Lector

“ That is our belief, and it is based on solid facts of history—Hungarian Independence, English suffrage struggle, Irish victory over conscription. There are limits to the possibilities of brute force. At this stage of the world it is impossible to slaughter a nation, it is impossible to cope with a nation of passive resisters. What is to be done with a million or so of people who refuse to pay taxes, who combine to secure the products of their own country, who repudiate the authority of the intruders? That is the problem which England does not want to face in this country. ”

“ Is it the sole mission of Irish men and women to send beef and butter to John Bull?
Look at the other nations and ask yourself, Why not? Why is not Ireland free? Are we too small in area? We are double Switzerland or Denmark, nearly three times Holland or Belgium. Is our population too small—though it was once double? We are as numerous as Serbia, our population is as large as that of Switzerland and nearly double that of Denmark or Norway. Does the difficulty lie in our poverty? Are we too poor to exist as a free people? ”

“ We will see to it that pharisaism shall be confronted by an Ireland clamouring for independence. And we shall not be friendless. Our race has power in America, in Australia. Ireland’s freedom, too, is essential for the American conception of the freedom of the seas.
The issue is now before us. We are in the birth-time of big changes. Let us not lose the great chance of freedom. Let the Irish Democracy once and for all declare that Ireland is a Nation entitled to sovereign independence. ”

“ The Abstention Policy means, therefore, that we give up the sham battle and take up the real struggle in grim earnest. We cease to rely on talk as an effective economic or political defence, we begin to DO something, to rely on ourselves. There is only one way of putting an end to English tyranny in Ireland, and that is, not by scolding at it from the other side of the Irish Sea, but by making it unworkable over here. ”

“ Sinn Fein is in no way built exclusively on the hopes of the Peace Conference; the movement was founded by Arthur Griffith years before the war, if indeed it is not coeval with the Irish age-long struggle for freedom. Nor are we such sentimental fools as to rely merely on gush. We do indeed hope for the triumph of moral principles in international affairs, and especially we hope that democracy is coming into its rightful inheritance. But meantime we rely primarily on ourselves and our own determination. ”

“ Stand together in the face of the brutal and cowardly enemies of your race.... Stand passively, firmly, fearlessly by, while the armies of England may be engaged in their hopeless struggle against a spirit which their weapons cannot touch.... The Government will learn in a single winter how powerless is armed force against the will of a united, determined and self-reliant nation.”
Would to God that this was the message which Mr. Dillon had for Ireland to-day! ”

“ Whatever may have been done in the way of small doles, petty grants, and big talk, the fact is that we are not Free and the issue is, Do we want to be Free?
Why should we be afraid of Freedom? Would any sane adult voluntarily prefer to be a slave, to be completely in the control and power of another? ”

“ Why should it not be, if Belgium is fit to be a sovereign nation, if Serbia is so fit, if Montenegro—whose King is not much more than a strong farmer in this country—is fit, all fit to be independent nations? Then, when putting the question as to Ireland, I would really ask everyone, men and women, in this country to cease speaking slightingly of their own race and their own country. ”

“ Ireland was practically confined by law to the English market. In 1782, 60,000 Volunteers, with arms in their hands, won Free Trade—i.e., the liberty of Ireland to trade direct with the world. In a few years, bad as our own Parliament was, the country prospered exceedingly. The Union once more destroyed our industries and even our tillage and turned Ireland into a cattle-ranch; our mercantile marine was destroyed. All our trade is in the hands of English middlemen and we have to sell and buy at England’s price. ”

“ Men do not willingly walk into jail; why, then, should a whole people? The men who are afraid of national liberty are unworthy even of personal liberty; they are the victims of that slave mentality which English coercion and corruption have striven to create in Ireland. When Mr. John Dillon, grown tremulous and garrulous and feeble, asked for a national convention this autumn “to definitely forswear an Irish Republic,” he was asking Ireland to commit an act of national apostasy and suicide. ”

“ I believe it would be just as possible for Ireland to have a prosperous and free separate existence as a nation as Holland, Belgium, or Switzerland, or other small nationalities. And if it were in the power of any man to bring that result about to-morrow by honourable and brave means, he would be indeed a coward and a traitor to the traditions of his race did he not do so. ”

“ To go on accepting the English government, co-operating with it as farmers, workers, tax-payers, policemen, etc., and at the same time to keep whining and petitioning—this is despicable folly.
John Bull is our boss, Ireland is his food-producing factory. The old idea of the workers was to do nothing, to form no combination, but merely to cringe for charity from their employers. That is the stage in which the Irish Party want to keep us; they are a century behind-hand. The workers now rely on themselves, on trade union organisation, on direct action ”

“ Something like real Democracy, however, is coming to stay. Great and sacred principles have been invoked, and the workers of the world are not going to let them be quietly buried. Nor will Ireland. We are determined to apply the acid test to these noble professions of faith. The President of the American Republic, who has espoused the cause even of little Schleswig, will be confronted with the case for an Irish Republic. There can be no League of Nations, no firm foundation of international justice, so long as Ireland is denied that freedom which Letts, Finns, Slavs and Poles have won. ”

“ The Party never asked for Old Age Pensions, and when these were proposed they confined themselves to the remark that if extended to Ireland half-a-crown a week would be enough. Parliament has spent thirty-three years drafting Home Rule Bills; they have all come to nothing. In three weeks Irish Conscription was passed in spite of the Party. Where was Conscription defeated—in Ireland or in Westminster? And if the organised opposition and resistance of the Nation, especially of Labour, made Conscription impossible, does it not teach us that our real power is here at home in Ireland? ”

“ We maintain that attendance at Westminster is immoral and dishonest, it would be a national lie and apostacy. The members of the Irish Party, when seeking re-election, have always indulged in an orgy of sedition and disloyalty. They talk of Emmet and Tone, they celebrate the Manchester Martyrs, they are not afraid to speak of Ninety-Eight, they are proud of the felons of our land, they sap every moral claim of the English Government in Ireland. ”

“ We are dependent on England, not in the sense that we get anything out of her, but in the sense that we have allowed her to capture our trade and cut us off from the world. We have allowed England to become a parasitic bloodsucker. And because we have done so, we fancy that England is our sole customer. ”

“ An elaborate network of fraud and deceit has been built [Pg 5] up to hide the truth from our eyes. We are secretly and systematically robbed and we hardly notice it. The ordinary Irish worker pays at least four shillings a week to England, he is hardly aware of the fact, so nicely is it done whenever he buys tobacco or his wife gets tea and sugar, and so on. Though the average income in England is three times what it is in Ireland, the notoriously underfed Irish workers have to pay more than twice the English proportion of indirect taxes on food, etc. ”

“ No single reform, large or small, has ever been obtained by purely constitutional means.... We submit to the English usurpation of the government of Ireland, but we do so only because we have no adequate means of successful resistance.”
On 4th September, 1907, John Redmond described the Act of Union, which gave him his seat in the English Parliament, as “a great criminal act of usurpation carried by violence and fraud,” which “no lapse of time and no mitigation of its details can ever make binding upon our honour or our conscience.” ”

“ There, in Davitt’s words, you have the central belief of Sinn Fein: reliance on the moral solidarity and economic power of a Nation. Even a small determined minority, if prepared to suffer, can effect enormous reforms. The English Suffragettes have won the franchise for women. It was certainly not by physical force—even the militant suffragettes did not rebel, though they burnt houses, broke statues, and harried politicians. A handful of determined women made government extremely difficult and thus they won the vote in spite of Parliament. ”

“ The revenue raised per head in Ireland is double that of any other small nation, seven times that of Switzerland! The total revenue of Ireland is ten times that of Switzerland, three times that of Norway, four times that of Denmark, Serbia or Finland. Yet all these countries have their own armies, consuls, etc.; they run themselves as free nations at far below the cost of servile Ireland. Why? Because there is no other country pocketing their cash.
Here are some figures:—
These figures would suggest that Ireland is a strong military and naval power among the small nations. ”

“ John Dillon at Moville in 1904, “that I should never have dedicated my life as I have done to this great struggle, if I did not see at the end of it the crowning and consummation of our work—A FREE AND INDEPENDENT IRELAND.” It is sad that, fourteen years later, when the end is in sight, Mr. Dillon should be found a recreant and a traitor to his past creed. The degeneration of such a man is a damning indictment of Westminsterism.
Parnell, too save for one short moment when he tried by compromise to fool English Liberalism but was foiled, proclaimed his belief in Irish Independence. ”

“ Things are even much worse; for the whole Party system has made Parliament a fraud and a farce. The House of Commons has lost its independence to a caucus which controls the jobs and the party funds. The latest development, whereby Messrs. Lloyd George and Bonar Law have arranged to wipe out the Opposition, makes the further presence of a few Irish Nationalists a jocose anachronism.
[Pg 10] The English Coalition would, however, still like the eighty Irishmen to come and hobnob with them. England is far keener on their attendance than Ireland ever was. ”

“ Now that Poland has regained her Full Independence, it is our most fervent prayer that she may once more take her place in the community of nations and resume her career as a champion of civilisation and Christianity. ”

“ As a going concern Ireland is now worth thirty million a year to its owner, John Bull. There are certain expenses of administration—police, Castle, secret service, prisons, tax collectors—and there are, of course, several items of hush-money, dodges necessary to fool the people, such as “education.” But the fact is that a bigger and bigger profit is being made every year out of this island. More agricultural materials and products are shipped to England, more Irish brains are selected for running India, etc., more Irishmen are utilised for gun-fodder. ”

“ Do we really think that a handful of Irishmen by merely talking can persuade eight times their number of Englishmen to take their grip off this country, to cease exploiting us, to give up their fat profits? ”

“ Let us consider the whole policy in a sane, business-like way. John Bull runs his Other Island purely as a lucrative investment; he makes a good profit by the concern. Ireland is simply an Area for supplying beef and mutton, oats and butter, timber and men. We, Irish men and women, exist merely to be exploited. ”

“ And so we are—only the army and navy we support are not our own; they exist to keep us in slavery, not in freedom. It is about time we started business on our own.
DEPENDENT ON ENGLAND?
The most significant instance of English policy in Ireland is the creation of the widespread delusion that we are economically dependent on England. ”

“ The test of any policy is its practical result. What has Westminsterism got for us? For 47 years we have had an Irish Party, for 118 years Ireland has been represented in the English Parliament. We have given the experiment a fair trial; it is high time to take stock. When the Party started in 1871 our population was 51⁄2 millions ”