Irishmen have been long in realising that the days of the ‘Wild Geese’ are over, and that there are battles for Ireland to be fought and won in Ireland—­battles in which England is not the enemy she was in the days of Fontenoy, but a friend and helper.  But there will be little gain in replacing the traditional conception of England as the inexorable foe by the more modern conception, which threatened to become traditional in its turn, of England as the source of all prosperity and her favour as the condition of all progress in Ireland.  In the recent Land Conference I recognise something more valuable even than the financial and legislative results which flowed from it, for it showed that the conception of reliance upon Irishmen in Ireland, not under some future and problematical conditions, but here and now, for the solution of Irish questions, is gaining ground among us.  If this conception once takes firm hold, as I think it is beginning to do, of the Nationalist party in Ireland, much of the criticism of this chapter will lose its meaning.  The mere substitution of a positive Irish policy for a negative anti-English policy will elevate the whole range of Nationalist political activity in and out of Ireland.  And I am certain that if the ultimate goal of Nationalist politics be desirable, and continue to be desired, it will not be rendered more difficult, but on the contrary very much easier of attainment if those who seek it take possession of the great field of work which, without waiting for any concessions from Westminster, is offered by the Ireland of to-day.

FOOTNOTES: 

[11] This view of the case was powerfully stated by the deputation from the Belfast Chamber of Commerce which waited on Mr. Gladstone in the spring of 1893.  They pointed out inter alia that the members of the deputation were poorer by thousands of pounds owing to the fall in Irish stocks consequent upon the introduction of the Home Rule Bill in that year.

[12] The term ‘Scotch-Irish’ does not mean an amalgam of Scotch and Irish, but a race of Scottish immigrants who settled in north-east Ireland.  I may point out that in these criticisms of Irish-American politics I refer, of course, mainly to the Irish-born immigrants and not to the Irish, Scotch-Irish or other, who are American-born.  Nobody can have a higher appreciation than I of the great part played by the American-Irish once they have assimilated the full spirit of American institutions.

[13] Poems of Egan O’Rahilly. Edited, with translation, by the Rev. P.S.  Dinneen, M.A., for the Irish Texts Society, p. 11.  O’Rahilly’s charge against Cromwell is that he “gave plenty to the man with the flail,” but beggared the great lords, p. 167.