The course of the nineteenth century in Ireland is like a resurrection from the dead. It is full of memories--memories prior to 1603 and the destruction of the Irish State. The very order is significant. The Nation had lost certain things in a certain order; in its resurrection it set about to regain them in the inverse order. It had lost, first, its State; then its language and culture, the flowers of that State, had been penalised; then its land, on which the State had been based, was taken; and finally its liberty of faith. It won back, first, its liberty to faith; then its land; then its separate culture; and now it seeks its State. Literally and precisely the nineteenth century in Ireland is one of the most remarkable movements in history. It is like a great hall full of ghostly memories, but ghosts that bewilderingly become flesh and blood before our very eyes. It is a haunted hall where memories become realities again, instead of realities passing into memories. The struggle for Catholic Emancipation, it is true, was not of this order. It was part of a larger world movement into which the Nation was compelled by the leadership of one man. It may or may not have been the best beginning to have made; its fruits were unreal; and the victory was soon lost sight of by the Nation. But the land-war arose spontaneously from the people in a form that suggested an ancient memory. Before it found expression the compiler of the Devon Commission Digest remarked “that the tenant claims what he calls a tenant-right in the land, irrespective of any legal claim vested in him, or of any improvement effected by him.” He mentions it as a curious thing; and to him, with his foreign State-idea, it was indeed a curious thing; yet it was only the first re-assertion of a very old memory. For the Nation was not asserting a tenant’s right, but re-asserting a freeman’s right. And inasmuch as the landlordry was now mainly absentee it was making that re-assertion in a solid national formation.