THE IRISH NATIONAL IDEA

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 7

THE IRISH NATIONAL IDEA

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glory and luxury of their conquerors. The Italian city republics, which, while their citizens numbered less than the burgess roll of Cork city, conquered the East and discovered the West, and made Italy blossom like a rose garden up to the mountain crests—the tiny States which glittered with immortal names, such as those of Dante and Da Vinci and Michael Angelo and Columbus, as under a shower of stars so long as they were free—were struck with barrenness and desolation the moment they became incorporated in the great realm of Austria. In our own century little Belgium, which as an annexe of the French Empire withered and decayed, has in one generation of autonomy sprung into an activity which confronts English trade in Birmingham and Sheffield, and has outstripped Europe in the race for the wealth of the dim regions of equatorial Africa.

Had Ireland, too, no capabilities for increasing the sum of human happiness which were shrivelled up under the blight of English domination? Has she no seeds of greatness in her bosom to-day which want but to be touched by the rays of her own unimprisoned genius to burst forth into the glory of flower and fruit? We have two tests such as no other race that I know of can answer so well—her deeds in her day of freedom, and her vitality after seven centuries of wasting bondage. The Irish race have never had fair-play. Their growth as a nation was mutilated at the moment when all the other States of modern Europe were struggling out of chaos. Judging Ireland by her state at the Norman Conquest is like judging English Parliamentary institutions by the condition of the Saxon churls after the battle of Hastings, or the civilisation of Home by the days when an emperor was stabbed or poisoned … continue reading »

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