We left it
absolutely to those whom we declared incapable of understanding us or
governing us to devise for us a system by which we might govern
ourselves. I do not criticize those who devised the new machinery of
self-government, but those who did not devise it, and who discouraged
the exercise of political imagination in Ireland. It is said of an
artist that it was his fantasy first to paint his ideal of womanly
beauty, and, when this was done, to approximate it touch by touch to the
sitter, and when the sitter cried, "Ah, now it is growing like!" the
artist ceased, combining the maximum of ideal beauty possible with the
minimum of likeness. Now if we had thought out the ideal structure of
Irish government we might have offered it for criticism by those in
whose power it was to accept or reject, and have gradually approximated
it until a point was reached where the compromise left at least
something of our making and imagination in it. There is nothing of us
in the Act which is in abeyance as I write. I am less concerned with it
than with the creation of a social order, for the social order in a
country is the strong and fast fortress where national character is
created and preserved.
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