Gladstone attributes the inefficacity of laws passed by the Imperial
Parliament to their coming before Irishmen in a "foreign garb," and an
author who is not in any way a supporter of the Liberal leader does not
apparently on this point disagree with Mr. Gladstone. "If there was a
hope that anything which we could give would make the Irish contented
and loyal subjects of the British Empire, no sacrifice would be too
great for such an object. But there is no such hope. The land tenure is
not the real grievance: it is merely the pretext. The real grievance is
our presence in Ireland at all. If there was a hope that by buying up
the soil and distributing it among the tenantry we could make them, if
not loyal, yet orderly and prosperous, even so the experiment would be
worth trying; but, again, there is no such hope. The Land Bill of 1870
gave the tenants a proprietary right in their holdings. They have
borrowed money on the security of that right at ruinous interest, and
the poorest of them are already sinking under their debts to the local
banker or tradesman. If we make them proprietors to-morrow, their farms
in a few years will be sold or mortgaged. We shall have destroyed one
set of landlords to create another who will not be more merciful."[8]

[Sidenote: Criticism]

The only way of meeting the historical argument, containing as it does
admitted truth, and supported as it is by high authorities, is to survey
the broad phenomena of Irish history, and see what are the inferences
which they warrant.[9] Whoever wishes to derive instruction from the
melancholy history of the kingdom of Ireland must, as has already been
intimated, rid himself from the delusions caused in the domain of
history by personification. He must dismiss the notion that England and
Ireland are persons to be charged with individual and continuous
responsibility for the crimes or follies of past ages. He must check the