XVIII.
I have not in all this written anything about the relations of Ireland
with other countries, or even with our neighbors, in whose political
household we have lived for so many centuries in intimate hostility. I
have considered this indeed, but did not wish, nor do I now wish, in
anything I may write, to say one word which would add to that old
hostility. Race hatred is the cheapest and basest of all national
passions, and it is the nature of hatred, as it is the nature of love,
to change us into the likeness of that which we contemplate. We grow
nobly like what we adore, and ignobly like what we hate; and no people
in Ireland became so anglicized in intellect and temperament, and even
in the manner of expression, as those who hated our neighbors most. All
hatreds long persisted in bring us to every baseness for which we hated
others. The only laws which we cannot break with impunity are divine
laws, and no law is more eternally sure in its workings than that which
condemns us to be even as that we condemned. Hate is the high commander
of so many armies that an inquiry into the origin of this passion is at
least as needful as histories of other contemporary notorieties.
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