The National Being: Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity — A Reader’s Guide

A Poet-Economist’s Voice

Russell’s language is distinctive: he blends biblical cadence with economic reasoning. The opening chapter personifies the state as a newborn Hercules, wrestling serpents, while later passages shift into concrete proposals for co-operative federations. This duality is deliberate; Russell writes that he has been 'led to speculate how they might be brought within hailing distance of each other'—heaven and earth, poetry and economics. His sentences vary from the oracular ('Mars, the red planet of war, was in the ascendant') to the matter-of-fact ('Rural labor has no traditions of trade unionism'). The reader should attend to how Russell uses metaphor to frame political arguments, and how the pace quickens when he moves from diagnosis to prescription.

The Body and Soul of the State

Russell insists that self-government requires dual attention: 'not only with the body but the soul.' The body is the state’s institutions and economy; the soul is the national character. He warns that if the body is secular or militarist, it will 'by reflex action affect its soul.' This philosophical framework underpins his critique of urban industrialism, which he sees as draining the countryside of labor and creating 'national insecurity.' The excerpts show him tracing cause and effect: fewer food producers lead to imports, which in wartime become dangerous. His solution—co-operative federations uniting farmers and townspeople—is presented as a way to perfect national life before considering 'empires and world federations.'

Co-operation as a Unifying Principle

Russell’s central argument is that the co-operative principle can prevent the 'old battle between producer and consumer.' He envisions federations that handle manufacture, purchase, and sale for both rural and urban associations. Notably, he insists farmers should remain 'syndicalists, controlling entirely the processes of agricultural production themselves,' while urban co-operators benefit from shared wholesales. The excerpts detail how farmers’ societies in Ireland were already expanding into general-purpose stores, where a farmer’s wife could buy 'domestic requirements' alongside machinery. Russell’s tone here is pragmatic, even optimistic, as he describes a future where both sides find it 'to their interest to be affiliated.'

Readers should approach this text as a hybrid: part political treatise, part spiritual essay. Russell does not provide a step-by-step blueprint but rather a vision of national solidarity grounded in mutual economic interest. The book’s value lies in its attempt to reconcile idealism with practical organization, and in the distinctive voice of a poet who believed that the state’s body and soul must be shaped together. Pay attention to how Russell’s metaphors shift from the mythical to the mundane, and how his argument builds from a single image—the infant state—to a comprehensive social philosophy.

That rainy afternoon, The National Being kept me company while tea went cold; Russell’s insistence on federated spirit lingered oddly in my mind, the way his “twin serpents” faded into damp window panes. Later I stumbled upon State of the Union Addresses — Story, Setting & Ideas, and its formal voice felt like a distant cousin—same hope, different weather.