"The most important civic duty which most of us will ever be called upon to perform". That was the phrase which the Taoiseach used when he appealed to people to come out in large numbers and vote Yes on the Belfast Agreement. The scale of the Yes vote, North and South, is the most striking evidence that so-called ordinary people have the desire to control their own destiny and to shape a better future for themselves and for their children.
It was deeply moving to see queues at the polling stations - elderly people, teenagers, harassed parents with small children. What they share with people the world over is the hope that their vote may make it possible to move forward from the most intractable conflict to politics, the conduct of war by other means.
In this state the scale of the Yes vote in the Republic nailed forever the canard that people living south of the Border do not care about the Black North, that they regard it as a place apart where "they" are all as bad as each other. The percentage of those who voted in favour of the agreement in Cork and Kildare was virtually identical to that in Cavan-Monaghan and Louth.
P.J. Mara, who ran the Fianna Fail campaign for a Yes vote, has said that the party's opinion polling focus groups showed that most people did not care overmuch about the complexities of constitutional change. But the citizens of the Republic do care passionately about peace and believe that their Northern fellow countrymen and women, nationalist and unionist, have the right to live free from the obscene threat of the bomb and the bullet. That is why they sent an overwhelming message that the people of the South have no desire to coerce the North, that if a there is ever to be a united Ireland it will only come about by consent. It will not happen immediately, but in time this should remove the sense of threat which has been crucial in shaping unionist attitudes to Northern nationalists and which is at the root of much of the conflict in the North.
The turnout on Friday was a triumphant vindication of the idea which John Hume first put forward so many years ago - that a poll conducted in both parts of Ireland simultaneously would carry a moral authority which would be very difficult for those locked into the theology of the past to ignore. But the vote in the Republic did much more that is important for the healthy politics of this State. By changing Articles 2 and 3, the voters faced up to the truth of the political situation as it actually exists and replaced a wishful, dangerous fudge with reality. In time, that will influence the lazy tolerance with which people regard other aspects of laws from drunken-driving to tax evasion.
The scale of Friday's Yes vote has also liberated people in the South to look afresh at relationships - not only with the North, but with the diverse peoples who live on the neighbouring island. We have been fixated for a long time on blaming England for all the bad things which have happened in our history, up to and including the tragedy in the North. Now we have acknowledged a shared responsibility for what happens in the future, and this will make it possible to forge new and much more interesting links with Scotland and Wales, as well as England.
The first and most audible reaction to the result in the North has been the collective sigh of relief in a number of international capitals - Washington, Dublin, London - that the Yes vote came in as high as it did. It needs to be recognised, though, that many people in both communities - nationalist as well as unionist - voted "yes, but". They hope and pray that the momentum which has so far driven this agreement forward will continue and that it will be possible to create a new kind of politics. But they are fearful that the accord is full of contradictions and that it must eventually self-destruct.
Many of those who voted No in the unionist community feel this quite passionately and they should not be written off. They are not all unreconstructed bigots who have no desire to live in peace and equity with their Catholic neighbours. Many are deeply worried by what they see as the moral ambiguity of the agreement - the early release of prisoners, bringing former terrorists into government and so on. They wonder what further concessions will be made and how far it is possible to go down this road before the decencies of a democratic society are irreparably corrupted.
The nationalist Yes has been overwhelming in the North, but there are worries in that community, too. Many people went to the polls out of loyalty to their political leaders, particularly Sinn Fein supporters, rather than because of any real enthusiasm for a deal which seems to have compromised on so many of the sacred ideals of the past. They are fearful that changes to Articles 2 and 3 could remove a powerful moral protection from Northern nationalists. They point to the fact that politicians in London and Dublin seem wholly preoccupied now with bringing the unionists safely on board and see little evidence in the mainstream unionist parties of a willingness to embrace radical change.
ONE of the images which I carry from 30 years of covering this conflict is of Jim Callaghan speaking from a first-floor window in a small terraced house in the Bogside in 1969. Using a megaphone, he told a wildly cheering audience that no British Labour government could ever be neutral on issues of justice. To paraphrase Yeats, perhaps New Labour will deliver at last on the promises that Old Labour made then.
But the reality is that many of the issues which sparked off the first civil rights demonstrations - discrimination, the administration of justice, the role of the RUC - are still around. They form the core of Gerry Adams's equality agenda. And, unless progress is seen to be made on them, this agreement will not work.
And yet people can sense the possibility of a new beginning, a new politics which could allow both communities to live at ease with each other. It won't happen quickly. There are daunting challenges immediately ahead - the insecurity provoked by the deep fissures within unionism, the assembly elections, the Orange marching season. But we have already seen that the drive towards peace can survive such alarums and all the signs are that people are now prepared to absorb further shocks. In an odd way, one of the most reassuring poll findings of recent weeks was the high percentage of people who do not believe that peace will happen easily or quickly as a result of this agreement. To think this and still vote Yes demonstrates not only a high degree of commitment but also a firm grasp of reality.
We are all moving into uncharted waters. One side says that the deal makes the Union more secure, the other that the tide is moving towards a united Ireland. The truth is that either could happen. Unionists now have an opportunity to shape a Northern Ireland where nationalists may feel secure with the benefits of the Union. In time, this could lead to new relationships between north and south, east and west.
Many nationalists, however, believe that demographic changes and other factors will push events in their direction. But they accept that a united Ireland can only happen through consent, and this means measuring up to Tone's challenge to "unite Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter" under the common name of Irishman. Sinn Fein, in particular, has spoken of the importance of "managing change", explicitly recognising that what is most needed now is a period of peace to allow both communities to get to know each other better and, hopefully, to build mutual trust.
After the first IRA ceasefire in 1994 a young Protestant widow, whose husband had been killed by the IRA, told me that she had cried all night because it seemed that the champagne and the dancing in the streets insulted and made little of her loss. Very many people in Northern Ireland will be looking forward with mixed feelings to the new future which the agreement may or may not bring. The families of victims who still mourn their loved ones see little reason to celebrate. Others are fearful of the changes which peace will mean in terms of jobs and financial security. Yet many of these people voted Yes because they saw it as their duty to put aside their own sufferings and make a declaration of hope for peace. This has less to do with they hype about Ulster's Day of Destiny than with the fact that both communities have suffered and survived so much together. A return to the barbarity of the past was simply unthinkable.
That is what made a settlement possible and why we are now entitled to feel a sense of hope. We spend so time reviling our politicians, but these past weeks and months have shown that politics can be an honourable profession offering us the hope of rescue from anarchy and despair. It was striking, too, that for the most part it was ordinary people who worked the long days and nights to make the Belfast Agreement possible - doctors, teachers, women with childminding worries, former prisoners, all united by the belief that democratic politics could provide an escape from the sulphurous history of the past.
Now the people have added their voice to affirm what has been done. This will strengthen the politicians as they face into the next phase, the assembly elections. Often at this stage in an article the temptation for a journalist like myself is to look to one of Northern Ireland's poets for suitably vibrant lines to sum up the immensity of what has happened. But this time the plain, muscular prose of the people provides eloquence enough. Yes, Yes, Yes - to peace, to politics, to the future.