THE IRISH RACE IN THE PAST AND THE PRESENT

by Rev. Aug. J. Thebaud, S.J.




PREFACE



COUNT JOSEPH DE MAISTRE, in his "Principe Generateur des Constitutions
Politiques" (Par. LXI.), says: "All nations manifest a particular
and distinctive character, which deserves to be attentively considered."

This thought of the great Catholic writer requires some development.

It is not by a succession of periods of progress and decay only
That nations manifest their life and individuality. Taking any
one of them at any period of its existence, and comparing it with
others, peculiarities immediately show themselves which give it a
particular physiognomy whereby it may be at once distinguished
from any other; so that, in those agglomerations of men which we
call nations or races, we see the variety everywhere observable
in Nature, the variety by which God manifests the infinite activity
of his creative power.

When we take two extreme types of the human species--the Ashantee
of Guinea, for instance, and any individual of one of the great
civilized communities of Europe-the phenomenon of which we speak