If England had done everything she has done against the Irish nation, omitting the _confiscations_, the past would have been forgotten and condoned long ago, and the two nations would have been one people.

Even the religious wars resolve themselves into efforts to retain the land, or to recover the forfeited estates.

And the banished chiefs never could have rallied the nation to arms, as they so often did against overwhelming odds, if the people had not been involved in the ruin of their lords.

All that is really important in the history of the country for the last three centuries is, the fighting of the two nations for the possession of the soil.

The Reformation was in reality nothing but a special form of the land war.