For these ancient dignities have passed into the consciousness of every sort of Irishmen. It was, for example, Molyneux who, in his _Case of Ireland Stated_ at the end of the 17th century, first among modern Irish writers based an argument upon them. Molyneux was an English colonist. In the wars of Tirconnell and Patrick Sarsfield he had fled to England, returning only when Ginkel the Dutchman had won the field for his master, now monarch of England. He regarded the ancient nation with aversion. Yet when the English Parliament harassed what he proudly conceived to be the ancient liberty of Ireland, he stated the case of that nation, stated it as his case, in a public document of historic moment; and the English Parliament caused his book to be burned by the public hangman. The sorest part of his book was his reference to the Council of Constance of 1416. This Council may rightly claim to be the first of modern international congresses. At it a certain question of precedence had arisen between France and England, which was referred to the Court of Heralds. In the judgment which was given it was stated as an international ruling that Europe was first constituted from four nations. These nations, in the order of their precedence, were Rome, Byzantium, Ireland and Spain. And Molyneux, the English colonist, proudly referred to this ruling, and based a great part of his case upon it. The breed of Molyneux is alive to-day. Political differences have divided it from the ancient race which furnished its arguments. But the pride is the same; the sense of possession is essentially the same, obscured though it may have been by the causes of difference; and when a new alignment of political parties has blent the two points of view into one outlook, and made the whole consciousness to merge in one, the living factor of ancient nationhood will arise with a new strength. That strength will prove a factor for the future. The cause of it is registered in the present draft Constitution; and it is the first of the two causes that make it unlike those of the other nations with which Ireland is now confederate and co-equal. The second cause is curiously like, and yet curiously unlike, to the first. It is also derived from the fact of nationhood, but from the achievement of nationhood at the other end of history.