while often overcome it has emerged again and again in Irish history,
and it has perhaps more adherents today than at any period since
the Act of Union, and this has been helped on by the incarnation
of the Gaelic spirit in the modem Anglo-Irish literature, and a
host of brilliant poets, dramatists and prose writers who have won
international recognition, and have increased the dignity of spirit
and the self-respect of the followers of this tradition. They
assert that the Union kills the soul of the people; that empires
do not permit the intensive cultivation of human life: that they
destroy the richness and variety of existence by the extinction
of peculiar and unique gifts, and the substitution therefor of a
culture which has its value mainly for the people who created it,
but is as alien to our race as the mood of the scientist is to
the artist or poet.

5. The third group occupies a middle position between those who
desire the perfecting of the Union and those whose claim is for
complete independence: and because they occupy a middle position,
and have taken coloring from the extremes between which they exist
they have been exposed to the charge of insincerity, which is unjust
so far as the best minds among them are concerned. They have aimed
at a middle course, not going far enough on one side or another to
secure the confidence of the extremists. They have sought to
maintain the connection with the empire, and at the same time to
acquire an Irish control over administration and legislation. They
have been more practical than ideal, and to their credit must be
placed the organizing of the movements which secured most of the
reforms in Ireland since the Union, such as religious equality,
the acts securing to farmers fair rents and fixity of tenure, the
wise and salutary measures making possible the transfer of land