icy will not constrain
national character into an alien mould. The signature of the Irish mind
is not apparent anywhere in this new machinery for self-government. Our
politicians seem to have been unaware that they had any wisdom to learn
from the more obvious failures of representative government as they knew
it. So far, as I have knowledge, no Irishman during the past century
of effort for political freedom took the trouble to think out a form
of government befitting Irish circumstance and character. We left it
absolutely to those whom we declared incapable of understanding us
or governing us to devise for us a system by which we might govern
ourselves. I do not criticize those who devised the new machinery of
self-government, but those who did not devise it, and who discouraged
the exercise of political imagination in Ireland. It is said of an
artist that it was his fantasy first to paint his ideal of womanly
beauty, and, when this was done, to approximate it touch by touch to
the sitter, and when the sitter cried, "Ah, now it is growing like!" the
artist ceased, combining the maximum of ideal beauty possible with the
minimum of likeness. Now if we had thought out the ideal structure of
Irish government we might have offered it for criticism by those in
whose power it was to accept or reject, and have gradually approximated
it until a point was reached where the compromise left at least
something of our making and imagination in it. There is nothing of us
in the Act which is in abeyance as I write. I am less concerned with
it than with the creation of a social order, for the social order in
a country is the strong and fast fortress where national character
is created and preserved. A legislature may theoretically allow
self-government, but by its constitution may operate against national
character and its expression in a civilization. We have accepted the
principle of representative government, and that, I readily concede, is
the ideal principle, but the method by which a representative character
is to be given to State institutions we have not thought out at all. We
have committed the error our neighbors have committed of assuming that
the representative assembly which can legislate for general interests
can deal equally with particular interests; that the body of men who
will act unitedly so as to secure the liberty of person or liberty of
thought, which all desire for themselves, will also act wisely where
class pr