THE FUTURE OF THE YOUNG MEN OF IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 159

THE FUTURE OF THE YOUNG MEN OF IRELAND

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apostle, a hero, an idol?' He would remember the dreary half-century during which the Irish farmer had agitated in vain even for the smallest viaticum of compensation for disturbance; and lo! the arm of the rent-raiser has fallen paralysed, the godlike pride of the evicter has been brought low, the law that once chased without a pitying proviso the Irish peasant from the soil blubbers out in halting but irrevocable accents the confession that the Irish-born peasant is destined to remain its only lord and owner henceforth, and for all the ages that are to come. Our imaginary sleeper's recollection of an Irish labourer would be of an outcast in rags dwelling in a poisonous hut, wageless and foodless under the tooth of winter; he would go forth to-day through the pleasant fields of Limerick and Tipperary, and, side by side with the decaying mansions of the alien and the absentee, see the bright little cottages of the labourers beginning to light up the picture with their snug gardens, their flowers by the door, and their potato-pits stored to the brim against the wintry hour. Finally, his eyes would light upon the temples of the old faith's second youth rising stately and unfettered, fearing no longer priest-hunter nor brutal law, in friendly neighbourhood with the steeples of the discrowned Establishment; he would find the residue of the Church treasure once lavished upon the persecution of intractable Papists now dedicated to giving the intractable Papists the unconditioned higher education they once craved in vain, and to the rescue of the age-wronged cotters of the wild west from their rocks and bogs; and over all the land has gone forth the decree, which is registered in the inmost shrine of every Irish heart, that bigotry, nor intolerance, nor religious disability shall curse our shores no more, and that whatsoever may be a man's religious faith, … continue reading »

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