To return, however, to the field of politics. Where the essential quality of being law-abiding is wanting in individuals, it is hopeless to look for real liberty. The centripetal force in societies, as in planets, must be supplied somehow, or they would fly into dissolution; and if not by the integration of the tendencies of the individual units, then by external restrictions. Socialists may be allowed to make inflammatory harangues in a non-explosive atmosphere, but hardly to let off their fireworks in a powder-magazine. In order, however, that a nation shall be law-abiding, it is essential that the great majority should feel that, on the whole, the law is their friend. It is not in human nature to love that which injures, or to respect that which is felt to be unjust. The volcanic explosion of the French Revolution was due to the feeling of the French nation, with the exception of a few courtiers, nobles, and priests, that the existing order of things was their enemy, and law a tool in the hands of their oppressors. Even among English-speaking races we find, in the unfortunate instance of Ireland, that under specially unfavourable circumstances the same effects may be produced by the same causes. What has English law practically meant for centuries to an average peasant of Kerry or Connemara? It has meant an irresistible malevolent power, which comes down on him with writs of eviction to compel him to pay a high rent on his own improvements. More than half the population of Ireland consists of tenants and their families occupying small holdings, paying less than 10_l._ a year of rent. Of an immense majority of these small holdings two things may be safely asserted: first, that the total gross value of the produce is insufficient, after paying the rent, to leave a decent subsistence for the cultivator. Secondly, that this rent is levied to a great extent on the improvements of the tenant or his predecessors. Throughout the poorer parts of Ireland the greater part of the soil, in its natural state of bog or mountain, is not worth a rent of a shilling an acre; but some poor peasant, urged by the earth-hunger which results from the absence of other sources of employment, squats upon it, builds a wretched cottage, delves, drains, fences, and reclaims a few acres of land so as to bear a scanty crop of oats and potatoes. When he has done so the landlord or landlord’s agent comes to him and says, ‘This land is worth ten or fifteen shillings an acre, according to the standard of rents in the district, and you must pay it or turn out;’ and the law backs him in saying so by writs of eviction and police. Put yourself in poor Pat’s place, and say if you would love the law and be law-abiding.