O’HIGGINS, Kevin. Three Years Hard Labour. An Address Delivered to the Irish Society of Oxford University on the 31st October, 1924. By Kevin O’Higgins, T.D. Vice-President of the Executive Council and Minister for Justice of the Irish Free State. With a foreword by Eoin MacNeill, T.D., Minister for Education.

IRISH UNIFICATION

Dublin: Cahill & Co. n.d. [ca.1925]. Octavo. pp. 16. Printed wrappers. Staples rusty. A very good copy. Exceedingly rare.
JISC locates 5 copies only.
On October 31, 1924, Kevin O’Higgins, a senior minister in the Irish Free State, addressed the Irish Society at Oxford University. During this address, he discussed the importance of improving the quality of Irish agricultural exports, particularly for the “great market alongside our coast,” according to a Taylor & Francis Online article. He also touched upon the broader political situation in Ireland, Irish Unification, describing it as complex and the subject of considerable political influence.
Kevin O’Higgins as the Vice President and Minister for Justice in the Irish Free State, was one of the founding fathers of modern Ireland. While he is not as well-known as Eamon de Valera or Michael Collins, O’Higgins’s contributions to the formation of the Irish state are comparable to theirs. While O’Higgins participated in the revolutionary pursuit of national independence, he played a conservative role in consolidating the institutions of a new state after the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. His work in a short period of five years insured the solidity and survival of constitutional democratic institutions in Ireland in a century when such survival was scarcely guaranteed, and when societies confronted with comparable problems have descended into authoritarianism. Particularly notable accomplishments were his formation of an unarmed police force and his expulsion of private factions within the national army. His tragic assassination at 35, on 10 June 1927, robbed Ireland of one of its most constructive political figures. In his essay, On the Boiler Yeats placed O’Higgins along with Swift, Burke, Grattan, and Parnell, as being among “the true Irish people, and there is nothing too hard for such as these.” The personal tragedies and the great moral confrontations that O’Higgins experienced confirm that capacity of endurance in the pursuit of great tasks, which in his case was nation-building.

[L4 9A]