Ireland is
politically as Great Britain made her. Since the twelfth century, that
is to say for a great part of the Middle Ages and for the whole of the
modern period, the mind of England and not that of Ireland has been the
dominant fact in Irish history.
This state of things--a paradox in action--carries with it certain
metaphysical implications. The philosophers tell us that all morality
centres in the maxim that others are to be treated as ends in
themselves, and not as instruments to our ends. If they are right, then
we must picture Ireland as the victim of a radical immoralism. We must
think of her as a personality violated in its ideals, and arrested in
its development. And, indeed, that is no bad way of thinking: it is the
one formula which summarises the whole of her experience. But the
phrasing is perhaps too high and absolute; and the decline and fall of
Mr Balfour are a terrible example to those of us who, being young, might
otherwise take metaphysics too solemnly. It will, therefore, at this
stage be enough to repeat that, in contemplating the discontent and
unrest which constitute the Irish difficulty, Great Britain is
contemplating the work of her own hands, the creation of her own mind.
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