THE FUTURE OF THE YOUNG MEN OF IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 156

THE FUTURE OF THE YOUNG MEN OF IRELAND

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fight. But the victory of which I would speak to you tonight is not one to be hoped for, or even to be fought for. The victory is here already. It may and will be added to, but it can never be taken away. We have only to look around and measure it. We have seen it with our own eyes. It has all passed within the experience of almost the youngest person listening to me. And that immeasurable, irreversible victory is summed up in the fact that the Irish masses from being a horde of helots in their own country have become its masters. Popular power is still only in its infancy. But the infant is born. It is waxing fat and kicking. It has a life of crescent promise all before it. Within the recollection of men listening to me whose hair is not yet sown with grey, Nationalists had as little substantial ownership of their own country as slaves have of the golden plates they bear to their master's table. They were a timid minority in town councils. They crept into the board-rooms of the country unions like uneasy intruders. They had no electoral franchise except a paving stone or a black bottle on the polling day. The late Mr. Daniel O'Sullivan was regarded as an astounding phenomenon among Mayors of Cork because he was a Nationalist outspoken and unashamed. The election of a live rebel like O'Donovan Rossa for Tipperary was regarded as one of the wonders of the world. Men looked around for a policeman before singing a national song. Wherever a young Irishman's eyes turned, they met some badge of inferiority, some impassable stronghold of alien ascendency. National treasure went in millions of money to bedeck a Church whose predominance was an ever-burning insult to the Church of five-sixths of the population. The professions were double-locked monopolies. The Bar was a forcing-bed of Castle corruption. Men had to struggle … continue reading »

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