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.

For the other nations of the Commonwealth are themselves not now what they
were when their constitutions were first framed. They were then but
colonies, on whom their mother-country was pleased to bestow
constitutions--and if the pleasure was not always the most noticeable part
of the bestowal, the legal smile did not diminish the fact of the gift. In
their constitutions, therefore, the apron-strings are very much in
evidence. It is clear from them that the mother did not propose to let the
children wander far from her control, even though she permitted them to
walk with their own feet. Not only in the actual provisions of these
constitutions, but in their very conception and plan, drawn exactly
according to English methods and from English experience, it is evident
that a state of perpetual tutelage was imagined for the peoples to whom
they were given.

That has now changed. The colonies have come to be nations, very jealous
of their nationhood. They have grown with experience, have moved onward
with time, and it would go hard with anyone who attempted to remind them
of what, nevertheless, their constitutions are a continual reminder. The
consequence is that the provisions of these constitutions cannot be
enforced since they do not square with experience. They encumber the
documents which contain them as so much dead timber. They are sometimes
carelessly, and more often dishonestly, described as legal fictions. But
they are not legal fictions. They are dead letters--dead timber which a
wise woodman would soon hew away. Life and experience have outgrown them;
and this growth finds expression--if, unfortunately, not the full
expression that might at one time have seemed possible--i