The monstrosity of imposing Anglican Protestantism upon a people who had not reached the stage of development which is essential for even the understanding of Protestant dogma, and who if left to themselves would have adhered to Catholicism, conceals from us the strength of the pleas to be urged in excuse of a policy which to critics of the nineteenth century seems at least as absurd as it was iniquitous. Till towards the close of the seventeenth century all the best and wisest men of the most civilised nations in Europe, believed that the religion of a country was the concern of the Government, and that a king who neglected to enforce the "truth"--that is, his own theological beliefs--failed in his obligations to his subjects and incurred the displeasure of Heaven. From this point of view the policy of the Tudors must appear to us as natural as to themselves it appeared wise and praiseworthy. That the people of England should have been ripe for Protestantism at a time when the people of Ireland had hardly risen to the level of Roman Catholicism was to each country a grievous misfortune. That English Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries should in common with the whole Christian world have believed that the toleration of religious error was a sin, and should have acted on the belief, was a cause of immense calamities. But inevitable ignorance is not the same thing as wickedness.[14] Fourthly,--To the same source as religious persecution are due the whole crop of difficulties connected with the tenure of land.