VII.
At the Gates of the Future.
If there is one thing sure for the future of an Ireland free to develop its own State it is this, that one by one the moulds shaped by England for its governance will be thrown back into the cauldron and new moulds made to accord with the Nation's own sense of wisdom and economy. Urban Councils, District Councils, Poor Law Guardians, and County Councils, all that they are and all that they represent are destined for the cauldron in the forms in which they at present are known. The whole English political configuration of Ireland is destined to rejection (it never really existed otherwise than in a partial state of rejection) simply because it expresses little that is real in the life of the people. No organisation is good or bad in itself as a scheme; it is only good or bad in the degree in which it does, or does not, effectively and economically organise a flexible life for some definite end which it has to serve. In fact, the better it is the less will it be in evidence as a thing in itself, apart from the elements comprising it. The old Irish State was a good organisation, because it is almost impossible to think of it apart from the life which it contained and conveyed, so nearly identical were the two things. The stateships were the people and the people were the stateships; and that is why the conqueror found plantations necessary; for it was impossible to break
