The refusal of the people, that is to say, of the bulk of the nation, to submit to the policy of their chieftains, and the determination to repudiate that policy by deposing its supporters and choosing others in their stead, was most happy in its effect on their whole future history. The leaders, by accepting the new titles bestowed on them by the English kings, by taking their seats in Parliament, and concurring in the various measures there passed, subjected themselves to a foreign rule, surrendered to this rule the tribe- lands, which it was not in their power to surrender of themselves, gave up, in fact, their nationality, and became English subjects. The action of the clansmen reversed all the fatal consequences resulting from those acts. They remained a nation distinct from the English, whose laws they had never either admitted or accepted. And, as the clan spirit declined, under the policy of England, it only made way for a new and a greater spirit--religious feeling, the bond of a common religion assaulted--which, henceforth, lay at the bottom of the whole struggle--which, for the first time in their history, blended into one whole the broken clans, gave them a unity and a consistency never known till then, and thus the real nation was born. They might boast, therefore, not only of not having lost their autonomy, but of being more firmly than ever knit together; they could conclude treaties of alliance with foreign powers, without committing treason, and they soon began to use that power; they could even declare war against England, and it was not rebellion. The successors of Henry VIII. acted constantly as though the Irish nation had really subjected itself to English kings and English rule, as though the acceptance of a few titles by a few chieftains (who were deposed by their people as soon as the fact was known) signified an acknowledgment on the part of the Irish people of their absorption by the English feudal system; they appeared "horrified" when they saw the successors of those chieftains reject those titles and resume their own names; and they called the Irish "rebels" and "traitors" for going to war with England--a country they had never acknowledged as their ruler--and introducing into their country Spanish, Italian, and French troops as allies. The explanation of the whole mystery consisted in the simple fact that the people, the nation, had steadily refused to sanction the act of their leaders; and all the pretensions of English kings, statesmen, and lawyers, were valueless. Those Irishmen who subsequently entered into the various Geraldine and Ulster confederacies, and summoned foreign armies to their aid, were neither rebels nor traitors, but citizens of an independent state, possessing their international rights as citizens of any independent country. This we have seen in a previous chapter, and Sir John Davies has been obliged to confess its truth, admitting the difference between a tributary and a subject nation.