Page:The Irish Constitution Explained.djvu/12

 it would go hard with anyone who attempted to remind them of what, nevertheless, their constitutions are a continual reminder. The consequence is that the provisions of these constitutions cannot be enforced since they do not square with experience. They encumber the documents which contain them as so much dead timber. They are sometimes carelessly, and more often dishonestly, described as legal fictions. But they are not legal fictions. They are dead letters—dead timber which a wise woodman would soon hew away. Life and experience have outgrown them; and this growth finds expression—if, unfortunately, not the full expression that might at one time have seemed possible—in the present draft Constitution. For under her Treaty with England Ireland agreed to take equal rank in the Community of Nations with the other members of it. Specifically she accepted the "law, practice and constitutional usage" of Canada; and that constitutional usage implies, not the dead timber of the Canadian Constitution, but the living tissue of her constitutional experience.

These two causes, then, have joined together to produce the draft of the Irish Constitution. From them was created the original plan of the Constitution, according to which Ireland takes her place, not only generally among all nations in virtue of her ancient right, but specially in a certain confederacy of nations in virtue of a Treaty of Peace, signed between her plenipotentiaries and England’s plenipotentiaries, and approved by both legislatures. To the most casual glance, it is indeed a most modern and forward-looking document; yet it draws from so ancient a fountain-head. And the conjunction of these two may prove of searching value, if rightly used, to Ireland’s influence in the world—provided that there be peace at home, without which a nation is nought. That influence may not be of the same kind as one had hoped before the Treaty of Peace was signed. But even if it be not of the same kind, its measure need not be less. It cannot be so immediate; and that is loss; but it may with wisdom and firmness prove ultimately to be more extensive. Whatever