confused as Moral Force.


II


Since the time of O'Connell the cry Moral Force has been used
persistently to cover up the weakness of every politician who was afraid
or unwilling to fight for the whole rights of his country, and confusion
has been the consequence. I am not going here to raise old debates over
O'Connell's memory, who, when all is said, was a great man and a
patriot. Let those of us who read with burning eyes of the shameless
fiasco of Clontarf recall for full judgment the O'Connell of earlier
years, when his unwearied heart was fighting the uphill fight of the
pioneer. But a great need now is to challenge his later influence, which
is overshadowing us to our undoing. For we find men of this time who
lack moral courage fighting in the name of moral force, while those who
are pre-eminent as men of moral fibre are dismissed with a
smile--physical-force men. To make clear the confusion we need only to
distinguish moral force from moral weakness. There is the distinction.
Call it what we will, moral courage, moral strength, moral force; we all
recognise that great virtue of mind and heart that keeps a man
unconquerable above every power of brute strength. I call it moral
force, which is a good name, and I make the definition: a man of moral
force is he who, seeing a thing to be right and essential and claiming
his allegiance, stands for it as for the truth, unheeding any
consequence. It is not that he is a wild person, utterly reckless of all
mad possibilities, filled with a madder hope, and indifferent to any
havoc that may ensue. No, but it is a first principle of his, that a
true thing is a good thing, and from a good thing rightly pursued can