,
her safety, will be more and more impaired, while, as for us, there
will result a strong growth in patriotism and in anti-British
bitterness. What we have to do, right now, is to take our bearings in
such a way that, no matter what happens to England, our own future
shall be assured. We can do it if we wish it: the question is, shall
we wish it?

Here it may be objected, _Cui bono_ The English language is quite
enough for us. We have it now and we speak it, sometimes, even better
than the English people themselves. We are proud of using the same
language as Sheridan, Burke, and Grattan used. Such an opinion has
its modicum of truth, though less now than a hundred years ago.
Formerly there was in Ireland, and especially around Dublin, a little
colony of Anglo-Irish. The members of this colony spoke a very pure
and classic English, and this fact is largely responsible for the
place which Ireland at one time held in English literature. But
during the last century the remains of this colony have been swamped
beneath a flood of half-Anglicized people, of Irishmen from the
country districts, who were formerly excluded, and who brought with
them such a mixture of expressions and of phonetic tendencies derived
from the Gaelic that the language of Grattan, Sheridan, and Burke has
well-nigh gone out of existence. The reason of this is that since the
date of Catholic emancipation, most careers are open to everybody.
The result has been that the newly enfranchised majority has
ultimately absorbed the minority, and that the atmosphere of culture,
of which we have just spoken, has disappeared. We thus reach an
Ireland which, in a sense, has neither culture nor language, a
country in which the Gaelic spoken by a people humiliated and deeply
demoralized by an anti-Catholic legislation, which was both savage
and degrading, tended to coalesce with an English already condemned
to death. It is from the moment when the Catholics had finally
triumphed over persecution that we must date the beginning of that
political struggle with which we are familiar, a struggle which has
resulted in absorbing all the energies of a great part of the
population. That is why this tremendous problem presents itself to
us, at the very time when we should be justified in feeling ourselves
elated by triumph because of our victories in parliament. And let not
England rejoice too much at our dilemma. If we are doomed to die, she
will die with us, for before di