Seanad Éireann

“ The Oireachtas shall consist of the President and two Houses, viz.: a House of Representatives to be called Dáil Éireann and a Senate to be called Seanad Éireann. The Houses of the Oireachtas shall sit in or near the City of Dublin or in such other place as they may from time to time determine. The sole and exclusive power of making laws for the State is hereby vested in the Oireachtas: no other legislative authority has power to make laws for the State. ”

“ Money Bills shall be initiated in Dáil Éireann only. Every Money Bill passed by Dáil Éireann shall be sent to Seanad Éireann for its recommendations. Every Money Bill sent to Seanad Éireann for its recommendations shall, at the expiration of a period not longer than twenty-one days after it shall have been sent to Seanad Éireann, be returned to Dáil Éireann, which may accept or reject all or any of the recommendations of Seanad Éireann. ”

“ This is a great and critical occasion in the history of the Six Counties, but not for the Six Counties alone, for everything which interests them touches Ireland, and everything which touches Ireland finds an echo in the remotest parts of the Empire.
Few things are more earnestly desired throughout the English speaking world than a satisfactory solution of the age long Irish problems, which for generations embarrassed our forefathers, as they now weigh heavily upon us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The instinct for freedom, the feeling that the existing Government of Ireland had not for a hundred years fulfilled the primary functions of government, became a reasoned and rooted conviction that something more was needed to mend it than mere Home Rule. The price that Ireland had been asked to pay for Home Rule, that it was still pertinaciously pressed to agree to, the partition of Ireland, seemed an unforgivable treachery beside the fair prospect of an Ireland one and indivisible, in which Orange and Green, Protestant and Catholic were united in the love and service of a common country. ”

“ The changing of rack-rented farmers into peasant proprietors After years of struggle and sacrifice and increasing strife, the Irish cause has emerged at length triumphantly from the contest, and Ireland is on the highroad to nationhood and independence. Stupendous obstacles had to surmounted, centuries of prejudice had to dissipated, the power of a tyrannical and domineering oligarchy, accustomed to an unquestioned ascendancy, had to be shattered ere the Irish people were in a position to assert their will and to bring the English government to recognize the justice of their claims. ”

“ I do not believe there is an Irishman, whatever his political feeling, creed or position, who does not yearn to see a true settlement of the present chaotic, disastrous and ruinous struggle. In the best interests, therefore, of Ireland and my countrymen I beg most earnestly to invite the Duke of Abercorn, Mr John Redmond, M.P., Lord Barrymore, Colonel Saunderson, M.P., the Lord Mayor of Dublin, the O'Conor Don, Mr William O'Brien, M.P., and Mr T.W. Russell, M.P., to a Conference to be held in Dublin within one month from this date. ”

“ It was thus stated by Lalor in his paper, the Irish Felon:—
“The entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and down to the centre of the earth, is vested, as of right, in the people of Ireland. The soil of the country belongs as of right to the entire people of the country, not to any one class, but to the nation.” ”

“ Queen Elizabeth, when writing to Lord Sussex of a rumoured rising by O'Neil, desired him to assure her lieges at Dublin, that if O'Neil did rise, "it would be for their advantage; for there will be estates for them who want." The Sidney policy of treating Ireland as a discovered country, whose inhabitants had no right to the soil, except such as the discoverers graciously conceded to them—begat a new order of men, unknown to the history of other civilized states, which order we must now be at some pains to introduce to the reader. ”

“ The state of Ireland—not the present state merely, but the habitual state—is hitherto the most unqualified instance of signal failure which the practical genius of the English people has exhibited. We have had the Irish all to ourselves for five hundred years. No one has shared with us the privilege of governing them, nor the responsibilities consequent on that privilege. No one has exercised the smallest authority over them save by our permission. ”

“ To this end the members of the Irish senate must be brought back from the state of siege in ancestral castles, which they were pleased to call 'villegiatura,' without delay; by threats, and bribes, and promises they must be induced to haggle no more over their mess of pottage. Ireland must seem to retire from the world with a good grace, and be tucked snugly up between the sheets for evermore. Lord Clare was satisfied that the decisive moment had arrived, for the country was quiet enough now for the question of union to be freely ventilated. ”

“ I have great doubts of the propriety of what you mention of an address of the two Houses to empower you to give the royal assent to any Bills, because that would prematurely, as it seems to me, bring into discussion the great question of all—namely, how far the Lords and Commons of Ireland have the right, either of commanding the use of the English Great Seal, or of superseding its use, in an instance in which that, and the concurrence of the English Council, are fundamental points of the present constitution of Ireland. I am quite sure that the safest of all things will be the adjournment ”