I
National independence involves national sovereignty. National
sovereignty is twofold in its nature. It is both internal and external.
It implies the sovereignty of the nation over all its parts, over all
men and things within the nation; and it implies the sovereignty of the
nation as against all other nations. Nationality is a spiritual fact;
but nationhood includes physical freedom, and physical power in order to
the maintenance of physical freedom, as well as the spiritual fact of
nationality. This physical freedom is necessary to the healthy life, and
may even be necessary to the continued existence of the nation. Without
it the nation droops, withers, ultimately perhaps dies; only a very
steadfast nation, a nation of great spiritual and intellectual strength
like Ireland, can live for more than a few generations in its absence,
and without it even so stubborn a nation as Ireland would doubtless
ultimately perish. Physical freedom, in brief, is necessary to sane and
vigorous life; for physical freedom means precisely control of the
conditions that are necessary to sane and vigorous life. It is obvious
that these things are partly material, and that therefore national
freedom involves control of the material things which are essential to
the continued physical life and freedom of the nation. So that the
nation’s sovereignty extends not only to all the material possessions of
the nation, the nation’s soil and all its resources, all wealth and all
wealth-producing processes within the nation. In other words, no private
right to property is good as against the public right of the nation. But
the nation is under a moral obligation so to exercise its public right
as to secure strictly equal rights and liberties to every man and woman
within the nation. The whole is entitled to pursue the happiness and
prosperity of the whole, but this is to be pursued exactly for the end
that each of the individuals composing the whole may enjoy happiness and
prosperity, the maximum amount of happiness and prosperity consistent
with the happiness and prosperity of all the rest.
One may reduce all this to a few simple propositions: