Page:The Gaelic State in the Past & Future.djvu/14

 with anxious brows and careworn faces have begun to emit constitutions for Ireland at the pace of about one a week—with a facility hardly to be rivalled by the Abbé Siéyès of old in his most fecund hour. Dusty tomes are turned down from the top shelf, and every form of constitution and government is studied in order that it may contribute some new beauty to the destined scheme. Canada, Australia and South Africa have been laid under special contribution, because these are held to be adornments of the English Empire. The words Home Rule, Colonial Home Rule and Dominion Rule buzz about the air like flies of a summer's day, and nobody seems to be very clear as to what they exactly mean, except that there is a deep-seated suspicion that they are not being used very honestly. The air is racked with precedents from China to Peru; and amid it all, with a patience born of centuries, stands the Nation for whom all this pother is supposed to be raised.

The strange thing about it is that all this bustle and stir should so persistently neglect what is just the cause of the whole trouble. That cause is not economic; it is not, in the modern abuse of the word, political; it is historic. The economic and political troubles are incidental to the historical. The constitutions of English colonies such as Canada, Australia and South Africa may be good, bad or indifferent, wise or unwise, discreet or indiscreet; but they are as little applicable to the case of Ireland, and would eventually cause as much irritation, as Dublin Castle. They were created