TOLERATION IN THE EIGHT FOR IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 125

TOLERATION IN THE EIGHT FOR IRELAND

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to day, you would find it, large 'as our holy island and liberal as the mountain breeze, in the principles instilled into the Nation newspaper by Thomas Davis. What Irish Nationalist ever proposed to open Thomas Davis's veins to discover whether the orthodox quantity of Gaelic blood flowed to his heart? Were the question of race-origin a vital one the day that Davis, Duffy, and Dillon came together in the Phoenix Park to found their newspaper, they would instantly have fled apart into three camps; for the three men were of three bloods—Norman, British, and Gaelic. Were we to enter a National Portrait Gallery under the influence of this bigoted one-stem theory of our far-branching race, we should have to commence by tearing down the likenesses of three-fourths of the men whom the universal Irish heart reveres and loves, and we should have to seek our heroes mostly in ages before portraits began to be painted. We should be doing just as wise and feasible a thing as if the English people were to set about picking out every Englishman whose ancestor had been at the wrong side at the battle of Hastings, and banishing them to Normandy on the ground of incompatibility of race-temperament.

The three great race-elements of our population are knit together by every moral and material tie that could consecrate the partnership of men born under the same sky, and harnessed together for the same work in life. Even by the tie of religion—for all three are penetrated alike with veneration for those Divine revelations and those principles of Christian morality which they believe to be the basis of all human society. By the tie of material interests—for we may defy the most ingenious separatists to draw a line of distinction between the wants, the labours, and the ambitions of the farmer by the banks of the Bann … continue reading »

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