Page:The Irish Constitution Explained.djvu/9

 To anyone familiar with the constitutions of the nations that now comprise the Commonwealth of Nations the present Constitution will speak in an unaccustomed language. It is unlike any of them. It has clearly been planned as the result of a distinct and separate conception. The causes of the difference are, however, not very difficult to discover, and once seen are plain to understand. They constitute what may prove to be an international factor of the very first importance.

These causes fall under, broadly, two heads. The first is that Ireland is not what these other nations were when their Constitutions were first framed. Nor is Ireland, indeed, what they are now. Canada, for example, and Australia, are English Colonies, first established by white men in a coloured population. The greater part of these white men draw their traditions and inspiration, their habits of thought and habits of public conduct, from the rootstock of the English nation. They look to England as their mother-country. But Ireland is an ancient nation and a mother-country in her own right. She has herself peopled the earth with her children. Her empire is as far-flung as England’s. And if it is not based on military might, but linked by ties of memory, pride and love, it has not therefore proved itself any the less powerful internationally at times of crisis and danger for the mother at home.

Moreover, it was she who, when in the eighth and ninth centuries Europe fell into decay after the barbarian inroads, re-established and rebuilt European civilisation, sending her scholars with her books into every part of the continent of ruin. It was her missionaries, indeed, who first brought Christianity to England, and her scholars who taught the first English poet his letters. Before the name of England was heard, the name of Ireland was known and respected. She possessed an intricate, if uncompleted national polity when the neighbouring island was peopled by distinct and scattered populations of conquerors. By virtue of these ancient dignities she was