Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it!

John Adams, the first US Ambassador to the UK and second President of the US.

These were the words of the first US President to live in the White House – they resonate, not only as the next occupant takes residence there today, but also closer to home.

As I listened to the grace and compassion of Ian Paisley Jr on BBC The View last night about the legacy of Martin McGuiness, I remembered the wise words of one of my political heroes, John Adams.

Adams was a lawyer, revolutionary, first US Ambassador to the UK, First Vice-President and 2nd President of the US.

He knew well the sacrifice of war, the pain of peace and the reality that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

In studying his life, context is important.

Martin McGuiness is an example of this. His journey from IRA commander to statesman has been utterly transformative. I don’t seek to airbrush his role in conflict, nor has he denied his participation. From this backdrop, a man emerges who provided the leadership to move towards a cessation of violence and then to build bridges towards reconciliation.

Martin McGuiness was a critical and central figure in the journey of reconciliation. A process that has not yet reached its destination.

He was one of many. The founding fathers & mothers of our peace process through the Good Friday Belfast Agreement and subsequent peace agreements each played their role. John Hume, Lord Trimble, Lord Alderdice, Dr Ian Paisley, Monica McWilliams, David Irvine and many others dedicated themselves to resolving how we could find a way to end intractable violence and begin a process of peace-building towards reconciliation.

These remarkable individuals, leaders, visionaries and peace-makers understood the need for compromise, compassion and sacrifice.

They understood the need for finding better ways to relate – that peace is essentially about relationships: between these islands, these communities and critically with each other.

WB Yeats reflected “peace comes dropping slow” and the architects of our peace tirelessly (and at times with great personal and professional pain) understood that the price of peace was greater than any individual or party self-interest.

Sworn enemies became not only constructive partners, but real friends. The warmth of relationships allowed acts of grace and generosity to flow in a context of mutual respect and underpinned by compassion.

Martin McGuiness in his dignified resignation and Ian Paisley Jr in his graceful, warm response to it, remind us of the fundamental importance of relationship-building.

On their divergent and then collective journeys, they came to understand the cost of imagining, realising and maintaining peace.

A peaceful, prosperous society is the freedom the people of Northern Ireland desire and deserve. So as we move into this election, let us remember that it need not be ‘brutal’.

May we all guard against forgetting the price of our peace, the importance of underpinning our discourse with compassion, to re-focus on genuine relationship-building and to put all our energy into growing a reconciled, prosperous society in which our posterity have the opportunity to make good use of the hard won peace.