From the Irish standpoint no judgment can yet be formed. Reading the lamentable record of successive confiscations the words of the great Florentine exile as from the glories of the heaven of Mars he turned his thoughts to the old days of Florence when those were great who now were but broken exiles and the great houses, now all undone, made Florence flower in all her noble deeds, will strike a responsive chord
"Oh happy they! each one to lay the head
In her own tomb, and no one yet compelled
To weep deserted in a lonely bed."
The sufferings of individuals, even of whole classes, from the effects of confiscation were greater perhaps than we can now conceive. In spite of some mitigating features, such as I have mentioned, the condition of the greater part of the population all through the eighteenth and for the greater part of the nineteenth century was indescribably wretched.
Yet, after all, two or three centuries are but a short span in the life of a people. In more than one country that space of time has seen a revolution in the ownership of land as sweeping as we have seen in Ireland. Even in peaceful England itself, owing to the working of economic causes, there are not many families who have held their property in the direct line since the days of Henry VIII.
"To hear how noble families decay
Will not appear a novel thing or strange
Since states and kingdoms also pass away,"
once more to quote Dante.
