Page:The Gaelic State in the Past & Future.djvu/44

 Yet the main value of such criticisms is that they permit an examination of the Irish State at a moment when its inherent weaknesses had worked themselves out to the surface. At the height of Brian's power those weaknesses existed, but they were held in submission by his personal strength. After his death they at once rose to the surface, just because of the strength with which he had held them in submission and the manner by which he had risen to power. They then demanded a remedy contained in the State itself, and not dependent on the strength of a master mind. And in looking to the old Irish State for instruction it is important to note its weaknesses once they revealed themselves, and to perceive the development by which they would have been corrected.

Yet, while criticism is good, it is proper to look on the other side of the coin. In the light of its own day the Irish State was a remarkable achievement, but in the light of any other day it would be hard to find a statecraft so complete, so wise and so soundly based on a people's will while compact in itself. It was at once both aristocratic and democratic: in fact, it makes these modern expressions to seem, what they are, false entities, for it shows them to be parts of one whole, obverse and reverse of the same thing. The Normans when they came commented on the familiarity that existed between the members of a stateship and its king. The king, in fact, was generally required to foster his children with some freeman's family. Yet to be a king a man had to be pure of birth,