Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/21

him to do so. I would be strongly opposed to this. The tenants want the land, the landlords want the rents. … Repeal itself was sought by the mass of the people as a means to an end. In France Irish Nationality is regarded as dead. Here it is not understood. When they fought here, it was for principles and rights, and they cannot comprehend why people should fight for anything else. If you were to tell an American that Celts ought not to be ruled by Saxons, he would say you were either mad or drunk. But if he should see a people struggling to overthrow a dear and a bad Government, and to replace it by a good and cheap one, he would give a dollar to help them. The history of Ireland can hardly in truth be called the history of a nation. The glory that could be won in two or three battles is too small a thing for a nation to subsist upon. There is not one link that can bind the past of Ireland to its future. The old forms of society, the old laws, and the old language have perished irrecoverably. For these reasons I would, if I were Duffy, abandon this ground of Celtic Nationality, and take my stand henceforth upon the rights of man. A Federal Republic is what Great Britain and Ireland want, and if that object were judiciously pursued it might, perhaps, be realised within twenty years. If the French Republic should endure (as I hope it will) England will be the next addition to the Republican sisterhood, for, next to this country and France, it is the most enlightened and (politically) virtuous. With a republic at either side, it is impossible that she can long be satisfied with the present absurd and burdensome institutions. Here is a new gospel of which Duffy might become a great apostle, and London is the spot for him to erect his pulpit in. If he could only start a great journal in London, he would have the whole democracy of the Three Kingdoms in his hands in three years, and in this country he would be the most popular of living men. From that centre he could influence Irish opinion just as much, and he could brave Irish prejudices with vastly greater independence. From that place, too, his voice will be heard in foreign nations. In Ireland he must either suppress his opinion on most important questions—education, for example—or he will become once more the persecuted mouthpiece of a provincial party.