We have had, since the days of Strongbow, many conquests and confiscations and settlements, the main object of each being the acquisition of the land of Ireland.  Is it not marvellous, notwithstanding all the attempts to destroy our people, how they have clung to the soil and so absorbed the foreign element that you still so often find the old tribal names in the old tribal lands?  Apart from this, we have, in the descendants of the various invaders, what would be a most valuable element in a self-governing Ireland, for whatever be the creed or the race from which men have sprung, it is but natural that all should love alike the land of their birth.  As a result of Michael Davitt’s labours, that land is to-day more nearly than it has been for centuries the property of the people, and it seems now, humanly speaking, impossible that they should ever be dispossessed of it again.

Then there is the improvement in education.  At one time it was banned and hunted along with religion and patriotism.  Then it was permitted, with a view of turning it into a lever against the other two elements.  Concessions have so far been wrung from the British parliament that there is now a university to which Irish youths can be sent.  Here there is a great factor for good, for while, on the one hand, knowledge is power, on the other hand the thirst for knowledge has always been ineradicable in the Irish character.  There are also the beginnings of technical training so long badly needed.  Under self-government we should have been a couple of generations earlier in the race than we are, but it is not too late.

Lastly, in reckoning up the conditions from which we can take hope and comfort there is this:  In the darkest hour we have never lost faith in ourselves and our Cause.  To find a parallel for such tenacity in the pages of the history of any land would be difficult.

We come of a race that, through the long, dreary centuries, has never known despair, nor shall we despair now.  I am assured that, before long, the drain on our life blood that has gone on for sixty years will stop, and that we shall stand on solid ground at last, ready for an upward spring.

And so, to the young men of Ireland I would say:  Be true to yourselves; hold fast to the ideals which your fathers preserved through the centuries, in spite of savage force and unscrupulous statecraft.  The times are changing; new impulses are constantly shaping the destinies of the nations; have confidence in God and your country; and who shall dare to say that the future of Ireland may not yet be a glorious recompense for the heroism with which she has borne the sufferings of the past.

THE END.

  INDEX.

  A.

  Alabama Claims, 75.

  Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien condemned and executed, 104.

  Ambulances, Irish, for Franco-Prussian War, 160, 161.

  Amnesty Association and O’Connell Centenary, 183.