it is their loyalty to the outraged truth we honour. We do not extol a
rebel who rebels for rebellion's sake. Let us be clear on this point, or
when we shall have re-established our freedom after centuries of effort
it shall be open to every knave and traitor to challenge our
independence and plot to readmit the enemy. Loyalty is the fine
attribute of the fine nature; the word has been misused and maligned in
Ireland: let us restore it to its rightful honour by remembering it to
be the virtue of our heroes of all time. In considering it from this
view-point we shall find occasion to touch on delicate positions that
have often baffled and worried us--the asserting of our rights while
using the machinery of the Government that denies them, the burning
question of consistency, our attitude towards the political adventurer
on one hand, and towards the honest man of half-measures on the other.
Loyalty involves all this. And it shows that the man who revolts to win
freedom is the same as he who dies to defend it. He does not change his
face and nature with the changing times. He is loyal always and most
wonderfully lovable, because in the darkest times, when banned as wild,
wicked and rebelly, he is loyal still as from the beginning, and will be
to the end. Yes, Tone is the true Irish Loyalist, and every aider and
abettor of the enemy a rebel to Ireland and the Irish race.


II


When you insist on examining the question in the light of first
principles your opportunist opponent at once feels the weakness of his
position and always turns the point on your consistency. It is well,
then, in advance to understand the relative value and importance of
argument as argument in the statement of any case. A body of principles