duty to a more convenient future. It is as possible that an opening for
freedom may be thrust on us, as that we shall be required to organise a
formal war with the usual movements of armies; in our assumptions for
the second, let us not be guilty of the fatal error of overlooking the
first. As in other spheres, so in politics we have our conventions; and
how little they may be proven has been lately seen, when England went
through a war of debate,[Footnote: Debate over House of Lords.] largely
unreal, over her constitution and her liberties, even while foreign wars
and complications were still being debated; and in the middle of it all,
suddenly, from a local labour dispute, putting by all thought of the
constitution, feeling as comparatively insignificant the fear of
invasion, all England stood shuddering on the verge of frantic civil
war;[Footnote: The Railway strike.] and all Ireland, when the moment of
possible freedom was given, when England might have been hardly able to
save herself, much less to hold us--Ireland, thinking and working in old
grooves, lay helpless. Let us draw the moral. We cannot tell what
unsuspected development may spring on us from the future, but we can
always be prepared by understanding that the vital hour is the hour at
hand. Let the brave choice now be made, and let the life around be
governed by it; let every man stand to his colours and strike his flag
to none; then shall we recover ground in all directions, and our time
shall be recorded, not with the deadening but with the luminous years.
In all the vicissitudes of the fight, let us not be distracted by the
meanness of the mere time-server nor the treachery of the enemy, but be
collected and cool; and remembering the many who are not with us from
honest motives or unsuspected fears, live to show our belief beautiful
and true and, in the eternal sense, practical. Then shall those who are
worth convincing be held, and our difference may reduce itself to what
is possible; then will they come to realise that he who maintains a
great faith unshaken will make more things possible than the opportunist