THE FUTURE OF THE YOUNG MEN OF IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 166

THE FUTURE OF THE YOUNG MEN OF IRELAND

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ries of unparalleled oppression and degradation have soured our healthful blood within. But therein the patient must needs minister to herself. We have to shake our freemen's limbs free from the apathy which we were content to believe clung to us like a settled curse. We have to reject resolutely the mere cynic temptation—the doubt, the sneer, the barren criticism which would despoil us of the trustfulness, the faith in human nature, the quality of reverence and enthusiasm without which our Irish nature would be as a harp whose strings are torn, a thing of clay from which the divine flush of soul has fled. We have to place under the restraints of rational freedom the impulsiveness which we were free to indulge in the days of irresponsible subjection. Above all, we have to bear in mind that this nation comes of many sources and is of many minds, and that if ever a common interest in the weal of Ireland is to fuse her angry elements, it must be even as the ways and thoughts and blood of the early Norman conquerors commingled in the kindly Celtic strain—that is to say, not by repelling, but by attracting, conciliating, and loving. We must not conceive of patriotism as the property of any particular school or method. The methods vary with the circumstances, even as Hugh O'Neil's modes of action in 1586 differed from his modes of action in 1596, or as Wolfe Tone, the constitutional agitator of 1792, was the heroic rebel chief of 1798. Mere methods are accidents, not principles. The end, the principle, the substance remains always the same—the emancipation of this ancient, generous race from the dead hand of a foreign ascendency which misunderstood, corrupted, and oppressed them.

If it should be given to us to see the triumphal issue of the age-long conflict, and the furling of the battle-flags, we hold our liberties but as the heirs, the spiritual partners … continue reading »

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