a transition from anarchy and injustice to a condition of order and
equity. They acted in precisely the spirit of their descendants, who are
absolutely assured that the extension of English maxims of government
throughout India must be a blessing to the population of the country,
and shape their Egyptian policy upon their unwavering faith in the
benefits which European control must of necessity confer on Egyptian
fellahs. If, however, it is probable that King James meant well to his
Irish subjects, it is absolutely certain that his policy worked gross
wrong. His scheme only provided for the more powerful members of the
tribes, and took no account of the inferior members, each of whom in
their degree had an undeniable if somewhat indefinite interest in the
tribal land. Sir John Davis, who carried out the plan, seems to have
thought that he had gone quite far enough in erecting the sub-chiefs
into freeholders. It never occurred to him that the humblest member of
the tribe should, if strict justice were done, have received his
allotment out of the common territory; and the result of his settlement
accordingly was that the tribal land was cut up into a number of large
freehold estates which were given to the most important personages among
the native Irish, and the bulk of the people were reduced to the
condition of tenants at will.[15] An intended reform produced injustice,
litigation, misery, and discontent. The case is noticeable, for it is a
type of a thousand subsequent English attempts to reform and improve
Ireland. The rulers of the country were influenced by ideas different
from those of their subjects. Ignorance and want of sympathy produced
all the evils of cruelty and malignity.

Bad administration, religious persecution, above all a thoroughly
vicious system of land tenure, accompanied by such sweeping
confiscations as to make it at any rate a plausible assertion that all
the land in Ireland has during the course of Irish history been
confiscated at least thrice over,[16] are admittedly some of the causes,
if they do not constitute the whole cause, of the one immediate
difficulty which perplexes the policy of England. This is nothing else
than the admitted disaffection to the law of the land prevailing among
large numbers of the Irish people. The existence of this disaffection,
whatever be the inference to be drawn from it, is undeniable. A series
of so-called Coercion Acts passed both before and since the Act of