countries, could ever succeed in recovering possession of the estates
in France which were confiscated at the time of the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. And the only people who have a cause to complain,
even on sentimental grounds, of the wrongs of past ages, are the
lineal descendants of those who suffered ill-treatment. No Englishman
to-day can feel aggrieved because Saxons drove out Britons, or Normans
Saxons.

But more than that: the confiscation of the lands of rebels stands on
a different basis, and has been so regarded in every country in the
world, even New Zealand. The lands confiscated by Philip and Mary were
owned by the arch-rebel FitzGerald. Naturally fertile and capable if
properly cultivated of supporting a large population, they were at
this time a wild pathless tract of forest and bog. The ceaseless
tribal wars had prevented their being drained and cleared; the
miserable remnants of the Celtic tribes gained a precarious living by
periodical raids on the more peaceful inhabitants of the Pale. During
the whole of the reign of Edward VI fighting had gone on in Leix and
Offaly with great loss of life and at enormous expense to the English
Government. The object of the confiscation was not to drive out the
few existing tribesmen; for the land, when cleared and drained, might
well support them as well as the new settlers. Nor was it to confer
great estates on absentee proprietors, but to establish a fairly
thickly settled district which might be a source of strength rather
than a constant cause of trouble to the dwellers in the Pale. Nor
again was it to introduce feudalism; for as I have shown, the system
already in existence was feudalism without its advantages; the
substitution of fixed dues for the barbarous custom of "coigne and
livery" was an unmixed benefit to the occupiers of land. And it cannot
be denied that the first "Plantation" was a thorough success--thriving