ch have since
attained the most perfect unity, and there can be little doubt that,
if her development had been impeded by no extraneous influences,
Ireland would have followed the same path as England or France. Much
stress has been justly laid on the disorganising influence of a long
succession of Danish invasions, though it must be remembered that
Ireland owes to the Danes the foundation of some of her most important
cities. Roman conquest, which introduced into most of Europe
invaluable elements of order, organisation, and respect for law, never
extended to Ireland. The Anglo-Norman invasion and conquest produced
consequences which were almost wholly evil. If the invaders had been
driven from the Irish shore, the natural course of development would,
no doubt, have been in time continued. If the invaders had completely
conquered Ireland, a fusion might have taken place as complete and as
healthy as in England. Neither of these two events occurred. The
English conquest was prolonged over nearly four hundred years. A
hostile and separate power was planted in the centre of Ireland
sufficiently powerful to prevent the formation of another
civilisation, yet not sufficiently powerful to impose a civilisation
of its own. Feudalism was introduced, but the keystone of the system,
a strong resident sovereign, was wanting, and Ireland was soon torn by
the wars of great Anglo-Norman nobles, who were, in fact, independent
sovereigns, much like the old Irish kings. The Scotch invasion of the
fourteenth century added enormously to the anarchy and confusion; the
English power as a living reality contracted to the narrow limits of
the pale; in outlying districts the Anglo-Norman assimilated quickly
with the Celtic element, while the English legislators in Ireland,
alarmed at the tendency, made it the main object of their policy, in
the words of Sir John Davies, 'to make a perpetual separation and
enmity between the English and Irish, pretending no doubt that the
English should in the end root out the Irish.'

Such a state of things continued till the long and terrible wars of
Henry VIII. and Elizabeth broke the power of the independent chiefs
and of the Celtic clans, and gave Ireland, for the first time, a
political unity. It is one of the great infelicities of Irish history
that this result was obtained at the very period of the Reformation.
The conquerors adopted one religion, while the conquered retained the
other, and thus a new