It is speculation to suggest how this would have been remedied had the State been left free to work out its own destiny. Clearly the executive would either have become frankly hereditary or frankly elective. Probably at that time it would have become hereditary, especially as the son generally claimed to succeed from his father unless there were special reasons why he should not or could not. But then, what of the kings of stateships and territories? Had these also become hereditary the State from top to bottom would have become impossibly rigid; but there are reasons to suggest why this would not have been so. For one thing, the kings of stateships were elected by the voice of the freemen, whereas the kings of the higher executives were elected by their own courts. Moreover, the stateships served immediate and local needs that required the consent of the freemen for their continual adjustment. The two operating together would undoubtedly have compelled, without any of the complications of a _righ-damhna_, the perfectly free election of the executive head and leader of a stateship. Therefore had the monarchy become hereditary there would have been two contradictory principles in the State; there would always be a tendency to bring one into line with the other; and it is not very difficult to see which principle would finally have prevailed. Any arrogation of power by the monarch (and it is the first principle of monarchs to arrogate power) would have struck athwart the rule of the people in their most familiar and immediate life. A moment always arises in history (always has arisen and always will arise) when a monarch and a people front one another with the claim to real power. In such issues the people always win in the end, even when their rights in the State are most degraded. How much simpler would the issue be when the people, as in the Irish State, held the land, the final source of all wealth, in their own possession in corporate stateships? In the crisis that later befell all States no nation could have faced the future with greater assurance than Ireland, had Fate not thrown a sterner destiny before it.