Constitution, in its present
form, into being. Chief among these is the historical fact that Ireland
has, by Treaty, confirmed by the act of her Legislature, consented to
enter a Community of Nations known at the moment as the British
Commonwealth of Nations. We may disagree with this act; but it is an
international fact; and without it the Constitution would not be what it
now is. This factor in the result is therefore worth brief attention, by
way of introduction to the present publication of these articles.

To anyone familiar with the constitutions of the nations that now comprise
the Commonwealth of Nations the present Constitution will speak in an
unaccustomed language. It is unlike any of them. It has clearly been
planned as the result of a distinct and separate conception. The causes of
the difference are, however, not very difficult to discover, and once seen
are plain to understand. They constitute what may prove to be an
international factor of the very first importance.

These causes fall under, broadly, two heads. The first is that Ireland is
not what these other nations were when their Constitutions were first
framed. Nor is Ireland, indeed, what they are now. Canada, for example,
and Australia, are English Colonies, first established by white men in a
coloured population. The greater part of these white men draw their
traditions and inspiration, their habits of thought and habits of public
conduct, from the rootstock of the English nation. They look to England as
their mother-country. But Ireland is an ancient nation and a
mother-country in her own right. She has herself peopled the earth with
her children. Her empire is as far-flung as England's. And if it is not
based on military might, but linked by ties of memory, pride and love, it
has not therefore proved itself any the less powerful internationally at
times of crisis and danger for the mother at home.

Moreover, it was she who, when in the eighth and ninth centuries Europe
fell into decay after the barbarian inroads, re-established and rebuilt
European civilisation, sending her scholars with her books into every part
of the continent of ruin. It was her missionaries, indeed, who first
brought Christianity to England, and her scholars who taught the first
English poet his letters. Before the name of England was heard, the name
of Ireland was known and respected. She possessed an intricate, if
uncompleted national polity when the neighbouring island