Page:The Gaelic State in the Past & Future.djvu/41

 leader of a stateship. Therefore, had the monarchy become hereditary there would have been two contradictory principles in the State; there would always be a tendency to bring one into line with the other; and it is not very difficult to see which principle would finally have prevailed.

Any arrogation of power by the monarch (and it is the first principle of monarchs to arrogate power) would have struck athwart the rule of the people in their most familiar and immediate life. A moment always arises in history (always has arisen and always will arise) when a monarch and a people front one another with the claim to real power. In such issues the people always win in the end, even when their rights in the State are most degraded. How much simpler would the issue be when the people, as in the Irish State, held the land, the final source of all wealth, in their own possession in corporate stateships? In the crisis that later befell all States no nation could have faced the future with greater assurance than Ireland, had Fate not thrown a sterner destiny before it.

In the same dispute another fault of the State was involved in fact, was one of the causes that led to the invasion of the foreigner. For the dynastic war was really the struggle of the provinces for the hegemony. The O'Neills of Meath and Ulster, the O'Conors of Connacht and the O'Briens of Munster contended together in the names of their provinces; and the Mac Murchadhas of Leinster, having no part in the war, were driven into a false isolation. This was only possible because the provinces had