Page:The Gaelic State in the Past & Future.djvu/89

 represented who were pitted against one another. That was when the stranger was warring through the land, and if such a condition did not still the Nation's culture, how much purer would be the opportunity if a State order created a condition of life in which the human desire for rivalry became the asset of a community instead of the destruction of a community? It is the first function of a State to create such an order; but in the case of Ireland that order lies ready to her hand in her past Statehood that only requires to be adapted to the needs and necessities of her new life.

VIII.

purpose of this little book has been to examine the working of the old Irish State, to show how that State was affected by the attempt at military conquest, to see how, when that conquest succeeded in overthrowing the form of the State and uprooting it out of the soil, its memory persisted in the instincts and expectations of the Nation, and made all the uprisings of the Nation malleable to its ancient will, and finally to see how far those instincts could be translated into the new conditions and experiences of the national life in a re-birth of the old State. It is no part of its business to examine the problems that will beset the future State of Ireland. It has a sufficiently hardy task to carry