And Ireland, without
trenching on the needs of her home market, is capable of much more
intensive exploitation as a food-exporting country. Economically the two
nations are joined in relations that ought to be relations of mutual
profit, were they not eternally poisoned by political oppression. With
this virus removed, the natural balance of the facts of nature will
spontaneously establish itself between the two countries.
The true desire of all the loud trumpeters of "loyalty" is, as it
appears to me, of a very different order. What they really ask is that
Ireland should begin her career of autonomy with a formal act of
self-humiliation. She may enter the Council of Empire provided that she
enters on her knees, and leaves her history outside the door as a
shameful burden. This is not a demand that can be conceded, or that men
make on men. The open secret of Ireland is that Ireland is a nation. In
days rougher than ours, when a blind and tyrannous England sought to
drown the national faith of Ireland in her own blood as in a sea, there
arose among our fathers men who annulled that design.
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