Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/548

 528 REIGN OF ELIZABh 777. [en. 46. Some kind of shame was felt by statesmen in 1565. England at the condition in which Ireland con- tinued. Unable to do anything real towards amending it, they sketched out among them about this time a scheme for a more effective government. The idea of the division of the country into separate presidencies lay at the bottom of whatever hopes they felt for an improved order of things. So long as the authority of the sove- reign was represented only by a Deputy residing at Dublin, with a few hundred ragged marauders called by courtesy ' the army/ the Irish chiefs would continue, like O'Neil, to be virtually independent ; while, by recogniz- ing the reality of a power which could not be taken from them, the English Government could deprive them of their principal motive for repudiating their allegiance. The aim of the Tudor sovereigns had been from the first to introduce into Ireland the feudal administration of the English counties ; they had laboured to persuade the chiefs to hold their lands under the Crown, with the obligations which landed tenures in England were sup- posed always to carry with them. The large owner of the soil, to the extent that his lordship extended, was in the English theory the ruler of its inhabitants, magis- trate from the nature of his position, and representative of the majesty of the Crown. Again and again they had endeavoured to convince the Irish that order was better than anarchy ; that their faction fights, their murders, their petty wars and robberies, were a scandal to them ; that till they could amend their ways they were no better than savages. Fair measures and foul had