of tenure in Ireland from the
state in which it was forty years ago to that in which it is to-day is
evidence of the pressing grievance under which the country has suffered;
it is also proof that there cannot be legislation other than by shreds
and patches on the part of a legislature which lacks sympathy for and
knowledge of the country for which it is making laws.

The need for exceptional and separate legislation in Ireland has been
admitted, and the system which existed in fact, obtained legal sanction
only in 1881, to be in its turn swept away by further legislation which
will have a deeper economic bearing on the future of the country than
any other change since the relaxation of the Penal Laws. For the rest I
cannot do better than quote, in this connection, the opinion of the most
dispassionate critic of Ireland of recent years--Herr Moritz Bonn.
Speaking of the landlord who has sold his estate he says--"He has no
further cause of friction with his former tenants, who now pay him no
rent. He no longer regards himself as part of an English garrison. He
will again become an Irish patriot. He no longer talks of the unity of
the Empire, for Home Rule has few terrors for him now. He talks of
'Devolution,' of the concession of a kind of self-government for
Ireland. He will struggle for a while against the designation Home Rule,
because not so long ago he was declaring that he would die in the last
ditch for the union of the three kingdoms, but he will soon be
reconciled to it. It will not be very long till the former landlords,
whose chief interests lie in Ireland, have become enthusiastic
Nationalists."

CHAPTER V

THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION

"I am convinced that if the void in the lay leadership of the
country be filled up by higher education of the better classes
among the Catholic laity, the power of the priests, so far as
it is abnormal or unnecessary, will pass away."

--DR. O'DEA, now Bishop of Clonfert, speaking in evidence
before the Robertson Commission on University Education, as
the representative of Maynooth College. Appendix to Third
Report, p. 296.

The scruples of George III., who although as King of Ireland he yielded
to the claims of Catholics to the suffrage by giving the Royal consent
to the enfranchising Act of Grattan's Parliament in 1793, were such that
they made him declare that his coronation oath compelled him to maintain
the Protestantism o