Swift, Goldsmith, Berkeley, O'Grady, Shaw,
Wilde, Parnell, Davitt, Plunkett, and many others, however they differed
from each other, in so far as they betrayed a political character, were
intensely democratic in economic theory, adding that to an aristocratic
freedom of thought. That peculiar character, I believe, still persists
among our people in the mass, and it is by adopting a policy which will
enable it to manifest once more that we will create an Irish
civilization, which will fit our character as the glove fits the hand.
During the last quarter of a century of comparatively peaceful life the
co-operative principle has once more laid hold on the imagination of the
Irish townsman and the Irish countryman. The communal character is
still preserved. It still wills to express itself in its external
aspects in a communal civilization, in an economic brotherhood. That
movement alone provides in Ireland for the aristocratic and democratic
elements in Irish character. It brings into prominence the aristocracy
of character and intelligence which it is really the Irish nature to
love, and its economic basis is democratic.
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