their individual
drift to become part of the strong tide of national consciousness and
national unity. If Irish history is to be regarded as a test of racial
superiority then Ireland emerges with the crown and garlands of victory.
We came, we the invaders, to dominate, and we remained to serve. For
Ireland has signed us with the oil and chrism of her human sacrament,
and even though we should deny the faith with our lips she would hold
our hearts to the end.

But let us translate her triumph into more concrete speech. The
essential lesson of experience, then, is that no device, plan, or policy
adopted by England for the subjugation of Ireland has ever been anything
except an abject failure. And the positive of this negative is that
every claim that ever formed part of the national programme of Ireland
has won its way against all enmities. No plough to which she ever put
her hand has been turned back or stayed eternally in mid-furrow. It does
not matter what period you call to the witness-box; the testimony is
uniform and unvarying. Until Tudor times, as has been noted, there
cannot be said to have been in any strict sense an English policy in
Ireland; there was only a scuffle of appetites. In so far as there was a
policy it consisted of sporadic murder for the one half, and for the
other of an attempt to prevent all intercourse that might lead to
amalgamation between the two peoples. The Statute of Kilkenny--which is,
all things considered, more important than the Kilkenny cats though not
so well known in England--made it a capital offence for a settler to
marry an Irishwoman or to adopt the Irish language, law, or costume. The
Act no doubt provided a good many ruffians with legal and even
ecclesiastical fig-leaves with which to cover their ruffianism, and
promoted among the garrison such laudable objects as rape and
assassination. But as a breakwater between the two races it did not
fulfil expectation. The Statute was passed in 1367: and two centuries
later Henry VIII. was forced to appoint as his Deputy the famous
Garrett Fitzgerald whose life was a militant denial of every clause and
letter of it. With the Tudors, after some diplomatic preliminaries, a
very clear and business-like policy was developed. Seeing that the only
sort of quiet Irishman known to contemporary science was a dead
Irishman, English Deputies and Governors were instructed to pacify
Ireland by slaughtering or starving the entire population. The re