Irish Nationality

								

the Teutonic barbarians who became its heirs, the notion of a state
as an organisation held together, defended, governed and policed, by a
central ruler; while the sovereign was supreme in the domain of force
and maintenance of order, whatever lay outside that domain--art,
learning, history and the like--were secondary matters which might be
left to the people. The essential life of the nation came to be
expressed in the will and power of its master.
The Gaelic idea was a wholly different one. The law with them was the
law of the people. They never lost their trust in it. Hence they never
exalted a central authority, for their law needed no such sanction.
While the code was one for the whole race, the administration on the
other hand was divided into the widest possible range of
self-governing communities, which were bound together in a willing
federation. The forces of union were not material but spiritual, and
the life of the people consisted not in its military cohesion but in
its joint spiritual inheritance--in the union of those who shared the
same tradition, the same glorious memory of heroes, the same
unquestioned law, and the same pride of literature. Such an instinct
of national life was neither rude nor contemptible, nor need we
despise it because it was opposed to the theory of the middle ages in
Europe. At the least the Irish tribal scheme of government contained
as much promise of human virtue and happiness as the feudal scheme
which became later the political creed of England, but which was never
accepted in Ireland. Irish history can only be understood by realising
this intense national life with its sure basis on the broad
self-government of the people.
Each tribe was supreme within its own borders; it elected its own
chief, and could depose him if he acted against law. The land belonged
to the whole community, which kept exact pedigrees of the families who
had a right to share in the ground for tillage or in the mountain
pasturage; and the chief had no power over the soil save as the
elected trustee of the people. The privileges of the various chiefs,
judges, captains, historians, poets, and so on, were handed down from
generation to generation. In all these matters no external power could
interfere. The tribe owed to the greater tribe above it nothing but
certain fixed dues, such as aid in road-making, in war, in ransom of
prisoners and the like.
The same right of self-government extended through the whole hierarchy
of states up to the Ardri or high-king at the head. The "hearth of
Tara" was the centre of all the Gaelic states, and the demesne of the
Ardri. "This then is my fostermother," said the ancient sage, "the
island in which ye are, even Ireland, and the familiar knee of this
island is the hill on which ye are, namely, Tara." There the Ardri was
crowned at the pillar-post. At Tara, "the fort of poets and learned
men," the people of all Ireland gathered at the beginning of each