Irish Confederation

“ The Fenians stood for an Irish Republic, and so do we. No policy which left England in control of the Irish Nation could be regarded as final. There is only one way, and that is to get the absolute and complete independence of Ireland, free from English rule and English domination. ”

“ Impossible to refuse any request compatible with the general safety of the United Kingdom, which Ireland as a nation might prefer. Impossible to establish that system of Crown Colony Government which we had come to perceive was the only real and solid alternative to self-government. To those of us who had been feeling that the Irish difficulty was much the greatest of all England's difficulties, this stood out beyond the agitation of the autumn and the compromise of the winter as the great political event of 1884. ”

“ Throughout every single hour of seven hundred long years, Ireland has been secretly plotting or openly fighting against England. Not one solitary reign, from Henry II down to Victoria I, but has been marked with Irish dissatisfaction of English rule. Either in the aggregate or in detail, the Irish people have, throughout that long period, been constantly asserting their right to independence, and their unalterable antipathy to the presence of a foreign power upon their shores. ”

“ We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and Government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty ”

“ Our aim is the establishment of an Irish Republic, for the simple and sole reason that no other ending of our quarrel with England could be either adequate or final. This is the one central and vital point of agreement among all who are worthy of the name of Irish Nationalists-that Ireland is a separate nation-separate in thought, mind, in ideals and outlooks. ”

“ It is that the only way of healing the evils of Ireland,—difficulties of her administration, of giving contentment and prosperity to her people, and of making her a strength instead of a weakness to the empire,—is that the Irish people should have the management of their own domestic affairs ”

“ If we withdraw the Irish Government from Ireland, and put an end to its separate local existence,—surely we should place its management as a portion of the general government, not merely on a footing of equality, but on that of identity, with the executive for other parts of the United Kingdom. ”

“ It is a favourite line of argument to show that we have no choice between the maintenance of the Union and the concession to Ireland of national independence. The evils of Irish independence are universally reckoned by Englishmen to be so intolerable that we shall never agree to it. ”

“ Confederacies of Irish and Anglo-Normans were formed, one following another in endless and hopeless succession. Through all civil strife we may plainly see the steady drift of the peoples to a common patriotism. There was panic in England at these ceaseless efforts to restore an Irish nation, for "Ireland," English statesmen said, "was as good as gone if a wild Irish wyrlinge should be chosen there as king." ”

“ These—all these things—we, people of Ireland, must know if we would be a free, strong nation. A mockery of Irish independence is not what we want. The bauble of a powerless parliament does not lure us. We are not children. The office of supplying England with recruits, artizans, and corn, under the benign interpositions of an Irish Grand Jury, shall not be our destiny. ”

“ The national movement never flagged for a single generation. Never for a moment did the Irish cease from the struggle; in the swell and tumult of that tossing sea commanders emerged now in one province, now in another, each to fall back into the darkness while the next pressed on to take his place. An Anglo-Norman parliament claimed (1459) that Ireland was by its constitution separate from the laws and statutes of England, and prayed to have a separate coinage for their land as in the kingdom of England. ”

“ The more Ireland's Parliament succumbed to Irish ideas, the more it was flouted by England, and the greater the efforts made to secure in it the predominance of the English interest. England, in spite of itself, was creating an Irish nation. It had destroyed the system of septs which it could divide and play off against one another ”

“ These are the principles upon which the dependance and subordination of Ireland are founded. Whether they are just or not, is not necessary for us to enquire. The Irish nation have never been entirely convinced of their justice; have been ever discontented with them; and ripe and ready to dispute them. Their reasonings have ever been answered, by the ratio ultima and penultima of the tories, and it requires to this hour no less than a standing army of 12,000 men to confute them ”

“ It is the right of every civilized and progressive people, the grant of which to its dependencies is the glory of the British Empire, and in preparation for which it governs its subject races in India or Africa. Is Ireland less fit after nine centuries of English government to rule itself on constitutional lines than Canada or the South African Union? ”

“ The volunteers had supported the rights of the Irish parliament against those temporary trustees who would have relinquished them? but England had no reason to fear the Irish volunteers: they would die for England and her majestic race of men. Allied by liberty as well as allegiance, the two nations formed a constitutional confederacy: the perpetual annexation of the crown was one great bond, but liberty was a still greater. It would be easy to find a king, but impossible for Ireland to find a nation which could communicate to them a great charter, save only England. ”

“ It drained the national resources—it disgusted the national understanding—it made Ireland disunited, and England at once contemptuous of Irish feeling, and suspicious of Irish loyalty. The safety of the empire obviously rendered it impossible to leave in its rear a nation which might throw itself, at a moment’s notice, into the arms of France, Spain, or America—which had actually solicited a French army, and which still carried on transactions amounting to treason at home, and alliance abroad. Thus, the regenerators of Ireland, instead of raising her to a republic, sank her into a province. ”

“ The growth of feeling in England in favor of the concession of Ireland’s national autonomy is simply incontestable. It may well be that, as many Irish politicians declare, “the battle of Home Rule for Ireland [Pg 640] will be fought and won on British soil.”
And this is how Ireland stands in 1876—erect, powerful, resolute, united. What the future may have in store for her, victory or defeat, is beyond human ken. ”

“ The policy of “Unionist” leaders is to meet the Irish desire for an uplifting pride in the life of the Irish commonwealth by a flat denial. Ireland, we are told, is not, nor ever has been, nor ever can be, a nation. A disorganized and contentious people, incapable of rightly using any polity Irish or English, we have not, it is said, even the materials of a nation. We are only “material,” to use an old Irish expression, for an Empire. The island in fact was never a kingdom till England gave it a king worthy the name ”

“ England has so successfully hypnotized the world into regarding the neighboring conquered island as an integral part of Great Britain that even Americans gasp at the mention of Irish independence. Home rule they understand, but independence! "How could Ireland maintain an independent existence?" they ask. "How could you defend yourselves against all the great nations?" ”

“ Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, or its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations. ”

“ Ireland has had far graver causes for disaffection towards the English Government than any of the reasons alleged for the secession of Virginia; but Irish officers and Irish soldiers have always been perfectly loyal to England. The reason of the difference is obvious; the officers of the English army have never been distracted by the difficulties of divided allegiance. Make Ireland one of the States of a Confederacy, and these difficulties will at once arise. ”

“ Ireland shall have the same constitutional status in the Community of Nations known as the British Empire as the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa, with a Parliament having powers to make laws for the peace, order and good government of Ireland, and an Executive responsible to that Parliament, and shall be styled and known as the Irish Free State. ”

“ The motive passions of the Irish agitation have all along been hatred toward England and a desire to make Ireland a nation, holding her independent place among the nations of the world. This design was proclaimed by the Young Irelanders of 1848 and by the Fenian rebels of 1866; it has been avowed, in intervals of candour, by the present Nationalists themselves. The grant of an Irish Parliament will stimulate rather than appease this thirst for separate national existence. The nearer complete independence seems, the more will it be desired. ”

“ Ireland, instead of taking its place as an integral portion of the great empire, which the valour of her sons has contributed to win, has been treated as a dependent tributary province; and at this moment, after forty-three years of nominal union, the affections of the two nations are so entirely alienated from each other, that England trusts for the maintenance of their connection, not to the attachment of the Irish people, but to the bayonets which menace our bosoms, and the cannon which she has planted in all our strongholds. ”

“ I say to my countrymen who cry out for the complete separation of Ireland from the Empire, that they will not in this generation bring with them the most powerful and wealthy, if not the most numerous, party in their country. Complete control of Irish affairs is a possibility, and I suggest to the extremists that the status of a self-governing dominion inside a federation of dominions is a proposal which, if other safeguards for minority interests are incorporated, would attract Unionist attention. ”

“ An Act meant by its authors to be a source of the prosperity and concord which, though slowly, followed upon the Union with Scotland, has not made Ireland rich, has not put an end to Irish lawlessness, has not terminated the feud between Protestants and Catholics, has not raised the position of Irish tenants, has not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, and has, therefore, not removed Irish disloyalty. ”

“ I understand that it is the intention of the British Government to introduce a bill for conscription. Since I left Ireland, I notice many strange changes have come over the National leaders of Ireland. They are not as fearless as they were in the days of Parnell and they completely lost or destroyed their independence. ”

“ Above the cries of contending parties we raise the cry of Ireland and Irish independence—an independence in the gaining of which Catholic and Protestant will be shoulder comrades as they were a century ago, and in the advantages of which they will be equal sharers. Not an Ireland for a class or a creed, but an Ireland for the Irish, and the whole of the Irish, not an Ireland fettered and trammelled by England, but mistress of her own destinies, evolving her own national life and building for herself an ever-increasing prosperity. ”

“ At the least the Irish tribal scheme of government contained as much promise of human virtue and happiness as the feudal scheme which became later the political creed of England, but which was never accepted in Ireland. Irish history can only be understood by realising this intense national life with its sure basis on the broad self-government of the people. ”

“ The committee of Dublin, by communicating with other committees through the kingdom, will be able to conduct the body of the kingdom, and unite the various parts of it in certain principles, which will by degrees work themselves into a system, and complete the independence of Irish legislation. This will depend, however, upon the continuance of the war; for if England should be wise enough to make peace, of which there is little probability, the spirit of Ireland will evaporate, and their beautiful edifice dissolve, like the fabric of a vision. ”

“ I urge upon them that if the suggestions made here were accepted both would obtain substantially what they desire, the Ulster Unionists that safety for their interests and provision for Ireland's unity with the commonwealth of dominions inside the empire; the Nationalists that power they desire to create an Irish civilization by self-devised and self-checked efforts. ”

“ Thus the last open port, the last considerable town held by the Confederates, yielded to the overwhelming power of numbers and munitions, in the twelfth year of that illustrious war which Ireland waged for her religious and civil liberties, against the forces of the two adjoining kingdoms, sometimes estranged from one another, but always hostile alike to the religious belief and the political independence of the Irish people. ”