memory. Very frequently this will be found to be the case.
An indication of this kind, that looks both forward and backward, is to be found in Article 44 of our Constitution. This article has aroused considerable interest. It reads:—
"The Oireachtas may provide for the establishment of Functional or Vocational Councils representing branches of the social and economic life of the Nation. A law establishing any such Council shall determine its powers, rights and duties, and its relation to the government of the Irish Free State."
As a matter of curious interest it happens that the German Constitution contains an article very similar to this; but the conception had been in development in Ireland for some years. It had, indeed (as I endeavoured to shew in a little book on The Gaelic State, published in 1917), been a slumbering memory of the Irish Nation during the centuries when the characteristic political conceptions of the people were frustrate and idle, as they may now be put into practical development. It had been worked out in practical detail for one of our largest and most important industries in the Report on Sea Fisheries of the Commission of Inquiry, published in 1921. And it had actually, though imperfectly, been in operation for another great industry since 1896 in the Council of Agriculture.
What, then, are these Functional (or Vocational or Occupational) Councils for which provision is made, and on what political or social conception do they rest? One need not travel outside the present draft Constitution to discover the need for them. For in this Constitution, as in most constitutions, the people are, outside this one Article, considered in only two of the three relations that go to make up their lives, and which therefore constitute the complete life of the Nation. All the persons of the State are considered either as individuals or as citizens. But these two descriptions do not exhaust their lives. In
