independence; and when we abandon the simple name to men of half-measures, we prejudice our cause and confuse the issue.  Then there is the irreconcilable—­how is he regarded in the common cry?  Always an impossible, wild, foolish person, and we frequently resent the name and try to explain his reasonableness instead of exulting in his strength, for the true irreconcilable is the simple lover of the truth.  Among men fighting for freedom some start up in their plea for liberty, pointing to the prosperity of England, France, and Germany, and when we debate the means by which they won their power, we find our friends draw no distinction between true freedom and licentious living; but it would be better to be crushed under the wheels of great Powers than to prosper by their example.  And so, through every discussion we must make clear the meaning of our terms.  There is one I would treat particularly now.  Of all the terms glibly flung about in every debate not one has been so confused as Moral Force.

II

Since the time of O’Connell the cry Moral Force has been used persistently to cover up the weakness of every politician who was afraid or unwilling to fight for the whole rights of his country, and confusion has been the consequence.  I am not going here to raise old debates over O’Connell’s memory, who, when all is said, was a great man and a patriot.  Let those of us who read with burning eyes of the shameless fiasco of Clontarf recall for full judgment the O’Connell of earlier years, when his unwearied heart was fighting the uphill fight of the pioneer.  But a great need now is to challenge his later influence, which is overshadowing us to our undoing.  For we find men of this time who lack moral courage fighting in the name of moral force, while those who are pre-eminent as men of moral fibre are dismissed with a smile—­physical-force men.  To make clear the confusion we need only to distinguish moral force from moral weakness.  There is the distinction.  Call it what we will, moral courage, moral strength, moral force; we all recognise that great virtue of mind and heart that keeps a man unconquerable above every power of brute strength.  I call it moral force, which is a good name, and I make the definition:  a man of moral force is he who, seeing a thing to be right and essential and claiming his allegiance, stands for it as for the truth, unheeding any consequence.  It is not that he is a wild person, utterly reckless of all mad possibilities, filled with a madder hope, and indifferent to any havoc that may ensue.  No, but it is a first principle of his, that a true thing is a good thing, and from a good thing rightly pursued can follow no bad consequence.  And he faces every possible development with conscience at rest—­it may be with trepidation for his own courage in some great ordeal, but for the nobility of the cause and the beauty of the result that must ensue, always with