TOLERATION IN THE FIGHT FOR IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 114

TOLERATION IN THE FIGHT FOR IRELAND

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of this island—Celtic, Dane, or Saxon—in a common kindred, not indeed exempt from the differences of opinion which are the badge of human frailty, but warmed with a common love for a beautiful country, bound together for better for worse by interests which can no more be severed than the tide of centuries can be rolled back, and ready to face the future government of their native land with the magnanimity which can all but remake a sorrowful history, and render a healthy conflict of opinions the salt of public life, and not its poison?

In the next place, no particular school of Irish politicians can escape their share of responsibility for the acrimony, the apparent remorselessness, of disputes which the mass of Englishmen discuss rather less excitingly than the day's racing news, and which Americans blot out of their memory the morning after a Presidential election. We are all sinners by the temptation to over-zeal. It runs in our blood. It has been implanted in us by our history. Fervid conviction, a quickness of vision which realises our own point of view so intensely that it becomes difficult to imagine any other, the soldier-instinct which once enlisted under a sacred banner will charge with the impetuosity of crusaders and will cling all the more devotedly to a losing side, are all qualities which make bad disputants but charming comrades. In this respect, as in so many others, the virtues and the foibles of battalions in Orange and battalions in Green resemble one another as closely as the pavements of Carrick Hill resemble the pavements of the Shankhill Road. On both sides there is the same heat, the same whole-hearted faith in their own way of thinking; the same swiftness to carry the argument from words to blows; and the same chivalrous acknowledgment of opponents' good qualities the moment the clash of the battle is … continue reading »

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