would be the greater, and they would better preserve their social and
economic unity, if they decided to use the wealth of the whole for the
equal advantage of each of their members, regarding themselves, as
the old stateships apparently did in the fifteenth century, as great
trading units for export. That is to say, their members would not, if
they constituted themselves in this form, trade upon one another in an
uneconomical and wasteful warfare; they would create great communal
stores under the control of their assemblies, they would purchase
all their materials, domestic, farming and industrial, at the lowest
possible cost by the purchasing power of the whole stateship, and
they would bend all their efforts, together with the other stateships
under the Council of Trade, to capturing the markets of the world for
their produce. Competition, instead of being a destructive element
within the State, would become a fighting quality of the State itself
in its rivalry with other States, every man’s effort within the Nation
being bent to this end. The technical education of the schools, in
the application of the highest science to the Nation’s business,
would be drafted to this end under the control of the State and the
administration of the stateships.
Nor would the life of culture be neglected. The stateship so
constituted would employ, for example, its own chemist, not only for
its technical work, but for lectures. So would it also employ its own
historian and its own body of musicians. For when men are relieved
from the necessity of competition among themselves, and realise the
dignity of a life fellowship, they realise also the other dignities and
beauties of life. The finer flowers of life cannot bloom over a soil
choked by mutual rapacity, but when the soil is cleared by a cleaner
and more economical order those flowers, being a purer output of the
spirit of man, would find their natural life possible again. The old
stateships are the best indication of this. Men were neither more nor
less naturally corrupt then than they are now. Yet they were proud of
their poets; they esteemed the possession of a poet whose fame was wide
to be a high honour; poets coming from other stateships were received
with distinction and hospitality; and when in the Contention of the
Bards in the seventeenth century poets all over the country conducted
a controversy, it was not only they who rivalled one another, but the
stateships whom they represented who were pitted against one another.
That was when the stranger was warring through the land, and if such a
condition did not still the Nation’s culture, how much purer would be
the opportunity if a State order created a condition of life in which
the human desire for rivalry became the asset of a community instead of
the destruction of a community? It is the first function of a State to
create such an order; but in the case of Ireland that order lies ready
to her hand in her past Statehood that only requires to be adapted to
the needs and necessities of her new life.
VIII. APPROACHING PROBLEMS.
The purpose of this little book has been to examine the working of the
old Irish State, to show how that State was affected by the attempt
at military conquest, to see how, when that conquest succeeded in
overthrowing the form of the State and uprooting it out of the soil,
its memory persisted in the instincts and expectations of the Nation,
and made all the uprisings of the Nation malleable to its ancient will,
and finally to see how far those instincts could be translated into the
new conditions and experiences of the national life in a re-birth of
the old State. It is no part of its business to examine the problems
that will beset the future State of Ireland. It has a sufficiently
hardy task to carry out, however inefficiently, its declared purpose
without undertaking expeditions not proper to that purpose. Yet certain
problems lie within the automatic function of such a State, and some of
these may be briefly indicated.
There is, for example, the question of taxation. In most countries of
late movements have arisen demanding that taxation should be charged
upon wealth and not upon the heads of the population. This has,
necessarily perhaps, taken the form of a class-war in these other
countries; but it is at bottom not a class question at all, but a
question of a sound and a fairly obvious economic principle. A State
can only levy taxation in proportion to its wealth, and therefore
can only levy taxation upon that wealth, wherever that wealth be
held. To attempt to discover that wealth by a mere counting of heads
is a procedure the falsity of which could be exposed by a class of
school-children. That means that any taxation by heads of population,
direct or indirect, however it be scaled, graded or disguised, is bad
national economy, and therefore bad national finance. How otherwise,
then, can taxation be levied? Here again the old State comes with a
suggestion. We have seen that, though there is no direct proof that
the system was completed, its taxation was levied on the stateships,
presumably with some regard to their capacities. That taxation was
redistributed by them in their own assemblies according to their local
circumstances. If that method were adopted again the State would derive
its revenues from its stateships, and would levy it in proportion
to their abilities. That proportion would at least be more easy to
estimate in their case than in the case of individuals; whereas if the
stateships became not merely economic units but trading units their
balance-sheets would at once reveal the proportion of their capacities,
and the State would thus be enabled to charge its taxation directly
upon its wealth in an equitable ratio.
At first the incidence of this system would be light, but it would
gather importance with time. It is agreed that Ireland will need to
protect, and in some cases heavily protect, her young industries. But
in the degree in which such protection succeeded in its intention it
would cease to be profitable from the point of view of taxation. Then
the Nation would need to claim a levy on the wealth it had created for
itself, for the purposes of government and security.
Such a system would in great measure answer the question of the unused
mineral resources of the country. These are, as is well-known, very
considerable, and one of the first tasks of an Irish State would be
to see that they were used--though it would be an equally important
task to see that they were not mined so that they rendered whole
tracts of countryside foul and filthy as in other countries. Such
mineral deposits in the soil of a country are part of the national
wealth. Its State cannot grant monopolies of them to individuals or
companies, especially in a country where the soil of old was held and
of late was won back by its people. They would naturally, in such a
State as has been outlined, be held and worked by the stateships in
whose territories they lay, under the direction of the State. But then
the question arises, what royalties would the State charge for the
working of what truly is the wealth of the whole Nation and not the
sole possession of any of its stateships? And the answer is that if
taxation were levied on stateships according to their capacities this
would automatically adjust itself without the necessity of adopting any
direct device.
Then there is the question of the promotion of industry. No State
can leave this to hazard. It must be made part of a disciplined
effort. Nations must be made as far as is possible self-subsistent.
No government can stand idly by and say that its people are either
naturally industrial or agricultural, or declare piously that the whims
and hazards of private enterprise are the workings of wisdom. Attitudes
of this kind are the abrogation of all government. Governments, in the
degree in which they are governments, must set out to create what,
after careful thought, they conceive to be a living and liveable
balance of the activities of the national life, and to create it by
and in an order that ensures dignity, decency and subsistence to all
its people. The task may not be easy, but any neglect of it is treason
to the State. In an Ireland organised by responsible stateships the
task would be simplified. Ireland possesses, possibly in as great a
measure as any nation, what is known as White-Power. By harnessing the
manifold rivers that intersect her soil electricity can be directed to
each of these stateships for their use in order that they might as
communities create industries within their territories. It would be to
their interest to do so, if only to keep their population within their
fellowships, and to the general wealth of the fellowships, instead of
letting them drift to the stateships of the cities. But the general
direction of such efforts would lie with the State, which would seek
so to order things that there be in the national life a balance of all
the parts that are necessary to a self-subsistent and thriving nation.
Ireland would remain mainly agricultural, because of the richness of
the soil and because the neglect of agriculture is national suicide;
but she will cease to repeat the words of her enemies that her destiny
is agricultural only. Her destiny is what she will make it by an
organised and disciplined endeavour.
Finally there is the question of the language. This does not truly lie
within the scope of the book, but only because without it the book
would not be possible. Firstly, because it was in the language of the
Irish Nation that the Irish State was created; secondly, because it
was only when the language was recovered as an intellectual possession
and passion that the outlines of that State could be seen clearly, the
memories of which at that time were struggling in the acts and deeds
of a resurgent people. We have been tracing a historical continuity,
but the key of that continuity is the language. The State of the
future might be built on the foundations of the past, but the Nation
inhabiting it would not be the same Nation if it spoke by the tongue
of a foreigner; and then it is probable that the State would not
fully answer its expectations, because the change of a nation’s speech
implies a weakening of its surety of intuition. The recovery of the
language in daily use is not a sentimentalism but a national necessity
if the Nation is to act with the full certainty of its hereditary mind.
It is also necessary to its dignity among the nations--which also is
not merely an honourable emotion but actually an estimable quality in
commerce. Ireland will utter her State aright when she utters her own
speech aright, and when she does both other nations will look at her,
think separately of her and deal directly with her. Her dignity will
be a national beauty, and will aid her prosperity. For it is not when
a Nation is crowned that its dignity is completed, but when it speaks;
and not when it lisps with a stranger’s tongue but when it speaks with
its own.
* * * * *
PADRAIC PEARSE
COLLECTED WORKS
=Vol. I--PLAYS, POEMS AND STORIES.= Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
He was an out-and-out rebel ... a rebel who was a poet, a visionary who
worked not for prosperity, or even for political freedom, but for an
idea.--_Times Literary Supplement._
Probably no more selfless spirit ever broke itself against the might
of the Iron Age than this man’s spirit, which was lit up by love of
children and country, a dreamer with his heart in the Golden Age.--_The
Irish Homestead._
The publication ... of the literary works of the leaders of
the Irish Insurrection has helped us more than might have been
expected to understand the motives and hopes which lay behind their
action.--_Westminister Gazette._
=Vol. II--SONGS OF THE IRISH REBELS=, and Specimens from an Irish
Anthology. Gaelic Poems collected and translated by PADRAIC PEARSE.
Demy 8vo. 5s. net.
=THE STORY OF A SUCCESS.= An account of St. Enda’s School by PADRAIC
PEARSE, edited and completed by DESMOND RYAN. Illustrated. 3s. 6d. net.
=THE NATIONAL BEING.= Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity. By Æ. Crown 8vo
5s. net.
“Commands respect as an expression of the aspirations of a true friend
of Ireland, and an indefatigable worker in the one field in which a
constructive and reconciling policy has been carried to a successful
issue in that country.”--_The Spectator._
“A great book for Ireland, and for the socialist movement.”--_Labour
Leader._
A HISTORY OF THE IRISH REBELLION OF 1916
By WARRE B. WELLS and N. MARLOWE. Cloth, 7s. 6d. net. Cheap edition,
Wrappers, 1s. 6d. net. Contains Casement’s Speech from the Dock.
=THE INSURRECTION IN DUBLIN.= By JAMES STEPHENS. 2s. 6d. net. Wrappers,
1s. net.
=MY LITTLE FARM.= By “PAT,” Author of “Economics for Irishmen,” and the
“Sorrows of Ireland.” Wrappers, 1s. net.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
The one footnote has been moved to the end of its chapter.
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.