thermore, far from isolating us,
Gaelic will tend to put us in touch with the civilization of the
West. As a people Anglicised, and badly Anglicised at that, we share,
and even exaggerate, the faults which I have just described. It is
Anglo-Saxon speech which isolates us, and we wish on this ground to
break with it and to hold out our hand to our brothers of the
continent.

But, it may be said, what a pity to dig yet another abyss between
Ireland and Great Britain, for it is with the latter that our
geographical position will always link us for common defense. For,
while it is true that history does not show us a single case of an
empire which has not sooner or later fallen to pieces, nevertheless,
whatever happens, the two islands will be necessarily forced to
co-operate for the common good. Well, let us take it that things will
so fall out, and let us suppose an Anglicised Ireland called upon to
face such a situation. It would be a revolutionary Ireland, a
restless Ireland, an Ireland seeking vaguely for revenge on someone,
deprived of really national character, and, in a general way,
suspecting England of responsibility for the disappearance from our
country of everything that constitutes the idea of nationality. And
let us remark that we are no longer living in those good old times
when entire nations allowed themselves to be absorbed by their
conquerors. The art of printing has changed all that. Today a
"suppressed" nation is one that will sooner or later have its
revenge. Thus let us suppose that we are destined to make political
peace with England and to enter of our own accord into a
Hiberno-Britannic confederation. From our point of view, what would
be the result of that arrangement? The result would be strange. Here
again, as in the case of Home Rule, it is rather we who offer
advantages to England than she who offers them to us. Only, in this
latter case, the result depends on ourselves alone. If we die, it
will be because we have wished it. Our language is not dead; on the
contrary, although not widely spread, it is in itself much more alive
than English, which as a literary language is in full decay. We may
congratulate ourselves that our idiom is intact. Our civilization is
old, but it has not yet lived its full life. If we wish, the future
is ours. And let us truly believe that that is worth while, for the
race which has produced epics like those of Ossian and all that
magnificent literature which has b