y parts
of the world where Ascendancies have existed, or exist, the same methods
are employed, and always with a certain measure of success. Irish moral
fibre was at least as tough as that of any other nationality in
resisting the poison.

But the results were as calamitous in Ireland as in other countries. No
country can progress under such circumstances. The test of government is
the condition of the people governed. Judged by this criterion, it is no
exaggeration to say that Ireland as a whole went backward for at least
seventy years after the Union. Even Protestant North-East Ulster, with
its saving custom of tenant-right, its linen industry, and all the
special advantages derived from a century of privilege, though it
escaped the worst effects of the depression, suffered by emigration
almost as heavily as the rest of Ireland, and built up its industries
with proportionate difficulty. Over the rest of Ireland the main
features of the story are continuous from a period long antecedent to
the Union. A student of the condition of the Irish peasantry in the
eighteenth and in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth centuries
can ignore changes in the form or personnel of government. He would
scarcely be aware, unless he travelled outside his subject, that
Grattan's Parliament ever existed, or that subsequently a long
succession of Whig and Tory Ministers, differing profoundly in their
political principles, had alternately sent over to Ireland Chief
Secretaries with theoretically despotic powers for good or evil. These
"transient and embarrassed phantoms" came and went, leaving their
reputations behind them, and the country they were responsible for in
much the same condition.

It is not my purpose to enter in detail into the history of Ireland in
the nineteenth century, but only to note a few salient points which will
help us to a comparison with the progress of other parts of the Empire.
It is necessary to repeat that the basis upon which the whole economic
structure of Ireland rested, the Irish agrarian system, was inconsistent
with social peace and an absolute bar to progress. I described in
Chapter I. how it came into being and the collateral mischiefs attending
it. During the nineteenth century, by accident or design, these
mischiefs were greatly aggravated. Until 1815 high war prices and the
low Catholic franchise stimulated subdivision of holdings, already
excessively small, and the growth of population. With