, whereas the estate of the realm
which he represents is neutral and ought to keep strictly to neutral
ground. As to the effect of the office in degrading the national
spirit among the nobility and gentry, we could not have a better
illustration than the fact that the amiable Lord Carlisle was
accustomed, at the meeting of the Royal Dublin Society, to tell its
members that the true aim, interest, glory, and destiny of Ireland was
to be a pasture and a dairy for England,--a compliment which seemed to
have been gratefully accepted, or was at all events al