Ireland, it is hardly necessary to repeat, has been in a state of rebellion since the beginning of the British Conquest. But it has been in a state of revolution only for a period of about forty years. Insurrection betrayed itself now by individual but constant acts of rebellion, of which one can easily follow the succession through past ages, now by collective risings like those of Thomas Fitzgerald in 1534, of O’Neil in 1563, of Desmond in 1579, of Preston in 1642, of the Whiteboys in 1791, of the Oakboys in 1762, of the Steelboys in 1768, of Wolfe Tone in the course of the French Revolution, of Emmet in 1803, the New Whiteboys in 1807, of John Mitchell in 1848, of the Fenians in 1865 and 1867. As for the agrarian revolution, born of an economical situation impossible to bear, it follows its course as regularly as a great river, ever getting larger and larger, widening its bed, swelling its volume with all the streams it meets, increasing in power at the same time that its waters get more depth and breadth. Even the soothing mixtures prescribed for it by the Parliamentary doctors have served as its tributaries. Its torrent has at length become irresistible. To discover its source, we must go back to the famine evictions of 1847. The heart-rending spectacle then presented by Ireland made it natural to look for a palliation to such misery. The malady was studied in all its aspects; much learned discussion took place at the bedside of the agonizing patient. It was the time when Disraeli developed his famous theory of “the three profits.” The land, if one was to believe him, must yield profit to three persons:—the Queen, the landlord, and the tenant. It appears this was arranged from the end of Time by the Great Architect of the Universe. The laws of Kepler are not more absolute. The unlucky thing is that the earth does not always fulfil its obligations, and too often refuses to yield up the three sacramental profits. Theorists endowed with less boldness thought to find a remedy by giving legal consecration to the tenant’s rights by the system of _the three F’s_, as it was called, that is to say, _Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure, and Free Sale_. Through endless resistance, after endless debating in the course of twenty parliamentary sessions, a whole _remedial_ legislation came to add its bulk to the already so intricate structure of Anglo-Saxon law. Now the custom of Ulster was extended to the whole of Ireland, and the right of the farmer over the improvements paid with his money became law (1860); now he was promised an indemnity in case of eviction, and the basis was laid of a system of amortization which must infallibly in the course of time have ended in creating a class of peasant landowners (1870).