people, because it springs from biological necessity. As well might a
foolish gardener trust that his apple-tree would bring forth grapes as
to dream that there could be uniformity of character and civilization
between Irishmen and Englishmen. It would be a crime against life if it
could be brought about and diversities of culture and civilization made
impossible. We may live at peace with our neighbors when it is agreed
that we must be different, and no peace is possible in the world between
nations except on this understanding. But I am not now thinking of that,
but of the more urgent problem how we are to live at peace with each
other. I am convinced Irish enmities are perpetuated because we live by
memory more than by hope, and that even now on the facts of character
there is no justification for these enmities.
We have been told that there are two nations in Ireland. That may have
been so in the past, but it is not true today. The union of Norman and
Dane and Saxon and Celt which has been going on through the centuries is
now completed, and there is but one powerful Irish character--not Celtic
or Norman-Saxon, but a new race. We should recognize our moral identity.
It was apparent before the war in the methods by which Ulstermen and
Nationalists alike strove to defend or win their political objects.
There is scarce an Ulsterman, whether he regards his ancestors as
settlers or not, who is not allied through marriage by his forbears
to the ancient race. There is in his veins the blood of the people who
existed before Patrick, and he can look backward through time to the
legends of the Red Branch, the Fianna and the gods as the legends of
his people. It would be as difficult to find even on the Western Coast a
family which has not lost in the same way its Celtic purity of race. The
character of all is fed from many streams which have mingled in them and
have given them a new distinctiveness. The invasions of Ireland and the
Plantations, however morally unjustifiable, however cruel in method, are
justified by biology. The invasion of one race by another was nature's
ancient way of reinvigorating a people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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