hat the law of the League, with its
purely revolutionary propaganda, supplanted the law of the land and
reduced large areas to a condition of chaos, the decrees of the "village
ruffians," who ruled the situation, being enforced by systematic outrage
and assassination.

The first statesman who made a really serious attempt to meet this
appalling state of things was Mr. Arthur Balfour, who, as Chief
Secretary for Ireland, resolutely took up the task, first of repressing
crime and enforcing the law, and then of recasting the whole land system
in such a way that the tenant, transformed into an owner, would for the
first time feel it his interest to range himself on the side of the law
and of orderly government. At the same time, a systematic attempt was
made to deal with the question of perennial poverty in the extreme West
of Ireland in what came to be known as the "Congested Districts." The
construction of railways and piers, the draining of land, and the
provision of instruction in agriculture, fisheries, etc., speedily gave
promise of a new era in the economic history of a hitherto helpless and
hopeless population.

All this was done by Mr. Balfour and his successors in spite of
opposition and obstruction of a kind such as no Chief Secretary had ever
before had to encounter. Formerly, all through the centuries, whenever a
Viceroy or Chief Secretary was face to face with an organised outbreak
of crime and sedition in Ireland, both British parties united in
supporting and strengthening the hands of the executive as representing
the Crown. Mr. Gladstone's extraordinary reversal of policy and
principle in the winter of 1885-86 put an end to all this, and gravely
increased the difficulties of the Irish Government.

When Mr. Gladstone was first confronted with the demand for Home Rule,
even in the mild and constitutional form advocated by Mr. Isaac Butt,
and his Home Government Association, founded in the autumn of 1870, he
promptly declared, like Mr. John Morley, that legislative Union with
Great Britain was the only position permanently possible for an island
situated as Ireland is. In a speech at Aberdeen[19] he indignantly
asked--

"Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this
time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to
disintegrate the great capital institutions of this country for the
purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind
and