They all have their memories, their grievances, and their
hopes; and their memories, their grievances, and their hopes are all of
a practical and political kind. Highlanders, Welshmen, Bretons, French
Basques, whatever we say of the Spanish brethren, have doubtless
memories, but they have hardly political grievances or hopes. Ireland
may have political grievances; it certainly has political hopes; but
they are not exactly of the same kind as the grievances or hopes of the
Greek, the Albanian, and the Rouman. Let Home Rule succeed to the extent
of setting up an independent king and parliament of Ireland, yet the
language and civilization of that king and parliament would still be
English. Ireland would form an English state, politically hostile, it
may be, to Great Britain, but still an English state. No Greek,
Albanian, or Rouman state would be in the same way either Turkish or
Austrian.
On these primitive and abiding races came, as on other parts of Europe,
the Roman conquest. That conquest planted Latin colonies on the
Dalmatian coast, where the Latin tongue still remains in its Italian
variety as the speech of literature and city life; it Romanized one
great part of the earlier inhabitants; it had the great political effect
of all, that of planting the Roman power in a Greek city, and thereby
creating a state, and in the end a nation, which was Roman on one side,
and Greek on the other.
Pages:
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143