they were the higher race they would have put us down. But a
more detailed assignment of qualities between the two peoples is
possible. In general it may be said that the two stood on much the same
level of mentality, but that they had specialised on different subjects,
the Normans on war and politics, the Irish on culture. Of the many
writers who help us to reconstruct the period we ought to signalise one,
Mrs A.S. Green, who to a rare scholarship adds something rarer, the
genius of common sense. This is not the place in which to recall the
whole substance of her "Making of Ireland and its Undoing" and her
"Irish Nationality"; but from borrowings thence and elsewhere we can
piece together a plain tale of that first chapter of the Irish Question.

CHAPTER III

HISTORY

_(b) Plain_

In those days war was the most lucrative industry open to a young man of
breeding, courage, and ability. Owners of capital regarded it as a sound
investment. What Professor Oman tells us of the Normans in 1066 was
equally true of them in 1169:

"Duke William had undertaken his expedition not as a mere feudal
lord of the barons of Normandy but rather as the managing director
of a great joint-stock company for the conquest of England, in
which not only his own subjects but hundreds of adventurers, poor
and rich, from all parts of Western Europe had taken shares."

The Normans, then, came to Ireland with their eyes on three objects. In
the first place, property. This was to be secured in the case of each
individual adventurer by the overthrow of some individual Irish
chieftain. It necessitated war in the shape of a purely local, and
indeed personal grapple. In the second place, plunder. This was to be
secured by raids, incursions, and temporary alliances. In the third
place, escape from the growing power and exactions of the Crown. This
was to be secured geographically by migration to Ireland, and
politically by delaying, resolutely if discreetly, the extension in that
country of the over-lordship of the King. Herein lies the explanation of
the fact that for three and a half centuries the English penetration
into Ireland is a mere chaos of private appetites and egotisms. The
invaders, as we have said, were specialists in war, and in the
unification of states through war. This they had done for England; this
they failed to do for Ireland. The one ingredient which, if dropped into
the seething cauldron of he