The feeling of nationality has played a very subordinate part in fomenting or keeping alive Irish discontent. The Repeal agitation, in spite of O'Connell's legitimate influence, collapsed. No one can read Sir Gavan Duffy's most interesting account of the Young Ireland movement without perceiving that just because it was strictly a nationalist movement it took very little hold upon the people. The Home Rule movement never showed great strength till it became avowedly a Land League, of which the ultimate result should be, by whatever means, to make the tenants of Ireland owners of their land. To this add that in the judgment of foreign critics, and of thinkers like Mill, the popular protest against the maintenance in Ireland of a tenure combining the evils both of large estates and of minute subdivision of farms is founded upon justice. De Beaumont at any rate teaches that to transform Irish tenants into peasant proprietors would be the salvation of the country:-- _"Plus on considere l'Irlande, ses besoins et ses difficultes de toutes sortes, et plus on est porte a penser que ce changement dans l'etat de sa population agricole serait le vrai remede a ses maux.... "J'aurais mille autres raisons pour appuyer cette opinion; je m'arrete cependant. Un lecteur anglais trouvera mes arguments incomplets. Tout autre qu'un Anglais les jugera peut-etre surabondants."_[19] This opinion may be well-founded or ill-founded; but no wise statesman will reject it without the maturest consideration. History, then, if fairly interrogated, gives this result: Historical causes have generated in Ireland a condition of opinion which in all matters regarding the land impedes that enforcement of law which is the primary duty of every civilized government. From this fact Home Rulers draw the inference that the law is hated because it is foreign, and that England should surrender to Irishmen the effort to enforce legal rights, since this duty is one which can be performed by a native and cannot be performed by any English or foreign authority. This conclusion is clearly not supported by the premises. If the source of popular discontent be agrarian, then the right course is to amend the land laws while improving the administrative system, and enforcing justice between man and man.