means much more than mere political independence--that it is founded
on the character and intellect of the people, that it lives and is
expressed in its culture, customs and traditions, in its literature,
its songs and its arts. We saw hope for Ireland because she was
remaking and remoulding herself from within--the only sure way in
which she could work out her eventual salvation, whatever political
parties or combinations may come or go.

This process of regeneration took firm root when the parties were
exhausting themselves in mournful internal strife. Through the whole
of the nineteenth century it had been the malign purpose of England to
destroy the spirit of nationality through its control of the schools.
Just as in the previous century it sought to reduce Ireland to a state
of servitude through the operations of the Penal Laws, so it now
sought to continue its malefic purpose by a system of education "so
bad that if England had wished to kill Ireland's soul when she imposed
it on the Sister Isle she could not have discovered a better means of
doing so" (M. Paul Dubois). And the same authority ascribes the
fatalism, the lethargy, the moral inertia and intellectual passivity,
the general absence of energy and character which prevailed in Ireland
ten or twelve years ago to the fact that England struck at Ireland
through her brain and sought to demoralise and ruin the national mind.

Thank God for it that the effort failed, but it failed mainly owing to
the fact that a new generation of prophets had arisen in Ireland who
saw that in the revival and reform of national education rested the
best hope for the future. They recalled the gospel of Thomas Davis and
the other noble minds of the Young Ireland era that we needs must
educate in order that we may be free. They sought to give form and
effect to the splendid ideals of the Young Irelanders. A new spirit