Page:Confiscation in Irish history.djvu/17

 position of the Irish shortly—"der Ire war Sache, nicht mehr." "The Irishman was a chattel, nothing more."

Of course the natural result of this was to prevent any coalescence of the two nations. The Irish had to submit to loss of land and of personal liberty, or to fight. Naturally they chose the latter course, helped as they were by the difficult nature of the country, the small numbers of the settlers, and very soon by the feuds of the newcomers. The weakness of the central government soon became apparent. The settlers by themselves were not strong enough to effect a thorough conquest. The Irish learned military skill from the invaders, courage they had never lacked. The result was that some hundred years after the first invasion the Irish began to hold their own; half a century later they began to win back from the colonists the lands which they had lost.

Nor could the Kings of England win over the natives and blend both peoples into one nation by granting to the Irish the protection of the English laws, or by giving them a legal title to the lands still in their occupation. The former course was made impossible by the opposition of the colonists; and the Crown, having granted away practically the whole island to the settlers, was debarred from the latter. The result was that at the opening of the reign of Henry VIII., close on three and a half centuries after the first invasion, the island was divided very unequally between the two nations. About one-third was held by the descendants of the colonists,