The Norman lord scorned the Saxon churl quite as contemptuously as he scorned the Irish Celt; but there was this very important difference--the interests of the noble and the churl soon became one; they worked for the prosperity of their common country.

In Ireland, on the contrary, the interests were opposite.

The Norman noble hated the Celt as a people whom he could not subdue, but desired most ardently to dispossess; the Celt hated the invader as a man most naturally will hate the individual who is just strong enough to keep a wound open by his struggles, and not strong enough to end the suffering by killing the victim.
The land question commenced when Strongbow set his foot on Irish soil; the land question will remain a disgrace to England, and a source of misery to Ireland, until the whole system inaugurated by Strongbow has been reversed.

"At the commencement of the connexion between England and Ireland," says Mr.Goldwin Smith, "the foundation was inevitably laid for the fatal system of ascendency--a system under which the dominant party were paid for their services in keeping down rebels by a monopoly of power and emolument, and thereby strongly tempted to take care that there should always be rebels to keep down." There is a fallacy or two in this statement; but let it pass.

The Irish were not rebels then, certainly, for they were not under English dominion; but it is something to find English writers expatiating on Irish wrongs; and if they would only act as generously and as boldly as they speak, the Irish question would receive an early and a most happy settlement.
For centuries Ireland was left to the mercy and the selfishness of colonists.