The Irish Race in the Past and the Present | Page 5

any community of men. Other causes, no doubt, might also be
assigned for the remarkable change now under our consideration. The
one we have pointed out was the chief.
To the same causes, acting now on a larger scale throughout Europe,
we ascribe the same radical changes which we see taking place in the
various nations composing it: every thing brought everywhere in
question; the mind of all unsettled; a real anarchy of intellect spreading
wider and wider even in countries which until now had stood firm
against it. Hence constant revolutions unheard of hitherto; nothing
stable; and men expecting with awe a more frightful and radical
overturning still of every thing that makes life valuable and dear.
Are not these tragic convulsions the black and spotted types wherein
we read the altered character of modern nations; are they not the natural
expression of their fitful and delirious life?
These considerations, which might be indefinitely prolonged, show the
truth of the phrase of Joseph de Maistre that "all nations manifest a
particular and distinctive character, which deserves to be attentively
considered."
The fact is, in this kind of study is contained the only possible
philosophy of history for modern times.
With respect to ages that have passed away, to nations which have run
their full course, a nobler study is possible--the more so because

inspired writers have traced the way. Thus Bossuet wrote his celebrated
"Discours." But he stopped wisely at the coming of our Lord. As to the
events anterior to that great epoch, he spoke often like a prophet of
ancient times; he seemed at times to be initiated in the designs of God
himself. And, in truth, he had them traced by the very Spirit of God;
and, lifted by his elevated mind to the level of those sublime thoughts,
he had only to touch them with the magic of his style.
But of subsequent times he did not speak, except to rehearse the
well-known facts of modern history, whose secret is not yet revealed,
because their development is still being worked out, and no conclusion
has been reached which might furnish the key to the whole.
There remains, therefore, but one thing to do: to consider each nation
apart, and read its character in its history. Should this be done for all,
the only practical philosophy of modern history would be written. For
then we should have accomplished morally for men what, in the
physical order, zoologists accomplish for the immense number of living
beings which God has spread over the surface of the earth. They might
be classified according to a certain order of the ascending or
descending moral scale. We could judge them rightly, conformably
with the standard of right or wrong, which is in the absolute possession
of the Christian conscience. Brilliant but baneful qualities would no
longer impose on the credulity of mankind, and men would not be led
astray in their judgments by the rule of expediency or success which
generally dictates to historians the estimate they form and inculcate on
their readers of the worth of some nations, and the insignificance or
even odiousness of others.
In the impossibility under which we labor of penetrating, at the present
time, the real designs of Providence with respect to the various races of
men, so great an undertaking, embracing the principal, if not all,
modern races, would be one of the most useful efforts of human genius
for the spread of truth and virtue among men.
Our purport is not of such vast import. We shall take in these pages for
the object of our study one of the smallest and, apparently, most
insignificant nations of modern Europe--the Irish. For several ages they
have lost even what generally constitutes the basis of nationality,
self-government; yet they have preserved their individuality as strongly
marked as though they were still ruled by the O'Neill dynasty.

And we may here remark that the number of a people and the size of its
territory have absolutely no bearing on the estimate which we ought to
form of its character. Who would say that the Chinese are the most
interesting and commendable nation on the surface of the globe? They
are certainly the most ancient and most populous; their code of precise
and formal morality is the most exact and clear that philosophers could
ever dictate, and succeed in giving as law to a great people. That code
has been followed during a long series of ages. Most discoveries of
modern European science were known to them long before they were
found out among us; agriculture, that first of arts, which most
economists consider as the great test whereby to judge of the worth of a
nation, is and always has been carried by them to a perfection unknown