These comprehensive charges cover the two strongly-contrasted periods of Irish history—the period of Gaelic civilization, and that of Norman, or later of English settlement. All races are alike condemned. The one people had no institutions. The other misused what were given to it. In either case the fault is said to be “Irish”—the general word of contempt. Confounded together by Mr. Balfour for his own purposes, the two accusations have nothing in common, and must be separately considered if we wish to think justly. We may, however, observe that to both races is denied the praise of a “nation” or “nationality.” The definition of a “nation” may be varied: every man has his opinion, for, as the old Irish saying went, “’tis his own head he has on him.” But in the matter nature and history cannot be wholly set aside, and we may attach some importance to the unity of a country, the persistence of its race, and the continuity of its life. If we consider outward form, who ever thinks of the map of Great Britain as a whole? The form that is in men’s minds is of two configurations, one of England and one of Scotland, two countries mapped out on separate sheets. The names of the countries have changed, Alban and Scotland; Britain and England; and the title of the whole is a somewhat awkward evasion or compromise. Ireland on the other hand has its unchangeable boundaries fixed by the Ocean, its provinces from immemorial times subordinate territories of the undivided country. Its successive peoples, perhaps for some four thousand years, have never known it but by one name, Erin; or by the variations of that name as it passed into other speech, Iberia, Hibernia, Ire-land. The Old Irish knew it some fourteen hundred years ago as their “Fatherland.” As far back as we can go the unity of the country as a whole is prominent in their thought; as, for example, in an ancient poem on the passing of the pagan world and the triumph of Christianity: “God’s counsel at every time concerning virgin Erin is greater than can be told; though glittering Liffey is thine to-day, it has been the land of others in their turn.” In the Middle Irish period a legend of the coming to Tara of the most ancient of all the sages carried to the people the same rapt love of Ireland. When all the assembly rose up before him: “There is no need to make rejoicing for me, for I am sure of your welcome as every son is sure of his foster-mother, and this, then, is my foster-mother,” said Fintan, “the island in which ye are, even Erin, and the familiar knee of this island in which ye are, namely, Tara. Moreover it is the mast and the produce, the flowers and the food of this island that have sustained me from the deluge until this day. And I am skilled in its feasts and its cattle-spoils, its destructions and its courtships, in all that have taken place from the deluge until now.”