The Irish republic. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1867-18??, 1867-09-14

struggle ana uaterlng determination OF purpose. They
have lived through series of defeats and disasters which
not to be found in the records of any other nation
Never for moment in the long, dreary length of seven
centuries have they ceased hope to struggle and to
work Greece under the yoke of the Mussuman, Spain
bound beneath the power of she Saracen and Italy,
prey to Intestine strife, and only geographical idea,
had each and all their long years Of national prosraton
when the sentiment of nationality either dormant
dead But Ireland has not for hour lain quietly
in her chains. With power that seems superhuman,
and buoyancy of spirit that miraculous, she has
risen again and again. from defeat and apparent DEATH
to renew with redoubled vgor the everlasting fight for
liberty
This is the quality of which Ireland may feel justly
proud. Nations that fight and conquer may go on from
victory to victory without any real test Of the stuff they
made Of for it is not always the best and bravest
who win battle But the people who after hundred
defeats willing renew the strife if they had
hundred victories must be made of material
better and durable than that of which most moras
composed. To show that not led by national
pride to attribute to excelences which they do
not possess, give here quotation from one OF the
most eminent of modern historians which is tribute
to that undyng spirit of heroism greater than
uttered by of Thierry, in his history of
the Norman Conquest, speaking of the Irish and
the mpossbility Of conquerng the Irish nation
these remarkable words:
This heightened remembrance of departed bertyhis faculty
of preserving and nourishng through physical and
suffering the thought of that which moeof dparng
of constantly vanqushed for which thousands
generation have persisted the field or by the execuoner the
most extraordinary and greatest example people have gen
no oP If
make any Irishmans blood leap through his veins in
torrents thousand columns, erected on the tracks
of thousand victories would not tell of such heroism
The best and bravest the world has seen may be
forced to bow beneath brute force and numbers but it
is only those whose souls lighted by the true Prone
thean spark that live it were in spite of DEATH that
rise up from their defeats undefeated and grappe again
and again with the enemy they feel they must strange
in the end
It is this which has sustained our nation in her
struggle. She knows rather she feels she will win
some day. There is hardly Irishman to be found
who does not believe that his nation will yet be free and
happy He may not be able to tell why he thinks So
or when his hopes will be realized but he has con-
vction stronger almost than his life, that in spite of
defeats and reachery and misfortune his isle will one
day take her place among the nations
Never in all the past had Ireland such chance as
she has now; never was there time when it SO
behooved her to persevere. She must not be dscour
aged by the treachery she has recently encountered
She has time enough to undo what traitors have DONE
They have not defeated her. but only put her back
year two; and if they put her back whole
generation and snatched from her grasp the prize she
ready to seze the disappointment is only slight for
she is used to misfortune, and the time her is but as
day, for she has struggled for hundred years.
This virtue of the to which Ireland
her existence to-day But for it. the dreay struggle
would long ago have ceased, and of contented
human animals would defle the fair land of our hopes