When ideals which really lie at the root of our being are first proclaimed, all that is external in life protests. So were many great reformers martyred, but they left their ideals behind them in the air, and men breathed them and they became part of their very being. Nationality is a state of consciousness, a mood of definite character in our intellectual being, and it is not perceived first except in profound meditation; it does not become apparent from superficial activities any more than we could, by looking at the world and the tragic history of mankind, discover that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us. That knowledge comes to those who go within themselves, and not to those who seek without for the way, the truth, and the life. But, once proclaimed, the incorruptible spiritual element in man intuitively recognizes it as truth, and it has a profound effect on human action. There is, I believe, a powerful Irish character which has begun to reassert itself in modern times, and this character is in essentials what it was two thousand years ago. We discover its first manifestation in the ancient clans. The clan was at once aristocratic and democratic. It was aristocratic in leadership and democratic in its economic basis. The most powerful character was elected as chief, while the land was the property of the clan. That social order indicates the true political character of the Irish. Races which last for thousands of years do not change in essentials. They change in circumstance. They may grow better or worse, but throughout their history the same fundamentals appear and reassert themselves. We can see later in Irish literature or politics, as powerful personalities emerged and expressed themselves, how the ancient character persisted. Swift, Goldsmith, Berkeley, O'Grady, Shaw, Wilde, Parnell, Davitt, Plunkett, and many others, however they differed from each other, in so far as they betrayed a political character, were intensely democratic in economic theory, adding that to an aristocratic freedom of thought. That peculiar character, I believe, still persists among our people in the mass, and it is by adopting a policy which will enable it to manifest once more that we will create an Irish civilization, which will fit our character as the glove fits the hand. During the last quarter of a century of comparatively peaceful life the co-operative principle has once more laid hold on the imagination of the Irish townsman and the Irish countryman. The communal character is still preserved. It still wills to express itself in its external aspects in a communal civilization, in an economic brotherhood. That movement alone provides in Ireland for the aristocratic and democratic elements in Irish character. It brings into prominence the aristocracy of character and intelligence which it is really the Irish nature to love, and its economic basis is democratic. A large part of our failure to achieve