CURRENT LITERATURE.
A Short History of the Irish People, down to the Date of the Plantation of Ulster. By the late A. G. Richey, Q.C. Edited, with Notes, by R. R. Kane, LL.D. (Hodges, Figgie, and Co., Dublin ; Longman°, London.)—Strictly speaking, it is not possible to write a history of the Irish people, for no Irish people has over existed. From the earliest times, Ireland was inhabited by various races and tribes constantly at war with each other, and never, even under their shadowy Ard-righs, brought into any real political unity. The great battle of Clontarf was fought between the Irish of Leinster and the Irish of Munster under the celebrated Brian Born, the latter assisted by the Viking Ospak, the former by King Sigtrygg, of Dublin. The encounter was a typical one in Irish history. The struggle between Normans and Irish was obscured by a like commingling of indigenous and foreign hosts on either side, and even at the present day a not dissimiliar heterogeneity exists in the ranks of Home Rulers and Unionists. In fact, the national sentiment in Ireland is in large measure the result of a process of political manufacture of modern date. Up to the close of the war of Hugh O'Neill, which put an end
to all semblance of Irish independence, no Irish leader had appealed to any other than a clannish or tribal sentiment in the course of the long struggle that ended in the Plantation of Ulster. The English Pale had never had to face an united Irishry ; it maintained itself, though taking advantage of the strong disinclination of the Irish septa to enter into any form of combination which might necessitate the recognition of tribal or provincial superiority. It is, indeed, curious how faithful many of the septa were throughout to the English alliance, seeing in it, doubtless, their only protection against an overlordship which they dreaded infinitely more than they did the yoke of the foreigner, whose remote and discon- tinuous despotism was felt as a slight burden compared to the ceaseless and close oppression that would have had to be endured at the hands of a native tyrant. Dr. Richey'e volume brings out this aspect of Irish history very clearly, though in an incidental rather than in a direct way. His main purpose is to show that up to the death of Elizabeth, Ireland met with no exceptionally hard treat- ment from England. The Norman raid was the outcome of the political necessities of the time, and the subsequent interference of Henry II. was designed rather to keep Strongbow and his fellow- adventurers to their feudal obedience than to effect any conquest of the island while his relations with the Irish chieftains were of a friendly character. lie called himself, it is true, King of Ireland, but this was in a feudal sense, and the claim was not resented, while it was distinctly justified by the Pope. But the Norman families in Ireland, the De Courcyrs, Be Lacys, De Burghs, and Fitzgeralds, were the most pertinacious enemies of the Norman Kings, who sought to keep them in subjection mainly by the help of the native chiefs. As the feudal system was the only one a Norman could regard as civilised, the attempt to enforce it in Ireland was inevitable, and to this attempt can be directly traced both the harsh injustice of the Pale and the callous tyranny of the English Government, a tyranny exercised quite as much over the Pale itself as over the native Irishry. The Irish policy of the Tudors was motived, first by distrust of the Pale, to curb which was the object of the celebrated Poynings' Act;and afterwards by the dread of Ireland becoming a vantage-ground for Continental attacks upon England. Elizabeth merely carried out this policy in a feeble and hesitating manner until the revolt of Shane O'Neill drove her to take active measures for vindicating English supremacy. It is worth remembering that O'Neill met with no willing support whatever outside of his own clan from the native tribes. Whether the Irish would have worked out a true and full nationality if left to themselves, it is impossible to say. But it is certain that geography alone made it quite impossible that they should be left to themselves, and it is almost equally certain that at no period of their history have they shown in a sufficient degree the essential qualities of a nation-making people. There is no need whatever to regard the race as innately deficient in these qualities. The Teutons only displayed them under conditions that never obtained in Ireland. A better account of the early traditional history and primitive social and political condition of the Irish septa will be found in Skene than in the present volume ; but, singularly enough, no book we are acquainted with gives any adequate description of their condition in Angevin and Tudor times. The work is a posthumous one, and a certain roughness in its execution is thus explained, the editor having wisely refrained from other alteration than a limited rearrangement of its contents. But it gives by far the most philosophical view we have met with of the relations between England and Ireland from the twelfth century to the close of the sixteenth. Every page shows the author's thorough knowledge of his subject, and affords ample proof that he possessed to the full that impartial historic judgment without which the annals of Ireland, more than those of any other country, are degraded into a dell romance or an insensate philippic.
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