Such criticisms are, it is true, speculative. Even as such, however, an attempt has been made to keep them close to the development that the events themselves suggest--to the development that, as history proves, all nations must finally obey. In the eleventh century, it must be remembered, Ireland was almost the only country in Europe with a national State. Other nations were not to achieve their States for centuries; and even then many of them now famous did not create States so careful in its parts and so concerted as a whole. It is not at all likely that Ireland, had she been left alone to work out her own destiny, would have continued with a broken State without correcting the causes of its disruption. She would have proved a startling exception to the course of history had she done so. Yet the main value of such criticisms is that they permit an examination of the Irish State at a moment when its inherent weaknesses had worked themselves out to the surface. At the height of Brian’s power those weaknesses existed, but they were held in submission by his personal strength. After his death they at once rose to the surface, just because of the strength with which he had held them in submission and the manner by which he had risen to power. They then demanded a remedy contained in the State itself, and not dependent on the strength of a master mind. And in looking to the old Irish State for instruction it is important to note its weaknesses once they revealed themselves, and to perceive the development by which they would have been corrected.