But as the clansmen could not control his acts, they could never see the justice of being punished for his misdeeds by the confiscation of their lands, and driven from the homes of their ancestors often made doubly sacred by religious associations.
History, moreover, teaches them that, as a matter of fact, the government in the reign of James I .-- and James himself in repeated proclamations--assured the people who occupied the lands of O'Neill and O'Donnell at the time of their flight that they would be protected in all their rights if they remained quiet and loyal, which they did.

Yet they were nearly all removed to make way for the English and Scotch settlers.
Thus, historical investigators have been digging around the foundations of Irish landlordism.

They declare that those foundations were cemented with blood, and they point to the many wounds still open from which that blood issued so profusely.

The facts of the conquest and confiscation were hinted at by the Devon Commissioners as accounting for the peculiar difficulties of the Irish land question, and writers on it timidly allude to 'the historic past' as originating influences still powerful in alienating landlords and tenants, and fostering mutual distrust between them.

But the time for evasion and timidity has passed.