A
long effort has been made to keep Irish history out of our schools in
the interests of "loyalty." But it is English history that ought to be
kept out, for it is full of stuff much more perilous. You teach Irish
children the tale of Runnymede, covering with contempt the king of that
day, and heaping praise on the barons who shook their fists under his
nose. This is dangerous doctrine. It is doubly dangerous seeing that
these children will soon grow up to learn that the Great Charter, which
is held to justify all these tumultuous proceedings, has never even to
our own day been current law in Ireland. You introduce them to the Wars
of the Roses as a model of peaceful, constitutional development; to the
slaying of Edward II., Richard II., and I know not how many more as
object-lessons in the reverence which angry Englishmen accord to an
anointed king when they really dislike him. Later centuries show them
one Stuart beheaded outside his own palace, another dethroned and
banished in favour of a Dutch prince. Of romantic loyalty to the person
of a sovereign they find no trace or hint in the modern period.
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