In further consideration of this we should put by the thought of finding a mere working agreement.  There is a deep-lying basis of authority and justice to seek, which it should be our highest aim to discover.  Modern governments concede justice to those who can compel justice—­even the democracy requires that you be strong enough to formulate a claim and sustain it; but this is the way of tyranny.  A perfect government should seek, while careful to develop its stronger forces and keep them in perfect balance, to consider also the claims of those less powerful but not less true.  A government that over-rides the weak because it is safe, is a tyranny, and tyranny is in seed in the democratic governments of our time.  We must consider this well, for it is pressing and grave; and we must get men to come together as citizens to defend the rights as well of the unit which is unsupported as of the party that commands great power.  So shall we give steadiness and fervour to our growing strength by balancing it with truth and justice:  so shall we found a government that excesses cannot undermine nor tyranny destroy.

VI

We have to consider, in conclusion, the unrest in the world, the war of parties and classes, and the need of judging the tendencies of the time to set our steps aright.  With the wars and rumours of wars that threaten the great nations from without and the wild upheavals that threaten them within, it would be foolish to hide from ourselves the drift of events.  We must decide our attitude; and if it is too much to hope that we may keep clear of the upheavals, we should aim at strengthening ourselves against the coming crash.  We cannot set the world right, but we can go a long way to setting things in our own land right, by making through a common patriotism a united people.  What if we are held up occasionally by the cold cries shot at every high aim—­“dreamer—­Utopia”; cry this in return:  no vision of the dreamer can be more wild than the frantic make-shifts of the Great Powers to vie in armaments with one another or repress internal revolts.  Consider England in the late strike that paralysed her.  It was only suspended by a step that merely deferred the struggle; the strife is again threatening.  All the powers are so threatened and their efforts to defer the hour are equally feverish and fruitless; for the hour is pressing and may flash on the world when ’tis least prepared.  Let who will deride us, but let us prepare.  We may not guide our steps with the certainty of prophets, nor hope by our beautiful schemes to make a perfect state; but we can only come near to perfection in the light of a perfect ideal, and however far below it we may remain, we can at least, under its inspiration, reach an existence rational and human:  our justification for a brave effort lies in that the governments of this time are neither one nor the other.  He who thinks Ireland’s struggle to express her own mind, to give utterance