"
Were I to read the poem, of which these lines are the motif, to certain
genial Englishmen of my acquaintance they would observe that the
gentleman in question was a "queer cove, staying up late at night and
catching cold, and that no doubt there was a woman in the case." But
these are considerations a little remote from the daily dust of
politics. In the sense in which every life is a failure, and the best
life the worst failure, Ireland is a failure. But in every other sense,
in all that touches the fathomable business of daylight, she has been a
conspicuous success.
A certain type of fanaticism is naive enough to regard the intercourse
of England with Ireland as that of a superior with an inferior race.
This is the sanction invoked to legitimise every adventure in invasion
and colonisation. M. Jules Hormand, who has attempted, in his recent
book, "Domination et Colonisation," to formulate a theory of the whole
subject, touches bed-rock when he writes:
"We must then accept as our point of departure the principle that
there is a hierarchy of races and of civilisations, and that we
belong to the higher race and civilisation.
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