Preface

Chapter

I. The Ulster Covenant.  The Questions Stated.  Ireland under the Celts and the Danes

II.  Ireland from the time of Henry II to the time of Henry VIII

III.  Ireland under the Tudors

IV.  The Seventeenth Century, until the end of the reign of James II

V. The period of the Penal Laws

VI.  The earlier part of the reign of George III.  The acquisition of independence by the Irish Parliament

VII.  The independent Parliament.  The Regency Question.  The commencement of the Rebellion

VIII.  The Rebellion

IX.  The Union

X. The period from the Union until the rejection of the first Home
Rule Bill

XI.  The Unionist Government of 1886

XII.  The Gladstonian Government of 1892.  The Political Societies

XIII.  Ireland under the present Government

XIV.  Criticism of the Bill now before the Country

XV.  The danger to the Empire of any form of Home Rule.  The Questions answered

Index

PREFACE.

In the following chapters I have endeavoured to lay before ordinary readers a simple statement of the present position of the Irish question.  Following the maxim of Confucius that it is well “to study the Past if you would divine the Future,” I have first shown that the tales which are told about the glories of the ancient Celtic Kingdom are foolish dreams, not supported by the accounts given by contemporary annalists or the investigations of modern writers, and that Ireland never was a nation in the political sense, with the possible exception of the few years between 1782 and 1800, during which the Irish Parliament was independent; that the charges made against the English government with reference to their action between the “Conquest” by Henry II and the assumption of the title of King by Henry VIII are baseless; and that though there is much which the historian must look back upon with regret in the period between the reign of Henry VIII and the passing of the Act of Union, it is mere waste of time now to dwell on the wrongs of a former age which have long since passed away and which in any other country would be forgotten.  Then I have traced the brief history of the independent Parliament, and shown that whatever may have been its virtues or its failings, it would be impossible to revive it now; all the circumstances of the country have changed.  I have striven also to make it clear that the Nationalists of to-day are not the representatives of the leaders of that Parliament but of the party which fought against it and brought on the horrors of the Rebellion; that the Union was a political necessity, if the connection between the British Islands was to be maintained at all; and that if the people of Ireland have not derived all the benefits from the