Irish affairs

“ When the Irish had the management of their own affairs, he continued, the result was universal misery. They could not govern themselves in the sixteenth century; therefore they could not govern themselves in the nineteenth. If American opinion would only tell the Irish that they had no longer any grievances which legislation could redress, the Irish would believe it, and all would be well. ”

“ If the isolation of Ireland from European politics has stultified her erratic excursions into foreign affairs, it has even more seriously affected the political relations of England and Ireland during the past four years. The Britisher, sympathetic or otherwise, is apparently quite incapable of realizing the fathomless indifference of the vast majority of the Irish nation towards the issues of the present conflict in Europe. ”

“ Desiring that none but the representatives of the Irish nation should legislate for Ireland, we have no wish to intermeddle with the affairs of England or Scotland, except so far as they may be connected with the interests of Ireland, or with the general policy of the empire. ”

“ For twenty-five years past—with the exception of the abortive Fenian movement—the Irish people have acted as if green flags, denunciation of England, and poetic sunburstry were enough to establish Ireland's claim to national independence.
We trust and believe that a change for the better is coming. Ireland is beginning to see that the men who are able to do something for themselves, the men of judgment and prevision in their own affairs, are likely to bring the best intelligence into national deliberations. ”

“ So long as one section of Irish society looks to England as the successor of an ancient enemy, and the other looks to her as a protector against the descendants of those whom their fathers kept beneath their heel, so long will incompatibility of temper exist. As soon as possible Liberals intend to put the inhabitants of Ireland in such a position that, ceasing to batten upon the exhumed remains of mediæval controversies, they may discover, in the course of managing their joint affairs, that they are only Irishmen after all. ”

“ The ignorance of Irish affairs in England is due partly to ourselves, but also to a natural heedlessness arising from distance and preoccupation with problems with which Englishmen are more intimately concerned. ”

“ Their position is that they are Unionists, not merely because it is for the good of Great Britain, but because they hold it to be for the good of Ireland, and it is the Irish argument weighs with them, and if they were convinced it would be better for Ireland to be self-governed they would throw in their lot with the rest of Ireland, which would accept them gladly and greet them as a prodigal son who had returned, having made, unlike most prodigal sons, a fortune, and well able to be the wisest adviser in family affairs. ”

“ Ultimately withdrawn from the material business of the continent nothing again drew back the Irish to any share in the affairs of Europe save a spiritual call—a call of religion, of learning, or of liberty. The story of the Irish mission shows how they answered to such a call.
The Teutonic invaders stopped at the Irish Sea. At the fall of the Empire, therefore, Ireland did not share in the ruin of its civilisation. And while all continental roads were interrupted, traffic from Irish ports still passed safely to Gaul over the ocean routes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Never had any country a more complete control over the destinies of another than had England over the destinies of Ireland during the greater part of the eighteenth century. The confiscations of Irish land which disorganised all social conditions, the commercial legislation which ruined Ireland's chance of becoming a rich industrial nation, the financial corruption and misapplication of patronage, were all the direct work of the English Parliament or of the English Government. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I trust that the opportunity of making a great advance on this question of Irish government will not long be delayed, and when that opportunity comes my firm belief is that a greater measure of agreement than hitherto as to the ultimate solution will be found possible, and that a keener appreciation will be felt of the benefits that will flow to the Irish communities and British people throughout the world, and that Ireland, from being disaffected, impoverished, and discouraged, will take its place as a strong, harmonious, and contented portion of the empire. ”

“ An independent nation is, in all essentials, what it has made itself by its own efforts; but a nation conquered, and held in subjugation ever since it had a history, is what its conquerors have made it, or have caused it to become. Yet this reflection does not seem to inspire Englishmen generally with any feeling of shame. The evils of Ireland sit as lightly on the English conscience as if England had done all which the most enlightened and disinterested benevolence could suggest for governing the Irish well, and for civilizing and improving them. ”

“ Men who love Ireland ignobly brawl about her in their cups, quarrel about her with their neighbor, allow no freedom of thought of her or service of her other than their own, take to the cudgel and the rifle, and join sectarian orders or lodges to ensure that Ireland will be made in their own ignoble image. Those who love Ireland nobly desire for her the highest of human destinies. They would ransack the ages and accumulate wisdom to make Irish life seem as noble in men's eyes as any the world has known. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Would Ireland know the solution of her vexed question? Then let history repeat itself; and instead of the torch of the incendiary, or the knife of the assassin, let the Irish tenantry take in their hands, as did their ancestors thirteen hundred years ago, the Bible of the blessed Savior, and convert again the English land-owners to the doctrines of him who taught, ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’ They have tried sullen submission, careless indifference, crafty counsels, and armed rebellion, none of which have been successful. ”

“ Yet not merely civilization, but the extreme grandeur and magnificence of Ireland in "former times," is the first postulate of all Irish discontent. It is because England has dimmed her glory and overthrown her royal state that Irishmen burn with patriot indignation, and not by any means because she has merely left barbarism and disunion still barbarous and disunited after seven centuries, and has checked, instead of encouraging, the industry and commerce of the land. ”

“ In like manner, the condition of Ireland has, from time to time, commanded the attention of the world; and, through the cruel expatriation of her children, made itself felt more widely perhaps than that of any other nation. When England perjured herself for the hundredth time, and violated the Treaty of Limerick, she exiled to France a host of our countrymen, who afterwards met her at Fontenoy, as the Irish Brigade, and trailed her bloody and broken in the dust. The wrongs of the past were with them. ”

“ It is not, however, for the Conquest only that this knowledge of the true state of Ireland ought to be acquired. The light it throws on the Irish people, their inherited and unchangeable tendencies, is of value from the parallel it presents to the latest modern developments. ”

“ 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 motives which form the distinctive characteristics of the Irish people are, and always have been, enthusiastic devotion to their religious convictions, unflinching loyalty to the principle of nationality, and a passionate attachment to the soil of their fatherland. Is not the history of England's rule in Ireland a heart-breaking record of systematic oppression upon each and all of these inherent principles of Irish character? ”

“ Unionist writers who are honest enough to admit the decay of Ireland between 1800-1900 attempt to trace it to any other cause than the Act of Union—to over-population, to the Catholic religion, to the Irish character, or even to the potato. But they labour in vain. If Ireland stood alone, they might succeed. But it does not stand alone. Precisely at the time when Ireland was decaying, all other Western nations were flourishing. ”

“ It might seem that amid centuries of conflict, ever-present danger, preyings and raidings, statutes to shut them out from learning, trade, or advancement in their church, and torrents of slander to defile their name, the Irish might in truth have fallen into the nomad barbarism and the beastly ignorance of which they were accused by the English from that time to this. In fact however the people, endowed with an immense vitality, were busily occupied with commerce and with learning. Irish princes were lively competitors with the English merchants of the Pale. ”

“ And as the English merchants were on the spot and commanded votes in Parliament, any injustice against them would be speedily rectified; the colonists living at a distance and having no means of making their voice heard, would be left to suffer.
In applying the colonial system to Ireland, it is true that in theory England undertook to protect her by means of the British army and navy, from foreign foes; but beyond that, the system was to Ireland all loss and no gain. Every branch of Irish industry was deliberately ruined by the English Government. ”

“ The question of Ireland remains a perplexing one. We have two Irishmen in our mess, one a Unionist, the other a Nationalist. The impression one gets from them at least is the hopelessness of our being ever able to settle the Irish problem. ”

“ Moreover, there is no doubt that, in the case of Ireland particularly, the Irish had for many centuries a legitimate government of their own, and when attacked by foreigners, who landed on their shores under whatever pretext, they had a perfect right, nay, it was the duty of the heads of clans, the provincial kings and princes, to protect the whole nation, and the part of it intrusted to their special care in particular, against open or covert foes. ”

“ By all admissions we have made a mess of Ireland. With singular and unwonted perverseness we have refused for more than a hundred years to apply to Ireland the principles of self-government that have justified their application in every province of the Empire that is mainly inhabited by people of our own race. We have risked and we have incurred the disaffection of the Irish themselves; we have imposed on them and on ourselves untold suffering and expense; we have imperilled the whole fabric of our Parliamentary institutions. ”

“ From the outbreak of the French Revolution onward, they had suspected—and with justice—that the French would endeavour to raise trouble in Ireland. For there alone in the British Isles was to be found a discontented population, held down by a minority which governed entirely in its own interests, and took no heed of the desires of its subjects. There had always been close communication between France and Ireland since the old Pg 588 Jacobite days, and many Irish exiles were living beyond the seas. ”

“ 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. ”