"We are always telling the Parliamentarians that we need not wait for the Act of the British Parliament to make Ireland a Nation. We ought equally to remember that we do not require an Act of the British Parliament in order ourselves to become pure or temperate, or diligent or unselfish. Our liberty--our real liberty--the liberty both of ourselves and our country--is in our own hands. England cannot crush or kill it, or even seriously injure it. England can only remain in Ireland, indeed, as long as our character is weaker than her guns. Guns are stronger than middling character. Against real character, passionate, determined, and organized, they are less availing than children's catapults. English domination feeds and thrives on weak character. When every Nationalist makes his or her character strong and self-reliant and beautiful, English domination will die from sheer lack of sustenance. If you are weak of will or base in your character, you are as valuable a support to the English garrison in Ireland as though you hated the Irish language and imported all your clothes from Yorkshire. _The only way to be a patriotic Irishman is to do your best to become a perfect man._" The necessity for individual action, to continue the illustration of its spirit, is emphasized by a very wholesome phrase. It is that "the only part of the Irish Nation which a good many of us have any chance of setting free immediately is ourselves." In other words, no Parliament can make a nation free--not even a native Parliament; or, as Arthur Griffith puts it, "Every Irish man or woman's self is the Irish Nation." With this no one of course would quarrel, but it does not follow, as the Gaelic element in Sinn Fein seemed to think, that "every Irishman who does not speak Irish is against his will a representative of English Domination in Ireland and striking a blow at his country's heart." For when we come to consider it, English literature owes not a little to the Celtic spirit, as on the other hand Ireland of to-day contains not a little of the Saxon strain. The attempt on the part of the Sinn Feiners therefore to establish such an extreme and antiquated definition was strictly against nature--a retrospective move, in other words, as against the blending progressive force of evolution represented by Parliamentarianism. At the same time it would be hard to find a more fruitful, inspiring, or elevating passage than the following:--