THE FUTURE OF THE YOUNG MEN OF IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 151

THE FUTURE OF THE YOUNG MEN OF IRELAND

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loaded end of a riding-whip. A more stupid race might well have accepted the seemingly inevitable, extinguished every illuminating spark of tradition or knowledge or faith in their souls, and been content to wallow in swinish subjection under the park walls of their masters. A more seductive career might even have glittered before the young Irishman who had some consciousness of genius, or whose veins tingled with the intoxication of youth and pleasure. On the simple condition of forswearing the torn flag and hunted faith of his fathers, the doors of the University opened to him, the law laid the property of his father and his elder brethren at his feet, and primrose paths of riches, fame, and pleasure beckoned him on through life as through a fairy garden. Unfortunately, perhaps, for their material well-being, but to the eternal moral credit of our race, the vivid Celtic imagination was too strong for contented degradation, and the everlasting Celtic faith and honour too high-sighted to covet the prosperity which is basely purchased. The Irish youth of those dark centuries had an imagination passionately alive to the injustices, humiliations, diabolical pains and penalties which stung his naked feet at every step in his tortured life; but his eyes never lost sight of the pillar of fire in the night which told him of hopes beyond the reach of penal laws, and of powers in whose hands the armies of England were but the angry puppets of an hour. He chose rather the God whose altar was the mountain rock, and whose priest sheltered in the lowly shieling, than the stranger creed that came to him enthroned in triumphant cathedrals and flashing with the splendour of corrupting gold. He took the outlaw's chance, sailed the main, and carried his sword from foreign camp to camp who, by one apostate word, might have trampled down his own countrymen as a … continue reading »

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