not be hampered in their development by the intervention of busybodies
from outside. Of course on matters where particular interests clashed
with general interests, or were unable to adjust themselves to other
interests, the supreme Assembly would have to decide. The more sectional
interests are removed from discussion in the National Assembly, and
the more it confines itself to general interests the more will it
approximate to the ideal sense, be less the haunt of greed, and more the
vehicle of the national will and the national being.

By the application of the principle of representative government now in
force, one is reminded of nothing so much as the palette of an artist
who had squeezed out the primary colors and mixed them into a greasy
drab tint, where the purity of every color was lost, or the most
powerful pigment was in dull domination. If the modification of the
representative principle I have outlined was in operation, with each
interest or industry organized, and freed from alien interference, the
effect might be likened to a disc with the seven primary colors raying
from a centre, and made to whirl where the motion produced rather the
effect of pure light. We must not mix the colors of national life
until conflicting interests muddle themselves into a gray drab of human
futility, but strive, so far as possible, to keep them pure and unmixed,
each retaining its own peculiar lustre, so that in their conjunction
with others they will harmonize, as do the pure primary colors, and
in their motion make a light of true intelligence to prevail in the
national being.

XV.

No policy can succeed if it be not in accord with national character.
If I have misjudged that, what is written here is vain. It may be asked,
can any one abstract from the chaos which is Irish history a prevailing
mood or tendency recurring again and again, and assert these are
fundamental? It is difficult to define national character, even in
long-established States whose history lies open to the world; but it is
most difficult in Ireland, which for centuries has not acted by its own
will from its own centre, where national activity was mainly by way
of protest against external domination, or a readjustment of itself to
external power. We can no more deduce the political character of the
Irish from the history of the past seven hundred years than we can
estimate the quality of genius in an artist whom we have only seen when
gr