rone, yet made exceptions in cases
where the lands verged on hostile territory, such as Durham or
Chester--thought that he could best follow the spirit of that policy
by establishing what were practically semi-independent principalities
in an island already inhabited by another race. But the result was
disastrous.

That the Normans were savage and brutal, dealing out no justice or
mercy to their victims, is proved by the account of their conquest of
England. Yet they possessed certain great qualities, which eminently
fitted them to become rulers in those wild, unsettled times; as their
successes, not merely in Britain, but also in Southern Italy and
Syria, show. They had the idea of a strong, centralized Government;
and more than that they had a marvellous capacity for receptivity.
Thus we see that in England, after a period of rough tyranny, they
blended the existing Anglo-Saxon Government--the strength of which lay
in its local organization--with their own; and from the union of
the two has come the British Constitution. So too in the Lowlands
of Scotland it was the Norman knight Robert Bruce who, accepting the
already existing Saxon and Roman civilization, raised Scotland into a
powerful kingdom. But in Ireland all was different. The only state
of society which the Normans found was Celtic barbarism. Political
institutions did not exist. As the Normans in England had become
Anglified, and in Scotland Scottified, so in Ireland they became
Ersefied. It is true that they built stone castles which at any rate
were better than the hovels of the Irish Chiefs, and (like the
Danes before them) founded a few towns, such as Kilkenny, Galway and
Athenry; but there their efforts ended. Scattered amongst the tribes,
they learnt their ways. They sank to the position of the Celtic
Chiefs around them; local wars went on the same as before; the only
difference being that they were waged sometimes by Normans against
Normans or against Celts, but more frequently by one body of Celts
against another, each side being aided by Norman allies.

One class of Nationalist writers has inveighed against the English
kings for not having forcibly introduced English law and put an end to
the barbarous Celtic customs. The simple answer is, How could they do
so? Whilst England was being weakened by long continental wars or
by struggles between rival Houses, what strength had she left to
undertake the real conquest of Ireland? The English kings had