Robert Mitchell Henry

“ We bear no ill will to any section of the Irish political body, whether its flag be green or orange, which holds that tortuous paths are the safest for Irishmen to tread; but, knowing we are governed by a nation which religiously adheres to ‘The good old rule—the simple plan—that those may take who have the power, and those may keep who can,’ we, with all respect for our friends who love the devious ways, are convinced that an occasional exhibition of the naked truth will not shock the modesty of Irishmen and that a return to the straight road will not lead us to political destruction.... ”

“ The people, that is the whole people, must remain sovereign not only in theory but in fact.... It is in fact true that the repositories of the Irish tradition, as well the spiritual tradition of nationality as the kindred tradition of stubborn physical resistance to England, have been the great, faithful, splendid, common people, that dumb multitudinous throng which sorrowed during the penal night, which bled in ’98, which starved in the Famine; and which is here still—what is left of it—unbought and unterrified. Let no man be mistaken as to who will be lord in Ireland, when Ireland is free. ”

“ Ireland is a distinct nation whose just right is sovereign independence. This right has been asserted in every generation, has never been surrendered and never allowed to lapse. We call the nations to witness that to-day as in the past it is by force alone that England holds Ireland for her Empire and not by the consent of the Irish; and that England’s claim to have given the Irish people ‘self-determination’ is a lie: her true attitude being shown by the recent ministerial statement that ‘under no circumstances could any English Government contemplate the ultimate independence of Ireland’. ”

“ When Saurin (who, though an Orangeman and a Tory and, after the Union, one of the law officers of the Crown in Ireland, opposed the policy of Castlereagh) uttered his famous dictum on the validity of the Act of Union, he provided Irish Nationalism with one of its most authoritative maxims: “You may make the Union binding as a law, but you cannot make it obligatory in conscience: it will be obeyed as long as England is strong, but resistance to it will be in the abstract a duty and the exhibition of that resistance will be a mere question of prudence.” ”

“ We are willing to fight Ulster or to negotiate with her, but we will not fight her over the miserable shadow of autonomy, we will not fight her because she tells England to go to Hell.” “The sheen of arms in Ulster was always the signal for the rest of Ireland. And Ireland even in this generation, hypnotized as most of her people are by catch cries about ‘imperilling Home Rule,’ by mockeries of all ‘wild’ politics and ‘wild’ plans, by doctrines even more debasing in their shameless lying than O’Connell’s, Ireland has answered the call.” ”

“ There has been nothing more terrible in Irish history than the failure of the last generation. Other generations have failed in Ireland, but they have failed nobly; or, failing ignobly, some man among them has redeemed them from infamy by the splendour of his protest. But the failure of the last generation has been mean and shameful, and no man has arisen from it to do a splendid thing in virtue of which it shall be forgiven. ”

“ If, in the course of this war, which Germany did not seek, the fortunes of arms should ever bring German troops to the coast of Ireland, they would land there, not as an army of invaders coming to rob or destroy, but as the fighting forces of a Government inspired by goodwill toward a land and a people for whom Germany only wishes national prosperity and national freedom. ”

“ If we are to have our concerns regulated by a majority of British representatives owing their position and powers to a display of armed force, no matter from what quarter that force is derived, it is plain to every man that even the modicum of civil rights left to us by the Union is taken from us, our franchise becomes a mockery and we ourselves become the most degraded nation in Europe. ”

“ They did not know how many Irishmen regarded the action of Ulster not as a menace to the dignity of the Parliament in which the Party sat but as the harbinger of national independence. They underrated (as who then did not?) the influence of Sinn Fein; they regarded the foundation of the Irish Volunteers as the work of “irresponsible young men,” though the “young men” were nearer the heart of Young Ireland: like O’Connell, they “stood for Old Ireland and had some notion that Old Ireland would stand by them.” ”

“ When one thinks over the matter for a little one sees that they have built upon an untruth. They have conceived of nationality as a material thing whereas it is a spiritual thing.... Hence, the nation to them is not all holy, a thing inviolate and inviolable, a thing that a man dare not sell or dishonour on pain of eternal perdition. They have thought of nationality as a thing to be negotiated about as men negotiate about a tariff or about a trade route.... I make the contention that the national demand of Ireland is fixed and determined; that that demand has been made by every generation ”

“ While the association aimed at the cultivation of a spirit of self-reliance and the attainment of a moral independence, it was clear that the realization of its ideals would be a slow process and would leave the actual political situation much as it was. The whole Irish nation might talk Irish, play Irish games, support Irish industries, deanglicize their children, have their own ideas of foreign policy and love one another like brothers, and yet Ireland would not have regained independence. ”

“ Up to the time of the Union the Gaelic language had preserved intact, in spite of Penal Laws and the instruments of repression, all that was most vital in the national spirit. Tales of warriors and heroes, of the long wars of the Gael with the stranger, the sighs of love and the aspirations of devotion, satire and encomium, all the literature and song of a people were enshrined in the native tongue. ”

“ To most Irishmen the panegyric of German disinterestedness was an idle tale, and Sinn Fein had been proclaiming (not without success) for nearly a score of years that the development of Ireland must not be expected from outsiders but from Irishmen themselves. But there were those who thought that the power to raise the heavy hand of England must be found, not in the slow efforts of a painful and hampered self-reliance, but in a hand heavier still: and it was assumed that German aid once given to free and re-establish Ireland would be withdrawn before it became tutelage and exploitation. ”

“ It was they who carried out all the work entailed by the publication of Irish Freedom. These clubs had just been founded “to propagate the principles and disseminate the teachings of Theobald Wolfe Tone and the other true Irishmen who in 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1867 strove for the complete independence of Ireland; to encourage the union of Irishmen of all creeds and sections in working for the freedom of their country; to promote the advancement of national thought and inculcate the spirit of self-sacrifice and self-reliance by which alone true liberty can be attained.” ”

“ The means at the disposal of Sinn Fein at present hardly seem adequate to accomplish its object. It may bring about the moral and intellectual independence of Ireland: it may secure a certain measure of economic independence: but to secure political independence, in face of the forces ranged against it, seems impossible. But what it cannot do for itself may in the future be done for it by the moral forces of which it is a manifestation. It may in the future be recognized by the conscience of mankind that no nation ought to exercise political domination over another nation. ”

“ We recognize that we can never free it without Labour. And we say, when Labour frees this country—helps to free it—Labour can look for its own share of its patrimony.’ We agree that ‘to free the country’ is an object worthy of all the devotion that men can give to it, but at the same time we would urge that, pending this devoutly-to-be-wished-for consummation, men and women must live and rear the families upon which the future Ireland depends. ”

“ At the basis of the opposition to Conscription stand the moral rights of Ireland, the very rock as it were of Irish nationality, the rights to choose her own future and to protect her people from the horrors of the European War. If there were any statesmanship left in England to-day it would look to creating harmony between Ireland and England, knowing that the real interest of nations is built thereon. ”

“ To insist upon the sovereign control of the nation over all the property within the nation is not to disallow the right to private property. It is for the nation to determine to what extent private property may be held by its members and in what items of the nation’s material resources private property may be allowed. A nation may, for instance, determine, as the free Irish nation determined and enforced for many centuries, that private ownership shall not exist in land, that the whole of a nation’s soil is the public property of the nation.... ”

“ We owe no allegiance to any other nation, nor the king, governors or representatives of any other nation.” In spite of the criticism that a purely Labour movement should confine itself to Labour questions, and leave the broader political issues to the one side, The Irish Worker declared for an independent Irish Republic: “We know,” it said, “that until the workers of Ireland obtain possession of the land of Ireland and make their own laws they can only hope for and obtain partial improvement of their conditions. We ask no more than our rights: we will be content with no less.” ”

“ As for Ulster, Ulster is Ireland’s and shall remain Ireland’s. Though the Irish nation in its political and corporate capacity were gall and wormwood to every Unionist in Ulster yet shall they swallow it. We will fight them if they want fighting: but we shall never let them go, never.” Sinn Fein and the Republicans were no more emphatic than the Labour Party. James Connolly in the Irish Worker said of Partition: “To it Labour should give the bitterest opposition, against it Labour in Ulster should fight even to the death if necessary as our fathers fought before us.” ”

“ Little was to be looked for from the Repeal leaders, content with “a small Dublin reputation,” with neither the desire nor the talents to lead a nation. His last article in the Irish Felon, written while Smith O’Brien and Meagher were in prison, is an impassioned appeal for someone to lead a nation that was only waiting for a man. “Remember this—that somewhere and somehow and by somebody, a beginning must be made. Who strikes the first blow for Ireland? Who draws first blood for Ireland? Who wins a wreath that will be green for ever?” ”

“ It seemed as if by the deliberate renunciation of any desire or intention to claim for Ireland anything more than the status of a dependency of Great Britain, deprived forever (so far as an act of legislation could deprive her) of her immemorial claim to be an independent nation, the Party had betrayed the national demand and sold the national honour. But the Party did not see (or betrayed no sign of having seen) the relevance of the criticism; and certainly they miscalculated the strength of the opposition which was gathering in the country. ”

“ Ulster, which had been for a century the backbone of the “loyalist” interest in Ireland, whose one publicly proclaimed panacea for all Irish disorders and complaints had been “the firm and impartial administration of the law,” which had called for the suppression of every attempt on the part of Nationalist Ireland even to express its national aspirations, was now openly contemptuous of the law, loud in its expressions of defiance of the Government and charging the Cabinet, suspected of some faint determination to do something to assert itself, with “organizing a pogrom.” ”

“ The Republicans might have seemed more sympathetic and congenial allies; but many even of them seemed too remote and formal in their ideals, too much wrapped up in visions of a future Ireland, free and indivisible, to have time to spare for the formulation of the means by which all Irishmen might really be free. But there were not wanting men on both sides who saw the necessity of union in the face of a common danger for the furtherance of a common purpose, who taught that if Labour should pledge itself to Ireland, Ireland should also pledge itself to Labour. ”

“ It has never been the creed of Irish nationalism until this our day. Mitchel and the great confessors of Irish nationalism would have laughed it to scorn. Mitchel indeed did laugh to scorn a similar but much less foolish doctrine of O’Connell’s; and the generation that came after O’Connell rejected his doctrine and accepted Mitchel’s. The present generation of Irish Nationalists is not only unfamiliar with arms but despises all who are familiar with arms. Irish Nationalists share with certain millionaires the distinction of being the only people who believe in Universal Peace—here and now.... ”