Darrell Figgis

“ The full height of nationhood is the recognition of sovereignty; and the completest act of sovereignty of which a nation may be capable is to confer its Constitution on itself. With the exception of Great Britain, none of the other members of the Community were, when their constitutions were enacted, capable of this. Each of them received its Constitution as bestowed, not by the Act of its own Legislature, but by the Act of a suzerain Legislature. And that shortness of national stature remained until it was removed by the addition of Ireland to the Community. ”

“ But the pride is the same; the sense of possession is essentially the same, obscured though it may have been by the causes of difference; and when a new alignment of political parties has blent the two points of view into one outlook, and made the whole consciousness to merge in one, the living factor of ancient nationhood will arise with a new strength. ”

“ But they live in the consciousness of a nation to-day; and therefore to-day they are a factor, to neglect which would be to neglect a prime element without which neither the present nor the future may be understood. Only the sentimentalist waves out of sight considerations that are unpleasant to him. The realist faces every element of being, conscious or unconscious; for he knows that only out of the sum of all those elements can life proceed, or creation begin. ”

“ The colonies have come to be nations, very jealous of their nationhood. They have grown with experience, have moved onward with time, and it would go hard with anyone who attempted to remind them of what, nevertheless, their constitutions are a continual reminder. ”

“ One need only believe with l'Abbé Coignard that "a people is not susceptible to more than one form of government at the same period," to believe, further, that if one asserts the derivation of all power and authority from the popular will, if that will be once fairly and honestly ascertained, it then follows that the will of the people is sufficient lo itself, and that all forms of government must be made malleable to it. ”

“ They are dead letters—dead timber which a wise woodman would soon hew away. Life and experience have outgrown them; and this growth finds expression—if, unfortunately, not the full expression that might at one time have seemed possible—in the present draft Constitution. For under her Treaty with England Ireland agreed to take equal rank in the Community of Nations with the other members of it. ”

“ And though it be true that words are only words, it is equally true that words are the parasites of thought, and cling to the mind long after their original uses are forgotten. To cause the relinquishment of an ancient word is itself a liberal accomplishment of no mean sort, as psychologists know ”

“ That strength will prove a factor for the future. The cause of it is registered in the present draft Constitution; and it is the first of the two sauses that make it unlike those of the other nations with which Ireland is now confederate and co-equal. ”