There is, outside of books, no such thing as Utopia. There is no such thing as a State abstractly good or bad in itself. A State is only good or bad in the degree in which it answers, or fails to answer, the needs of the Nation for which it is devised. All the rest is words. Similarly there is no such thing as ancient history--except in the case of nations, such as Assyria, that have ceased to exist. All history is new and living, because in it are to be discovered the urge and impulse of national minds. Particularly is this so with Ireland, where the right national development was suppressed by an alien military conquest. The nineteenth century, for instance, was full of unrest, of demands, of swift instinctive actions, that can only be understood by turning back three hundred years of history. It is true that these national intuitions have been frustrated so long that they are no longer sure of themselves. It is true that, the development having been hindered for so long, it is difficult to gauge what these intuitions would mean in the light of wholly changed conditions. Yet, in spite of all this, the principle remains sound, that it is only by searching into a nation’s mind that its desires and impulses can be discovered, and it is only by watching those desires and impulses when they were free to exercise themselves creatively that a State can be guessed-at that shall be that Nation’s crown. It is this search that I purpose in this little Essay. I am aware of the adventurous nature of the task--an adventure rendered doubly difficult by the confined space of the Essay and by the fact that it breaks new ground--but it is necessary that someone should undertake it, however ill-equipped he be for the task. It has necessarily to be compounded of research, criticism and speculation, each being based upon the other in the order stated. It is always desirable that history (especially Irish history, where the lying and depreciative tongue is not unknown) should be fully documented; but the slender limits of this Essay prohibit this. I make no statement, however, for which I have not chapter and verse before me. I have tried to make the criticism as direct and obvious as possible; but it is of course unavoidable, even if it be desirable, that a man’s predilections should influence the nature of his criticism. And as the speculation is based upon the criticism it is equally unavoidable that the speculation should also express the personal desire--though it does so happen that this is not always the case. All constitution-building is speculation; but if that speculation is based on history, and a just and critical search into that history with a view to discovering what are its permanent and what its impermanent, what its fundamental and what its incidental, elements, then it will be a national uplifting and not an irritation, a national hope and not an embarrassment and frustration. It is the hope