Page:The Gaelic State in the Past & Future.djvu/17

 being based upon the other in the order stated. It is always desirable that history (especially Irish history, where the lying and depreciative tongue is not unknown) should be fully documented; but the slender limits of this Essay prohibit this. I make no statement, however, for which I have not chapter and verse before me. I have tried to make the criticism as direct And obvious as possible; but it is of course unavoidable, even if it be desirable, that a man's predilections should influence the nature of his criticism. And as the speculation is based upon the criticism it is equally unavoidable that the speculation should also express the personal desire though it does so happen that this is not always the case. All constitution-building is speculation^; but if that speculation is based on history, and a just and critical search into that history with a view to discovering what are its permanent and what its impermanent, what its fundamental and what its incidental, elements, then it will be a national uplifting and not an irritation, a national hope and not an embarrassment and frustration. It is the hope of this book to promote thought along these lines; and if it achieve this it will have succeeded, even if it be finally cast aside by both writer and reader. For certainly time so spent will be more profitably spent than in the study of constitutions of alien peoples across the seas, or by any sort of constitution-mongering that gives no heed to the impulses of an old and historic Nation.