could never see the justice of being punished for his misdeeds by
the confiscation of their lands, and driven from the homes of their
ancestors often made doubly sacred by religious associations.

History, moreover, teaches them that, as a matter of fact, the
government in the reign of James I.--and James himself in repeated
proclamations--assured the people who occupied the lands of O'Neill
and O'Donnell at the time of their flight that they would be protected
in all their rights if they remained quiet and loyal, which they
did. Yet they were nearly all removed to make way for the English and
Scotch settlers.

Thus, historical investigators have been digging around the
foundations of Irish landlordism. They declare that those foundations
were cemented with blood, and they point to the many wounds still open
from which that blood issued so profusely. The facts of the conquest
and confiscation were hinted at by the Devon Commissioners as
accounting for the peculiar difficulties of the Irish land question,
and writers on it timidly allude to 'the historic past' as originating
influences still powerful in alienating landlords and tenants, and
fostering mutual distrust between them. But the time for evasion and
timidity has passed. We must now honestly and courageously face
the stern realities of this case. Among these realities is a firm
conviction in the minds of many landlords that they are in no sense
trustees for the community, but that they have an absolute power over
their estates--that they can, if they like, strip the land clean of
its human clothing, and clothe it with sheep or cattle instead, or lay
it bare and desolate, let it lapse into a wilderness, or sow it with
salt. That is in reality the terrific power secured to them by the
present land code, to be executed through the Queen's writ and by the