That is all. Giraldus adds: "Indeed both the realm and Church of Ireland are indebted to this mighty king for whatever they enjoy of the blessings of peace and the growth of religion; as before his coming to Ireland all sorts of wickedness had prevailed among this people for a long series of years, which now, by his authority and care of administration, are abolished." No wonder indeed that our historian Keating names Giraldus the _tarbh tána_, the leading bull of the herd, of the long-stretched herd of historians, journalists, and zealous reformers of "all sorts of wickedness." Giraldus, however, was not entirely a partisan of false pretences. Years afterwards, when Henry was dead, he addresses his successor John, reminding him of his father's pledge to Pope Adrian, then also dead--the first pledge made by an English ruler in regard of Ireland, whereby, he says, Henry "secured the sanction of the highest earthly authority to an enterprise of such magnitude, involving the shedding of Christian blood." This pledge, he says, has not been kept. On the contrary, "the poor clergy in the island are reduced to beggary; the cathedral churches, which were richly endowed with broad lands by the piety of the faithful in the olden times," and which, we may add, supported on these endowments the schools already mentioned, "now echo with lamentations for the loss of their possessions, of which they have been robbed by these men and others who came over with them or after them; so that to uphold the Church is turned into spoiling and robbing it." Even the revenue, the Peter's Pence, promised by Henry to the Pope was not paid, and Giraldus pleads that it should be paid in future, "in order that some acknowledgment and propitiation may be made to God for this bloody conquest _and the profits of it_." And now, before considering further the character and effects of the Feudal conquests in Ireland, let us take a general view of the domestic polity of Ireland. In recent times, and only, I think, in recent times we find the whole of this domestic polity, or nearly the whole of it, summed up in one convenient phrase--the Clan System. This phrase is used by the ultra-patriotic just as freely and confidently as by those on the opposite edge--whatever we are to call them--those people who perform for Irish history the not unfruitful function of devil's advocate. The word system imparts a notion of something arranged in a definite and perceptible order, and those who speak or write about the Clan System indicate thereby that they have some perception of this detailed and co-ordinated arrangement. But I do not know where any one of them has successfully undertaken to reduce his mental view of the system to plain words. I think, however, most of us have gathered in a vague way the underlying notions. They amount to this: