nizations will cover rural Ireland, democratic in constitution and
governed by the aristocracy of intellect and character.

Such associations would have great economic advantages in that they
would be self-reliant and self-contained, and would be less subject to
fluctuation in their prosperity brought about by national disasters and
commercial crises than the present unorganized rural communities are.
They would have all their business under local control; and, aiming at
feeding, clothing, and manufacturing locally from local resources as far
as possible, the slumps in foreign trade, the shortage in supplies, the
dislocations of commerce would affect them but little. They would make
the community wealthier. Every step towards this organization already
taken in Ireland has brought with it increased prosperity, and the
towns benefit by increased purchasing power on the part of these rural
associations. New arts and industries would spring up under the aegis of
the local associations. Here we should find the weaving of rugs,
there the manufacture of toys, elsewhere the women would be engaged
in embroidery or lace-making, and, perhaps, everywhere we might get a
revival of the old local industry of weaving homespuns. We are dreaming
of nothing impossible, nothing which has not been done somewhere
already, nothing which we could not do here in Ireland. True, it cannot
be done all at once, but if we get the idea clearly in our minds of the
building up of a rural civilization in Ireland, we can labor at it with
the grand persistence of medieval burghers in their little towns, where
one generation laid down the foundations of a great cathedral, and saw
only in hope and faith the gorgeous glooms over altar and sanctuary,
and the blaze and flame of stained glass, where apostles, prophets, and
angelic presences were pictured in fire: and the next generation raised
high the walls, and only the third generation saw the realization of
what their grandsires had dreamed. We in Ireland should not live only
from day to day, for the day only, like the beasts in the field, but
should think of where all this long cavalcade of the Gael is tending,
and how and in what manner their tents will be pitched in the evening
of their generation. A national purpose is the most unconquerable and
victorious of all things on earth. It can raise up Babylons from the
sands of the desert, and make imperial civilizations spring from out a
score of huts, and af