under and for power with all the advantages of possession, of
prescription, and of extraneous support, there is a David that can kill
this Goliath. That conquering force lies in the principle of
nationality.

It was the growing sense of nationality that prompted the Irish
Parliament to develop its earlier struggles for privilege on the narrow
ground into a genuine contest for freedom, civil and religious, on a
ground as broad as Ireland, nay, as humanity at large. If there be such
things as contradictions in the world of politics, they are to be found
in nationality on the one side, and bigotry of all kinds on the other,
but especially religious bigotry, which is of all the most baneful.
Whatever is given to the first of these two is lost to the second. I
speak of a reasonable and reasoning, not of a blind and headstrong
nationality; of a nationality which has regard to circumstances and to
traditions, and which only requires that all relations, of incorporation
or of independence, shall be adjusted to them according to the laws of
Nature's own enactment. Such a nationality was the growth of the last
century in Ireland. As each Irishman began to feel that he had a
country, to which he belonged, and which belonged to him, he was, by a
true process of nature, drawn more and more into brotherhood, and into
the sense of brotherhood, with those who shared the allegiance and the
property, the obligation and the heritage. And this idea of country,
once well conceived, presents itself as a very large idea, and as a
framework for most other ideas, so as to supply the basis of a common
life. Hence it was that, on the coming of Lord Fitzwilliam, the whole
generous emotion of the country leapt up with one consent, and went
forth to meet him. Hence it was that religious bigotry was no longer an
appreciable factor in the public life of Ireland. Hence it was that on
his recall, and in order to induce acquiescence in his recall, it became
necessary to divide again the host that had, welcomed him--to put one
part of it in array as Orangemen, who were to be pampered and inflamed;
and to quicken the self-consciousness of another and larger mass by
repulsion and proscription, by stripping Roman Catholics of arms in the
face of licence and of cruelty, and, finally, by clothing the extreme of
lawlessness with the forms of law.

Within the last twelve months we have seen, in the streets of Belfast,
the painful proof that the work of Beresfor