Читать книгу Ireland in Travail онлайн

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The landlord all this while, hearing several opinions and pleading inability to distinguish the right one, does what is easiest and suits him best, and leaves things as they are. It is small excuse that Britain should have been so tardy with justice; but it is probable that she would have been swifter righting Ireland’s wrongs had she heard a united voice in place of many.

The illustration of landlord and tenant suits better than any other; but it smacks unpleasantly of possessor and possessed. Let us be clear. The landlord of Ireland is that single people made out of the four separate peoples of the British Isles.

Let us turn to a more profitable question. When were the beginnings of Sinn Fein?

Who shall say so late in the day what might have checked the growth of this movement? May Sinn Fein have been a distemper which, contracted, must be gone through with? May it have been something altogether different, a coming to rebirth of a people, as the nearly drowned man is brought back to life with pain and tears? Is it that the gods decide such and such a thing shall befall and determine when it shall take place? The Gaelic League went before Sinn Fein like John of old. “After me shall come another mightier than I.” It is sufficient that the movement had a beginning, and like an avalanche gained way as it moved.