TOLERATION IN THE FIGHT FOR IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 129

TOLERATION IN THE FIGHT FOR IRELAND

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it with an appeal to the Lord of armed hosts. The Irishman who would claim infallibility for his own particular views of national policy would have to disown Owen Roe O'Neil and Wolfe Tone and Mitchel on the one side, or to outrage the memory of Grattan, and O'Connell, and Butt and Parnell on the other. The true Irish Nationalist heart has its corner for every man who served Ireland in his day with the best that was in him, whether his glory shone on Senates or on ranks of steel, whether he toiled in the obscurity of dark days or lived to taste the intoxication of success, whether his services to Ireland took the bright forms of literature or song or consisted in filling giant factories with the hum of prospering industry, or in whatever other form, brilliant or lowly, he may have added to the happiness of the gentle-hearted Irish land, or to the golden memories which redeem her sorrow-haunted story among the nations. In the life of nations, as well as in the life of the individual, human philosophy has never yet found a formula to replace the divinely-inspired words, which stand true of all races to all time, ' Three things remain, Faith, Hope, and Charity; and the greatest of these is Charity.' These are the virtues by which alone achievement is possible to a nation: the faith which can see beyond the jealous circle of the critic, the hope which can pass through valleys of darkness with an undimmed spirit of light, the kindliness which is willing to dwell rather on points of agreement than on points of dissent, which recognises that three-fourths of the misunderstandings that divide mankind come, not from knavery, but from human weakness, which has no personal rancour to gratify and regards no true-born Irishman as a foe. Let us cross in that spirit the mysterious portals of the future that is opening in the colours of a golden dawn before us, and … continue reading »

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