Note 886 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

Excessive isolation may mean impoverishment in purse and progress even for an advanced race. Ireland has long suffered from its outskirt location. It lies too much in the shadow of England, and has been barred by the larger island from many warming rays of immigration, culture and commerce that would have vitalized its national existence. The "round barrow" men of the Bronze Age, the Romans, and the Normans never carried thither their respective contributions to civilization. The Scandinavians infused into its population only inconsiderable strains of their vigorous northern blood.886 In consequence the Irish are to-day substantially the same race as in Cæsar's time, except for the small, unassimilated group of antagonistic English and Lowland Scotch, both Teutonic, in Ulster.887 Barred by Great Britain from direct contact with the Continent and all its stimulating influences, suffering from unfavorable conditions of climate and topography, Ireland's political evolution progressed at a snail's pace. It tarried in the tribal stage till after the English conquest, presenting a primitive social organization such as existed nowhere in continental Europe. Property was communal till the time of the Tudors, and all law was customary.888 Over-protected by excessive isolation, it failed to learn the salutary lesson of political co-operation and centralization for defense, such as Scotland learned from England's aggressions, and England from her close continental neighbors. Great Britain, meanwhile, intercepted the best that the Continent had to give, both blows and blessings, and found an advantage in each. The steady prosecution of her continental wars demanded the gradual erection of a standing army, which weakened the power of feudalism; and the voting of funds for the conduct of these same wars put a whip into the hand of Parliament.