Everything that has been introduced by England into Ireland is destined to rejection, and not as a matter of prejudice, but as an inevitable fact in statesmanship. Suits cut for other people, or demanded by other people’s necessities, are the proper wear for clowns. At best these things were wrung as concessions given with poor grace after long and bitter war; at worst they were anticipations of further war and the spontaneous creation of an alien thought. The first was better than the second because it did spring from the initiative of the people, and partially and ineffectually answered that demand, while the second sprang from the same alien intention that has created three centuries of almost unremitting warfare. And whether that intention stalk as an undisguised foe, or prank about with the antics of a philanthropist, the result in statesmanship is the same. Instead of effecting an organisation it creates a configuration; instead of producing human contentment, comfort and ease it produces irritation, exasperation and enmity; instead of being as flexible as the life it contains it is as rigid as the thought that made it; instead of being capable of development it is only capable of being broken or abused; instead of being a National State it is a national despair and futility. Therefore statesmanship must neglect its achievements (though continuity of government may compel their continuance for awhile) and must make a direct approach to the national life, and its needs and necessities, human and economic, in order to build again, however slowly to build, from the foundations the structure that those foundations decree and suggest.