periods of the earth's history, it is interesting to note that the first-known mammals of Europe and North America* resembled forms now living in Australia, and that, at the time of the deposition of the oolite beds, cycads and araucarias inhabited England. Again, in Eocene timest we had lemurs, true opossums, tapirs, alligators, and gavials, simultaneously in Europe, and chameleons in America, while the character of the fauna of the southern part of South America seems to have been European. In Miocene times long-armed apes, giraffes, and rhinoceroses existed in Europe, while giraffes and orangs existed in India. Indeed, at that period, there appears to have been a rich fauna, more or less common to Asia, Europe, and Africa, from which the existing Indian and Ethiopian fauna have, as it were, diverged, becoming increasingly different. In Pliocene timest camels, rhinoceroses, elephants, and horses all coexisted in North America as well as Europe; while later, in South America huge precursors of the sloths ranged the forests (the trees of which they felled and fed on), as great marsupials in Australia preceded the smaller but closely-allied marsupials of our own day. The interesting bearing of these facts of old animal geoDifficult as graphy, upon the existing distribution of life, is obvious. it may be as yet to interpret satisfactorily the indications of migration and survival with modification, it is evident that we must look to Palæontology for light which may enable us to find our way through the complex labyrinth of facts which constitute the geography of living creatures. At present these facts may perhaps be best understood by means of such a geographical classification of botanical and zoological phenomena as is here offered to the biological inquirer.

ST. GEORGE MIVART.

* In the Permian and Oolite formations. See CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, January, 1880,

pp. 112 and 113.

+ L. c. p. 115.

L. c. 117.

SOME FORGOTTEN ASPECTS OF THE IRISH

QUESTION.

S

EVEN centuries have passed away since England took possession of Ireland; yet to-day the Irish Question is still the question of the hour in our domestic politics. It still disturbs the relations of political partics, still baffles the calculations of politicians, still threatens to wreck the popularity and impair the reputation of statesmen. Penal laws have been abolished, one by one; the Established Church has been deposed from its place of privilege, and no longer vexes an alien people with its insignia of domination; a Land Act has been passed for the express purpose of securing to the occupier the legitimate fruit of his capital and toil and the result of it all is that the Irish are still unhappy and discontented, still crying for justice and agitating against English misrule.

How are we to account for this? How explain a phenomenon which has hardly a parallel in the history of civilized Europe? Superficial observers suggest, as a sufficient answer, some inherent flaw in the Irish character. But the Irish, out of Ireland, are not deficient in the virtues of which good citizens are made. They are intelligent, brave, and generous. Under favourable conditions they are industrious and frugal. Long before the tide of emigration set in from Ireland to America, bands of poor harvest labourers from Ireland came not only to England, but braved even the long and dreary sea-voyage to America and back; and, denying themselves almost the necessaries of life, returned to Ireland with their savings to pay the rent of their miserable cabins and plots of ground, and enable their families to live during the remainder of the year. And when the Famine drove the Irish across the Atlantic in multitudes, the first thought of those who went away was to save money to pay the passage out to those who stayed behind. In the six years after the Famine-that is, from 1848 to 1853-the Irish in America

remitted to relatives in Ireland, according to the Emigration Commissioners, the sum of nearly £6,000,000, or about £1,000,000 annuallya large amount for the comparatively small number of Irish then in America, and who had, moreover, almost all arrived in the New World in a state of poverty.

Another of the most essential virtues of good citizenship is love of justice, and in the Irish this is admitted even by their enemies to reach a passion. Sir John Davys was not a man given to praise the Irish, but honesty forced him to bear the following testimony :-" There is no nation of people under the sun that doth love equal and indifferent justice better than the Irish, or will rest better satisfied with the execution thereof, although it be against themselves, so as they may have the benefit and protection of the law when upon just cause they do desire it."

Shall we say, in our perplexity and despair-as some, indeed, have not hesitated to affirm-that there is some ineradicable antipathy of race which prevents the amalgamation of the Kelt and Saxon into one homogeneous nation? But facts prove the contrary; for, not to mention other instances, the Highlanders of Scotland, who belong to the Irish race, are among the most contented and loyal of the Queen's subjects. Nor will the fact of religious antagonism solve the riddle; for though it be true, as Burke says, that "the Irish have been more harassed for religion than any people under the sun," they have now comparatively little to complain of on that score, and the present discontent in Ireland does not rest on a religious basis.

"They say it is the fatal destiny of that land," says Spenser in his account of Ireland in 1596, "that no purposes whatsoever which are meant for her good will prosper or take good effect; which, whether it proceed from the very genius of the soil, or influence of the stars, or that Almighty God hath not yet appointed the time for her reformation, or that He reserveth her in this unquiet state for. some secret scourge which shall by her come unto England, it is hard to be known, but yet much to be feared."

sway.

When Spenser wrote these words the English rule in Ireland was, in point of justice and humanity, little better than the rule of the Turk now in the Christian provinces which still lie under the blight of his Yet in the very paragraph from which I have quoted Spenser speaks complacently of the "divers good plots devised, and wise counsels cast" by the English Government for the benefit of the Irish people! Such is the blinding effect of prejudice even on minds which are by nature benevolent and just! If so wise, so good, so well-informed a man as Spenser could so grossly deceive himself as to the conduct of England towards Ireland, is it quite certain that none of this self-deceit still lurks in the breasts of Englishmen ? Has England, in matter of fact, discharged to the full the reparation which she owes to Ireland?

It may be pleaded, and generally is pleaded, on behalf of the British Parliament, that it has gradually undone the wrongs of centuries, and

has at last placed the people of Ireland on a footing of perfect equality with the people of England. But the mere undoing of a wrong does not always place the injured person on an equality with those who have not been wronged. The Sovereign's "pardon" does not necessarily place the innocent convict where he was before. His health may have been ruined meanwhile, or his business, or both. In equity, therefore, if not in strict law, he has exceptional claims on the consideration and sympathy of the Government which did him wrong.

Now, what is the case of Ireland as against England? "You abhorred the Penal Code, as I did, for its vicious perfection," writes Burke to Sir Hercules Langrishe; "for I must do it justice. It was a complete system, full of coherence and consistency; well-digested and well-composed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.'

Before I conclude, I shall venture to point out some things as to which the Irish are not yet on a level of equality with the English. But it will be useful, in the first place, to run over some of the heads of the terrible Penal Code denounced by Burke in the passage quoted above. The conduct of England in the past goes far to explain the present condition of Ireland. If that conduct has been exceptional in the highest degree, the Irish may be less unreasonable than is generally supposed in demanding some exceptional remedies.

It is popularly supposed that the special ill-treatment of Ireland by England began at the time of the Reformation. Undoubtedly the Reformation introduced a new element of discord by adding to the antipathy of race the more potent and more bitter antipathy of religion

-the religion of a handful of English officials in Dublin imposed upon the Irish nation by the Mussulman argument of the sword. Before the Reformation the Irish nation was outlawed for the crime of being Irish. At the Reformation it was outlawed anew for the additional crime of being "Papist."

But to say that the Irish were outlawed by England may appear to some an exaggerated statement. It is, however, the literal fact. The truth is that England found the conquest of Ireland a much more difficult matter than it had bargained for. If the Irish had been united politically under one head, one of two results must have followed :-Either the English invaders would have been driven out of the country, or the Irish would have submitted after a few decisive defeats. But the ancient Irish were broken up into a number of separate tribes, owing collectively no allegiance to any one single chief. This made it impossible, without a. military occupation of the whole country, to subdue and rule them in the mass; and a military occupation of the whole country was impossible. Political organizations are in this respect like animal organizations. #Burke's Works, vol. iv., p. 547.

When they are highly developed you can deal with them as individual entities whose power of resistance is destroyed when you have cut off or overcome the head. In low organizations, on the other hand, to divide is simply to multiply the centres of life and of resistance. Ireland was politically in this undeveloped condition at the time of Strongbow's invasion. No victory, however decisive on the spot, sufficed to crush the resistance of the population at large, because the population at large acknowledged no single head. Dispersed at one place, they suddenly attacked at another. Harassed and exasperated by this style of warfare, the English seem to have conceived the idea of exterminating the large majority of the native population. The atrocious laws decreed against them hardly admit of any other interpretation. The Irish were, simply: as Irish, placed outside the protection of the law, and were treated as vermin. Submission to English rule did not bring with it the correlative privileges of an English subject. To kill an Irishman was no murder. "To break a contract with him was no wrong. He could not sue in the English courts. The slaughter of the Irish and the seizure of their property were acts rewarded by the Government." There was no restraint on the greed and cruelty of the oppressor, except the fear of retaliation. "A common defence in charges of murder was that the murdered man was of 'the mere Irish."" To escape from this cruel bondage the Irish repeatedly petitioned for admission to the benefits of English law, and were always refused. Such was the condition of the Irish beyond the Pale. Nor was the lot even of those who lived within it an enviable one. The degree of protection which submission to English rule afforded them may be tested by a statute of 1465, which decreed that " any person going to rob or steal, having no faithful man of good name or fame in his company in English apparel," might be killed by the first man who met him. This placed the life of every Irish man and Irish woman within the Pale at the disposal of any Englishman who might feel tempted to indulge his passions.

But it is right to record even small mercies, and therefore I hasten to add that the brutality of this law was somewhat mitigated by a subsequent statute which directed the Irish within the Pale to wear English apparel.

Such, however, was the fascination of the Irish character, stimulated here and there, perhaps, by sympathy with undeserved wrongs or by love of adventure and a wild life, that Englishmen were allured across the Pale in considerable numbers. These became proverbially "more Irish than the Irish." They learnt the language, adopted the costume, imbibed the manners, and got infected with the wit of the subject race. If this process of amalgamation had been allowed to go on unchecked, Ireland would probably have had a different history. But it was arrested inside the Pale by the Reformation; outside the Pale by the Statutes of Kilkenny. By these statutes an impassable gulf was dug between the two races. To intermarry with the Irish, or, indeed, to form any sort