In the past, said the bishop, the Church in Ireland had thrived under
common ownership. When in the fifth century Patrick evangelized Ireland,
the ancient Irish were practising a kind of socialism. There was a common
ownership of land. Each freeman had a right to use a certain acreage. But
the land of every man, from the king down, might be taken away by the
state. There was an elected king, and assemblies of nobles and freemen.
There were arbitration courts where the lawgivers decided on penalties, and
whose decisions were enforced by the assemblies. One of the reasons, the
bishop said, that England had found it difficult to rule the Irish, was
that she attempted to force a feudal government on a socialistic people.
Recently--to illustrate that the Irish still retain their instinct for
common ownership--there had been, as the bishop mentioned, a successful
socialistic experiment in Clare. On looking up this fact at a later time, I
discovered that the experiment had points of resemblance to the ancient
state.[2] In 1823 the English socialist, Robert Owen, visited Ireland. His
outline of the possibilities of co-operation on socialistic lines inspired
the foundation of the Hibernian Philanthropic Society. It was in 1831 that
Arthur Vandeleur, one of the members of the society, decided he would
establish a socialist colony on his estate in Ralahine, Clare county.
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