No doubt our political chieftains loved their country,
but love has many degrees of expression from the basest to the highest.
The basest love will wreck everything, even the life of the beloved, to
gratify ignoble desires. The highest love conspires with the
imaginative reason to bring about every beautiful circumstance around
the beloved which will permit of the highest development of its life.
There is no real love apart from this intellectual brooding. Men who
love Ireland ignobly brawl about her in their cups, quarrel about her
with their neighbor, allow no freedom of thought of her or service of
her other than their own, take to the cudgel and the rifle, and join
sectarian orders or lodges to ensure that Ireland will be made in their
own ignoble image. Those who love Ireland nobly desire for her the
highest of human destinies. They would ransack the ages and accumulate
wisdom to make Irish life seem as noble in men's eyes as any the world
has known. The better minds in every race, eliminating passion and
prejudice, by the exercise of the imaginative reason have revealed to
their countrymen ideals which they recognized were implicit in national
character.
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