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 Cornell University Library 
 
 DA 960.G49 1919 
 
 Irish republic. Why? 
 
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 3 1924 028 168 676 
 
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Cornell University 
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 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
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 http://archive.org/details/cu31924028168676 
 

HBIHIBfiSSlSniBSfSIBraiSI^ 
 
 The 
 
 IRISH REPUBLIC. 
 WHY? 
 
 Non-Official Statement 
 Prepared for submission to the 
 
 PEACE CONFERENCE 
 
 by 
 LAURENCE GINNELL 
 
 Barrister of the Middle Temple and Irish Bar 
 Representative of North Westmeath in the Dail Eireann 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 | I IRELAND'S CASE FOR INDEPENDENCE 
 
 (OFFICIAL) ^ j^. 
 
 Published by ^ \~ 
 
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Foreword 
 
 To Revised Edition 
 
 Early in 1918 the Coisde Comhairle, Sinn Fein, appointed 
 a special committee to draft Ireland's Case for Independence 
 to be presented to the Peace Conference. While engaged in 
 this work, leaders of the Irish people, including the members 
 of that Committee, were arrested and imprisoned by the British 
 Government without legal charges being preferred against 
 them, and held almost a year without trial. The Committee 
 was thus prevented from accomplishing its task at the time 
 and in the manner desired. 
 
 One member of the Committee, Mr. Laurence Ginnell, 
 while incarcerated in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, July, 1918, as 
 a "political" prisoner, completed the document herein pre- 
 sented — the Governor of the prison being unaware of the 
 nature of Mr. Ginnell's literary work. 
 
 Subsequent to its despatch from Ireland, the Dail Eireann 
 assembled in Dublin, January 21, 1919, and drafted the official 
 statement of Ireland's Case for presentation to the Peace Con- 
 ference by the official delegates of the Irish Republic — De 
 Valera, Griffith and Plunkett. This statement and Ireland's 
 Declaration of Independence are included in the present edition 
 of "The Irish Republic. Why?" 
 
 DIARMUID LYNCH. 
 New York, June 20, 1919. 
 
 JfL- 
 
Ireland's Case for Independence 
 
 Adopted by Dail Eireann for Presen- 
 tation to the Peace Conference 
 
 (Translation) 
 
 Ireland is a Nation not merely for the reason, which in the case of 
 other countries has been taken as sufficient, that she has claimed at all 
 times and still claims to be a nation, but also because, even though no 
 claim were put forward on her behalf, history shows her to be a dis- 
 tinct nation from remotely ancient times. 
 
 For over a thousand years Ireland possessed and fully exercised 
 Sovereign Independence, and was recognized through Europe as a 
 distinct Sovereign State. 
 
 The usurpation of the foreigner has always been disputed and 
 resisted by the mass of the Irish people. 
 
 At various times since the coming of the English the Irish Nation 
 has exercised its sovereign rights as opportunity offered. 
 
 The hope of recovering its full and permanent sovereignty has 
 always been in the breasts of the Irish people, and has been the inspira- 
 tion and the mainspring of their political activities, abroad as well as 
 at home. 
 
 English statecraft has long and persistently striven in vain to force 
 the Irish people to abandon hope. The English policy of repression, 
 spiritually and materially, has never been at rest from the first 
 intrusion of English power until the present day. 
 
 English policy has always aimed at keeping every new accretion of 
 population from without separate from the rest of the Nation and a 
 cause of distraction and weakness in its midst. 
 
 Nevertheless the Irish Nation has remained one, with a vigorous 
 consciousness of its nationality, and has always succeeded sooner or 
 later in assimilating every new element of population. 
 
 The Irish People has never been intolerant towards its minorities 
 and has never harbored the spirit of persecution. Such barbarities as 
 punishment by torture, witch-burning, capital punishment for minor 
 offences, etc., so frequent in the judicial systems of other countries, 
 found no recognition in Irish law or custom. Twice in the seventeenth 
 century, in 1642-8 and in 1689, when, after periods of terrible persecu- 
 tion and deprivation of lands and liberty, the Irish People recovered 
 for a time a dominant political power, they worked out in laws and 
 treaties a policy of full religious equality for all dwellers in the Island. 
 On each of the two occasions, the English policy, becoming again 
 dominant, subjected the Irish people to further large confiscations of 
 land and property, restrictions of liberty, and religious persecutions. 
 And when, notwithstanding the English policy of maintaining as com- 
 plete a severance as possible, Irish Protestants became attracted to 
 the support of the National cause, the Catholic; of Ireland accorded 
 political leadership to a succession of Protestant leaders. 
 
 The Irish have long been a thoroughly democratic people. Through 
 their chosen leaders, from O'Connell to Parnell, they have provided 
 the world with a model of democratic organization in opposition to the 
 domination af privileged classes. 
 
 If Ireland, on the grounds of National right, is entitled to recover 
 
 2 
 
her sovereign independence — and that is her demand — the recognition 
 of her right is due from other nations for the following' reasons: 
 
 1. Because England's claim to withhold independence from Ireland 
 is based on a_ principle which is a negation of national liberty and 
 subversive of international peace and order. England resists Ireland's 
 demand on the ground that the independence of Ireland would be, as 
 alleged, incompatible with the security of England or of Great Britain, 
 or of the British Empire. Whether this contention is well or ill- 
 founded, if it is admitted, then any State is justified in suppressing the 
 independence of any nation whose liberty that State declares to be 
 incompatible with its own security. An endless prospect of future wars 
 is the natural consequence. 
 
 2. Because England's government of Ireland has been at all times, 
 and is conspicuously at the present time, an outrage to the conscience 
 of mankind. 
 
 Such a government, especially in its quasi-democratic form, is 
 essentially vicious. Its character at the best is sufficiently described 
 by a noted' English writer, John Stuart Mill (Representative Govern- 
 ment (1861) Chapter 18): "The Government by itself has a meaning 
 and a reality: but such a thing as government of one people by another 
 does not and cannot exist. One people may keep another as a warren 
 or preserve for its own use, a place to make money -in, a human cattle 
 farm to be worked for the profit of its own inhabitants. But if the 
 good of the governed is the proper business of a government, it is 
 utterly impossible that a people should directly attend to it." Con- 
 sequently the people of England devolve the power which they hold 
 over Ireland upon a succession of satraps, military and civil, who 
 represent no interest of the Irish people; and recent events show that 
 the essential vices of the government are as active now as in former 
 times. 
 
 3. Because the English temper towards the cause of Irish national 
 liberty produces atrocious and intolerable results in Ireland. Among 
 the results are: A depopulation unexampled in any other country, 
 however badly governed; wholesale destruction of industries and com- 
 merce; over-taxation on an enormous scale; diversion of rents, savings 
 and surplus incomes from Ireland to England; opposition to the util- 
 ization by the Irish people of the economic resources of their country, 
 and to economic development and social improvement; exploitation 
 of Ireland for the benefit of English capitalists; fomentation of 
 religious animosities; repression of the national culture; maintenance 
 of a monstrous system of police rule, by which in the words of an 
 English minister, all Ireland is kept under the microscope; perversion 
 of justice, by making political service and political subservience almost 
 the sole qualification for judicial positions; by an elaborate corruption 
 of the jury system, by the organization of police espionage and perjury, 
 and the encouragement of agents provocateurs, and recently and at 
 present by using for the purpose of political oppression in Ireland the 
 exceptional powers created for the purposes of the European war. 
 Under these powers military government is established, some areas 
 being treated as hostile territory occupied in ordinary warfare; a war 
 censorship is maintained over the press and over publications gen- 
 erally; printing offices are invaded and dismantled; the police and 
 military are empowered to confiscate the property of vendors of litera- 
 ture without any legal process; persons are imprisoned without trial 
 and deported from, Ireland; Irish regiments in the English army are 
 removed from Ireland, and a large military force, larger than at any 
 previous time, with full equipment for modern warfare, has been main- 
 tained in Ireland; civilians are daily arrested and tried by court-martial, 
 and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. 
 
 3 
 
What are England's objections to Ireland's independence? 
 The one objection in which English statesmen are sincere is that 
 which has been already mentioned — that the domination of Ireland by 
 England is necessary for the security of England. Ireland, according 
 to the English Navy League, is "the Heligoland of the Atlantic,' a 
 naval outpost to be governed for the sole benefit of its foreign mas- 
 ters. This claim, if it is valid, justifies not only the suppression of 
 national liberty but also the weakening of Ireland by depopulation, 
 repression of industry and commerce and culture,' maintenance of in- 
 ternal discord, etc. It can also be held to justify the subjugation of 
 any small nation by a neighboring great power. 
 
 The proximity of Ireland to England furnishes another plea. But 
 Ireland is not as near to England as Belgium, Holland, Denmark, etc., 
 are to Germany, Norway to Sweden, Portugal to Spain. In fact, it is 
 this very proximity that makes independence necessary for Ireland, as 
 the only condition of security against the sacrifice of Irish rights to 
 English interests. 
 
 Another plea is that, Engl nd being a maritime power, her safety 
 depending on her navy, and her prosperity depending on maritime 
 commerce, the domination of Ireland is for her a practical necessity. 
 This may explain why Ireland's harbors, the best in Europe, are empty 
 of mercantile shipping except for such shipping as carries on the 
 restricted trade between Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 Once more, Ireland protests that the interests of one country, be 
 they what they may, cannot be allowed to annul the natural rights of 
 another country. If that claim be admitted, then there is an end to 
 national rights and all the world must prepare to submit to armed in- 
 terest or to make war against them. We in Ireland are determined 
 not to submit. 
 
 We may expect to find the plea insinuated, in some specious form, 
 if not definitely and clearly made, that the English rule in Ireland has 
 been and is favorable to peace, progress and civilization in Ireland. 
 We answer that, on the contrary, English rule has never been for the 
 benefit of Ireland an'd has never been intended for the benefit of Ire- 
 land; that it has isolated Ireland from Europe, prevented her develop- 
 ment and done everything in its power to deprive her of a national 
 civilization. So far as Ireland at present is lacking in internal peace, 
 is behind other countries in education and material progress, is un- 
 able to contribute notably to the common civilization of mankind, 
 these defects are the visible consequences of English intrusion and 
 domination. 
 
 The Irish people have never believed in- the sincerity of the pub- 
 lic declarations of English Statesmen in regard to their "war aims" ex- 
 cept in so far as those declarations avowed England's part in the war 
 to have been undertaken for England's particular and imperial inter- 
 ests. They have never believed that England went to war for the sake 
 of France or Belgium or Serbia, or for the protection or liberation of 
 small nationalities, or to make right prevail against armed might. If 
 English statesmen wish to be regarded as sincere they can prove to 
 the world by abandoning, not in words but in act, the claim to sub- 
 ordinate Ireland's liberty' to England's security. 
 
 Ireland's complete liberation must follow upon the application of 
 President Wilson's principles. It has not resulted from the verbal ac- 
 ceptance of those principles; and their rejection is implied in the re- 
 fusal to recognize for Ireland the right of self-determination. Among 
 the principles declared by President Wilson before and since America 
 entered the war, and accepted by the spokesmen of the chief allied 
 powers, we cite the following: "No peace can rest securely on politi- 
 cal or economic restrictions, meant to benefit some nations and crip- 
 
 4 
 
pie or embarrass others." "Peace should rest upon the rights of peo- 
 ples, not on the rights of governments — the rights of peoples, great 
 and small, weak or powerful; their equal right to freedom and security 
 and self-government, and to participation, upon fair terms, in the eco- 
 nomic opportunities of the world." "What we demand in this war is 
 nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and 
 safe to live in and particularly that it be made safe for every peace- 
 loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, deter- 
 mine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by 
 other peoples of the world, as against force and selfish aggression." 
 "An evident principle runs through the whole of the program I have 
 outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, 
 and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one 
 another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this principle be 
 made the foundation, no part of the structure of international jus- 
 tice can stand." 
 
 Speaking on behalf of the American people at New York, on the 
 27th of September, 1918, President Wilson said: "We accepted the 
 issues of the war as facts, not as any group of men either here or 
 elsewhere had defined them, and we can accept no outcome which does 
 not squarely meet and settle them. The issues are these: 'Shall the 
 military power of any nation or group of nations be suffered to de- 
 termine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule, 
 except the right of force?' 'Shall strong nations be free to wrong 
 weak nations and make them subject to their purpose and interest?' 
 'Shall peoples be ruled and dominated, even in their own internal af- 
 fairs, by arbitrary and irresponsible force, or by their own will and 
 choice?' 'Shall there be a common standard of right and privilege for 
 all peoples and nations, or shall the strong do as they will, and the 
 weak suffer without redress?' 'Shall the assertion of right be hap- 
 hazard and by casual alliance, or shall there be a common concert to 
 oblige the observance of common rights?' No man, no group of men, 
 chose these to be the issues of the struggle. They are the issues of it, 
 and they must be settled — by no arrangement or compromise or ad- 
 justment of interests, but definitely and once for all, and with a full 
 and unequivocal acceptance of the principle that the interest- of the 
 weakest is as safe as the interest of the strongest. . . The im- 
 partial justice meted out must involve no discrimination between those 
 to whom we wish to be just and those to whom we do not wish to be 
 just. It must be a justice that plays no favorites and knows no stand- 
 ards but the equal rights of the several peoples concerned." 
 
 If England objects to the application of these principles to the set- 
 tlement of the ancient quarrel between herself and Ireland, she thereby 
 testifies: (1) That her international policy is entirely based on her own 
 selfish interest, not on the recognition of rights in others, notwith- 
 standing any professions to the contrary; (2) That in her future deal- 
 ings with other nations she may be expected, when the opportunity 
 arises, to use her power in order to make her own interest prevail over 
 their rights; (3) That her paticular object in keeping possession of 
 Ireland is to secure naval and mercantile domination over the seas, 
 and in particular over the North Atlantic and the nations which have 
 legitimate maritime interests therein; ruling Ireland at the same time 
 on a plan of thoroughgoing exploitation for her own sole profit, to 
 the great material detriment of Ireland, and preventing the establish- 
 ment of beneficial intercourse, through commerce and otherwise, be- 
 tween Ireland and other countries. 
 
 It is evident that, while Ireland is denied the right to choose freely 
 and establish that form of government which the Irish people desire, 
 
no international order can be founded on the basis of national right 
 and international justice; the claim of the stronger to dominate the 
 weaker will once more be successfully asserted; and there will be no 
 true peace. 
 
 It must be recognized that Ireland has already clearly demon- 
 strated her will. At the recent general election out of 104 constitu- 
 encies (Trinity College, Dublin, having the power to elect tw» rep- 
 resentatives) 73 returned Republican candidates, and 6 returned rep- 
 resentatives who, though* not Republicans, will not oppose the free 
 exercise of self-determination by the Irish people. Nor is there the 
 slightest likelihood that this right will at any time be relinquished. 
 
 Here it may be necessary to anticipate special pleas that may be 
 put forward to the effect that Irish independence may properly be 
 conceded gradually, or as it is called, a "breathing space ought to 
 intervene." The Irish people will regard any proposal of this character 
 as deceptive and dangerous. They are thoroughly capable of taking 
 immediate charge of their national and international affairs, not less 
 capable than any of the new states which have been recognized since 
 the beginning of the war or which are about to be recognized. 
 
 The effect on the world of the restoration of Ireland to the so- 
 ciety of free nations cannot fail to be beneficial. On the part of the 
 nations in general, this fact will be a guarantee of the new inter- 
 national order and a reassurance to all the smaller nations. On the 
 part of England, if justice to Ireland be "not denied or sold or de- 
 layed," the fact will be an earnest to other peoples, especially to those 
 whose commerce is borne upon the Atlantic Ocean, that England's 
 naval power is not hostile to the rights and legitimate interests of 
 other countries. 
 
 Ireland's voice in the councils of the nations will be wholly in 
 favor of peace and justice. Ireland will have no possessions and no 
 territorial claims outside of her own well-defined geographical bounds. 
 Her liberty cannot infringe on that of any other people. She will not 
 make any war or aggression or favor any. In remembrance of her 
 unexampled progress and prosperity during a brief period of legislative 
 but not executive independence (1782-1798), she looks forward con- 
 fidently to the time when she will again be free to contribute to the 
 prosperity of all countries in commercial relation with her. 
 
 The longest agony suffered by any people in history will be ended, 
 the oldest standing enmity between two peoples will be removed. 
 England will be relieved of the disgrace she bears in the eyes of all 
 peoples, a disgrace not less evident to the remote Armenian than to 
 her nearest Continental neighbors. In proportion as England gives 
 earnest of disinterestedness and good will, in like proportion shall 
 Ireland show her readiness to join with England in allowing the past 
 to pass into history. The international ambition of Ireland will be to 
 recreate in some new way that period of her ancient independence of 
 which she is proudest, when she gave freely of her greatest treasures 
 to every nation within her reach, and entertained no thought of recom- 
 pense or of selfish advantage. 
 
A Non-Official Statement of Ireland's 
 Case for Freedom for Submission 
 to the International Peace Con- 
 gress in Fourteen Propositions. 
 
 SYNOPSIS 
 
 The ancient sovereign State of Ireland, one of the primary 
 sovereign States of Christendom, claims resumption of her 
 sovereign independence, recognition of her status by the Inter- 
 national Peace Congress, and intervention on her behalf by 
 way of international guarantee of future respect for her inde- 
 pendence; and submits in support of her claim the subjoined 
 fourteen Propositions, prefaced by a brief Synopsis of them, 
 respectively : 
 
 I. The Irish Nation earnestly desires the International 
 Peace Congress to be pure and impartial in its constitution and 
 proceedings, beyond the reach of the power and contamination 
 of States guilty of entering into secret treaties in conflict with 
 their public professions and with the rights and interests of 
 peoples subject to them and of peoples subject to other States ; 
 beyond the reach of all influences save those of authentic his- 
 tory and justice ; in order that it may inspire confidence in all 
 nations, small as well as great, to be affected by its decisions ; 
 and that those decisions may be of a character fitting for the 
 beginning of a new era of amity among nations and peaceful 
 progress throughout the world. 
 
 II. Ireland is historically entitled to independence as one 
 of the primary sovereign States of Christendom, never having 
 forfeited or lost her sovereign status or consciously recognized 
 sovereignty over her in any other country; always having so 
 resented and resisted the usurpation of foreign military force 
 that the continual presence of an army of occupation has 
 always been, and still is, essential to the maintenance of for- 
 eign rule ; having always venerated, and still venerating as her 
 truest patriots the purest and best of her sons who, treated by 
 England as criminals, have, generation after generation, off ered 
 their lives in open insurrection for her freedom ; still adhering 
 
 7 
 
to her right of sovereignty with matchless fidelity and tenacity 
 at immeasurable sacrifice of life and property. Of all this, the 
 presence of England's army of occupation is England's practi- 
 cal admission. All Irish national characteristics, especially 
 love of freedom, are acknowledged by EfTglish legislation and 
 English statesmen. Nor can England have acquired any right 
 over Ireland by prescription, because (a) prescription is a 
 domestic principle not applicable between nations; and (b) 
 there can be no prescription of what is unjust: Grotius. A 
 further historical basis, sufficient in itself, is, that at present a 
 vast majority of the Irish population, of every race of which it 
 is composed, regard foreign rule as slavery, and are animated 
 by a reasoned determination never to yield a willing allegiance 
 to foreign rule, to destroy it at the earliest possible moment, 
 and to continue resistance to it until Ireland's sovereign inde- 
 pendence is re-established and secured. 
 
 III. Ireland's constitutional right is supported by her 
 meritorious record when independent. The public profession 
 of anxiety for civilization as a justification of the Great War 
 gives special force to this claim. Ireland's unique services 
 to civilization from the sixth to the twelfth centuries, espe- 
 cially during the eighth, ninth and tenth, when history shows 
 that the services were most opportune and important, 
 strengthen her constitutional right and constitute an addi- 
 tional special claim upon Europe to enable her to resume her 
 independence. The distinctions won by Irishmen in strange 
 lands in those early times, as shown in this Statement, were 
 triumphs for herself and benefits to mankind as noble as ever 
 nation achieved ; and not to the Continent alone, but to Eng- 
 land also, as acknowledged by the Venerable Bede, in marked 
 contrast with England's subsequent treatment of Irishmen in 
 England, and English laws against religion and civilization 
 in Ireland. And throughout her agony of subjection and per- 
 secution Ireland has shown the permanence of that spirit and 
 attitude by never practising persecution and by always main- 
 taining intimacy with the pure and noble. She has to-day no 
 feeling for the peoples of other lands but reciprocal friend- 
 ship, respect and a desire to co-operate with them towards 
 increasing and securing happiness and peace amongst nations, 
 by, as in the time of her independence, commercial and indus- 
 trial as well as intellectual intercourse. All this constitutes 
 an additional title to independence, an additional claim upon 
 European nations, and an additional reason against leaving 
 Ireland in subjection to the usurped power of a state guilty 
 of the abuses of power exemplified in this Statement. 
 
 IV. Ireland is inherently entitled to sovereign inde- 
 pendence and international recognition. For nation as for in- 
 
 S 
 
dividual, the right of self-determination is indefeasible. En- 
 dowed with all the qualities, properties and faculties essen- 
 tial to a State, she is entitled to exercise them. Ireland 
 being replete with distinct national individuality and ani- 
 mated with an inextinguishable desire to realize the purposes 
 of her being, she has never learned, from morality, Or con- 
 stitutional law, or the course of history, any valid reason 
 why she should not be, now as in the past, in the full enjoy- 
 ment of sovereign independence; and she confidently submits 
 that no valid reason exists; that her national endowments, 
 which even England reluctantly admits in making them a pre- 
 text for persecution, are for Ireland's own purposes ; and that 
 foreign usurpation of power over her is an outrage upon her 
 and a breach of international law, aggravated by the manner 
 of its exercise and by the policy of defamation; that it is 
 her duty and her interest to throw off this foreign yoke; 
 and that in doing this she is entitled to international sup- 
 port. The inherent right of free intercourse with the outside 
 world, now denied her, is also indestructible. We would ask 
 the Peace Congress to note in connection with this proposi- 
 tion, that as a slanderous person is dangerous to society, 
 so a slanderous State is dangerous to international peace, 
 and that abuse of a country by those who are profiting by 
 that country is suspicious. 
 
 V. Ireland possesses adequate potential manpower to 
 maintain sovereign independence once 'established. General 
 proof of this appears in the fact that the Irish nation still 
 exists, in spite of the policy of extermination carried on 
 persistently for 360 years, including, as will be found in 
 this Statement, murder by Act of Parliament; "extermination 
 preached by gospel;" State-created famine; sale of Irish 
 youths into slavery in the West Indies at 25 pounds each; 
 death of millions from famine and plague, culminating in the 
 Great Famine in Queen Victoria's reign, and the exultation 
 of the English press. This policy of extermination, adopted 
 by Henry VIII, practiced by his daughters — Mary and Eliza- 
 beth, and expanded by James I, was brought to logical per- 
 fection of iniquity and the reduction of the population to 
 one-third by Cromwell; the murderers of the people being 
 commonly rewarded out of the property of their victims. A 
 nation that has survived that, the severest test of a nation's 
 manpower of which there is record, must be indestructible. 
 And yet within forty years of the Cromwellian massacres, the 
 nation was once more able and generous enough to make a 
 brave fight for an undeserving king, James II. English legis- 
 lation against Irish industries and trade threw the people onto 
 the land ; the Penal Laws and laws hostile to agriculture 
 
 9 
 
cleared them off the land again; the consequential State-cre- 
 ated famine and plague overtook each other almost continually 
 during the eighteenth century. The misery resulting from the 
 Union and from hostile legislation and culpable neglect pi 
 official reports on the condition of the people perpetuated fam- 
 ine from 1815 till 1845. The Great Famine of 1846-7-8 was 
 caused by carrying away the food grown by the Irish people to 
 feed the English people, subjecting more than a million peo- 
 ple to the most terrible of all deaths, and forcing nearly two 
 millions into exile. Victoria, whom many of us have seen in 
 the flesh, surpassed Cromwell in cruelty. The same policy 
 of extermination was continued in milder but equally effective 
 form down to 1914, when the population of Ireland was only 
 half what it had been seventy years before, while that of Eng- 
 land' had more than doubled in the same period. The Irish 
 race is now estimated at 30,000,000, less than one-seventh of 
 that number being in Ireland ; a situation showing at once the 
 fertility of the race and the necessity for freedom to enable 
 them to live in their own country. 
 
 VI. Ireland is apt for industries and trade as an inde- 
 pendent State.- When independent she had her industries 
 and trade in the measure customary at that time; manufac- 
 tured her own requirements ; used them with great profusion, 
 as will be found set forth in this Statement, and exported a 
 considerable surplus of commodities in exchange for wines 
 and silks. Her industries and trade underwent normal growth 
 until the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. By the end of that 
 reign there was little of them left. Thenceforward wars and 
 English legislation combined in hostility to Irish industries, 
 chiefly by destroying the export trade on which they depended, 
 a typical law, for example, peremptorily prohibiting the 
 export of glass of Irish manufacture to any country whatever. 
 After the Irish woolen industry had been destroyed by legis- 
 lation in that spirit, and large numbers of people in the south 
 of Ireland, thrown out of employment, the Government per- 
 emptorily forbade the founding of linen industry in the south 
 of Ireland, although William III and the English Lords and 
 Commons had publicly pledged "the utmost support in their 
 power" to a linen industry in Ireland on the discontinuance 
 of the woolen. Every manufacturing industry founded with a 
 prospect of success was deliberately crushed, and the people 
 reduced to the land as their sole industry; whereupon Irish 
 agriculture was similarly thwarted. Vast areas were cleared 
 of people and turned to grass. A situation was created leaving 
 no use for Irish people in Ireland. The number and strin- 
 gency of the hostile statutes afford the most conclusive evi- 
 dence of the persistent efforts of the Irish to practice almost 
 
 10 
 
any industry, and England's persistent determination not to 
 allow them. The section of this Statement dealing with this 
 matter needs to be read throughout, because the character ot 
 the legislation was such as would otherwise be incredible. 
 Such statutes are not now necessary; they did their work too 
 well. Their unspent force and unbroken pursuance of the pol- 
 icy make their effect permanent as if enacted yesterday. Inde- 
 pendence alone can ever open industries and trade for the 
 Irish people in Ireland as they are open to free peoples. 
 
 VII. Ireland is financially able to discharge the duties of 
 an independent State. England affords proof of this which 
 even she cannot attempt to refute, by the amount of money 
 she has abstracted from Ireland ; and the prospect of abstract- 
 ing more is one of her reasons for retaining control as long as 
 she can. A country from which England has, on the findings 
 of her own financial experts, abstracted,, from the year 1800 to 
 1914, 400,000,000 pounds in excessive taxes, in addition to what 
 the government of Ireland cost in that time, possesses natural 
 wealth which many an independent State might envy. A 
 country from which Englishmen resident in England abstract- 
 ed through the various public and private channels during the 
 nineteenth century 1,300,000,000 pounds, without any return 
 whatever, is represented by English statesmen and press as 
 poor. If she be poor and England rich, there can be no doubt 
 as to the cause. There may possibly be doubt whether the 
 system of government should be regarded as an imperial 
 license to plunder, or as a new species of fine art. We ask the 
 Peace Congress to note that the same English government 
 which alleges that this country is poor is at the present time 
 extracting from Ireland an annual tax revenue at the rate of 
 40,000,000 pounds, spending less than 13,000,000 pounds on the 
 government and defence of Ireland, and appropriating to itself, 
 without our consent, a net profit of 27,000,000 pounds ; all out 
 of the country which it alleges to be poor. Although these 
 facts show that Ireland has ample financial strength to dis- 
 charge the duties of an independent State, they in no way 
 weaken her claim to the common justice of restitution of the 
 excessive charges and reparation of wanton damage inflicted 
 upon Ireland, in accordance with international law and the 
 practice of great States. Ireland is entitled to all that is due to 
 her. The amount is more than England can conveniently pay. 
 On obtaining independence and an international guarantee 
 that it will be respected in future, Ireland is willing, for the 
 sake of peace, to accept an immediate payment of 500,000,000 
 pounds to help her undo the wreckage England has wrought 
 and recover the due commercial and industrial position of 
 which England has deprived her. 
 
 11 
 
VIII. Ireland is fit and prepared to resume the responsi- 
 bilities, internal and external, of an independent State. A 
 nation possessing the historical right, the special claim upon 
 Europe, the inherent right, the manpower, the aptitude for 
 industries and trade and the financial resources adequate for 
 a sovereign State, is in possession of a large part of fitness 
 for independence. What remains is chiefly organizing finan- 
 cial, administrative and judicial abilities and powers, which 
 usually accompany the other possessions, but which are in 
 our case being specially cultivated; so that we stand to-day 
 adequately equipped in all those departments for inde- 
 pendence. We, the people concerned, who would suffer if our 
 preparations were inadequate, are confident of their efficiency 
 for the security of life, liberty and property in Ireland, and 
 the promotion of the country's highest interests and welfare. 
 For obvious reasons the specific preparations and personnel 
 cannot be disclosed here. England's present method of coun- 
 teracting us in advance is intensive practice of her permanent 
 policy of Divide and Rule, the unity of the Irish people being 
 the greatest permanent danger to her power in Ireland. She 
 knows that but for her persistent and strenuous exertions the 
 entire Irish people would have been fused together long since ; 
 that on their amalgamation English rule would no longer be 
 tolerated, and that their harmonious amalgamation is certain 
 as sobn>as her power to keep them apart is eliminated. Hence 
 she stakes all upon her present efforts to keep the Irish 
 divided. We look with confidence for complete amalgamation, 
 prosperity and happiness as a result of independence, and 
 security for its permanence. We invite the Peace Congress 
 to rule on the merits of this simple issue. 
 
 IX. Ireland is entitled to the right, common to nations and 
 persons, of self-preservation against England's policy . of ex- 
 termination. This elementary right is too self-evident to need 
 argument. A nation or individual that had not the right of 
 self-preservation had no right whatever. All other rights are 
 embodied in that. If it were conceivable that this Peace 
 Congress would acquiesce in a policy of extermination and 
 destruction, it might well be said that there was no such thing 
 as international law, because the saving, of a nation from de- 
 struction would be one of the primary functions of such a law. 
 The urgency of the need for its exercise arises from the con- 
 tinuance of England's policy and the imminent extinction of 
 the Irish nation in Ireland if that continuance is tolerated 
 This supreme danger the nation is now determined to resist. 
 It believes it still possesses sufficient power, but without in- 
 ternational intervention the struggle might be long and de- 
 structive. In any event, better even rapid extinction in a 
 
 12 
 
worthy fight than the stealthy extinction planned by England. 
 That is the situation. 
 
 X. Ireland has rightly re-asserted her right in armed in- 
 surrection in 1916. In "the Great War, which, according to 
 England, was to free the world from military government, no 
 belligerent State on either side can, and no neutral State will 
 desire to dispute the proposition which has been made a text 
 tor the war, and a most powerful incentive for recruiting, 
 namely, that the benefits most certain to result from the war 
 were the elimination of militarism as a permanent system of 
 government, and the independence and future security of small 
 oppressed nations. See, as a specimen, the English proclama- 
 tion at Bagdad. Nationality, not imperialism, is the principle 
 to which appeal has been made everywhere; and of all forms 
 of bad government a foreign military government is unani- 
 mously condemned as the worst. Irish Nationalists, with 
 all the irresistible reasons shown in this Statement to guide 
 them, and with a foreign military despotism in actual opera- 
 tion over them, could not do other than regard with scorn 
 professions they knew to be false, and were bound to assert 
 their right, if only to let the world see how false the profes- 
 sions were. They would have been unworthy of freedom if 
 in the circumstances they had failed to render this great serv- 
 ice to Ireland and to mankind. We proudly submit the fact 
 of their having done so as powerful additional support of Ire- 
 land's claim, and the execution of those patriots as criminals, 
 in flagrant breach of the international convention of The 
 Hague, 1907, Clause c, after they had fought for their coun- 
 try's independence, surrendered and laid down their arms, as 
 conclusive evidence of England's unfitness to rule Ireland 
 England's appeal for recruits having been successful in getting 
 millions of men to fight and slay each other, we now ask the 
 Peace Congress to require the States which made those pro- 
 fessions and thereby got what they wanted, to fulfil their 
 promises to the small nations. We ask especially that this be 
 done in the case of England. We really want, not central 
 countries only, but all countries, to be free from the danger 
 of militarism ; and it is clearer now than it was when the bel- 
 ligerents said so that an essential condition for the abolition 
 of militarism and the durability of peace is the re-establish- 
 ment of the independence of oppressed nations. 
 
 XI. Ireland's purposes on resuming independence are those 
 of peace and progress. While on the one hand no right of 
 inquisition exists to require a nation on re-entering the soci- 
 ety of independent States to declare her intentions in advance, 
 and on the other, any such declaration before power had been 
 recovered wou'ld be merely academical and therefore unsatis- 
 
 13 
 
factory ; nevertheless, we are willing, subject to those qualifica- 
 tions, to gratify a natural desire, and it may be to help the 
 Peace Congress to satisfy itself on this subject. We are the 
 more willing from the fortunate circumstance of being able to 
 refer to our past for corroboration so strong that we actually 
 make it one of the foundations of our claim. To emulate that 
 past in harmony with the very different circumstances and 
 with the greater facilities and varied interests of modern life, 
 we hold to be a worthy ambition. We calculate that the 
 essential work of rebuilding our State and most of its interests 
 from the ruins, ridding ourselves of costly evils forced upon 
 us, curing gross neglect, reviving and practicing our charac- 
 teristic ideals, releasing faculties blasted by foreign rule, and 
 fostering our domestic aptitudes, will occupy most' of us 
 for a considerable time. A private individual's outline of our 
 probable activities will be found in the part of this Statement 
 to which this summary refers. It has no authority save the 
 writer's, but may be accepted as typical of current thought. 
 
 XII. Ireland's sovereign independence is essential to the 
 Freedom of the Seas. That her sovereign independence is 
 essential to her own freedom of commerce is self-evident, and 
 is demonstrated by the number and stringency of English laws 
 for the destruction and prevention of Irish commerce; last 
 illustrated by England's prohibition of the Hamburg-Amerika 
 line of steamships from calling at an Irish port in 1913, and 
 by the fact that now, under direct English rule, most of Ire- 
 land's harbors are empty and have no commerce. The neces- 
 sary liberty to engage in commerce is one of the most impor- 
 tant of our objects after independence itself; because, favor- 
 ably situated as we are, we look with confidence to a great 
 commercial future for an independent Ireland, and to a con- 
 siderable revenue from that source. Ireland's geographical 
 position makes its freedom, while vital for itself, important 
 for other countries also. A powerful State intolerant of free 
 commerce in a country subject to it would, in favorable cir- 
 cumstances, be equally intolerant of any commerce but its 
 own, and is capable of using the geographical position of Ire- 
 land, in conjunction with other strategic points in her pos- 
 session; to the detriment and danger of all international com- 
 merce. The freedom of the seas would then be an idle dream. 
 The sovereign independence of Ireland is essential to make it 
 a reality. 
 
 XIII. England is disqualified and unfit to rule Ireland. 
 This is abundantly demonstrated by every section of this 
 Statement, as by every governmental act of England over 
 Ireland. Unconstitutional and criminal as that record is, 
 it is not of misgovernment we complain, but of foreign rule,' 
 
 14 
 
whatever its character. Its bad character is only secondary 
 evidence for us; but it is primary evidence against England. 
 England first established her colonial parliament in Ireland; 
 made it the most corrupt assembly that ever bore the name; 
 made it a fit instrument for enforcing penal laws against 
 religion and civilization and for keeping the colonists and 
 the nation at permanent enmity; made it a classic exhibition 
 of the futility of a subordinate parliament for any legitimate 
 purpose; and when, under popular pressure, the parliament 
 showed a tendency to amalgamate, bribed it to -commit sui- 
 cide. In the history of the subsequent relations between the 
 two countries, since ameliorative legislation began to be 
 talked of, it is the uniform experience admitted by all, Eng- 
 lish as well as Irish, that the one thing that can always be 
 predicted with certainty of any English measure for Ireland 
 — other than a coercive measure — is that it will be bad in 
 itself, or spoiled by its limitations, or by something hateful 
 accompanying it, by rubbing poison into an open wound, by 
 delay, by the manner of giving, or by some of the many ways 
 in which it is humanly possible to spoil a measure. In not 
 one solitary instance has this rule been departed front. In 
 the case of any other country, this phenomenon might be 
 attributed to unfortunate coincidence. But the calculated 
 result of English rule evidenced in the present deplorable 
 condition of Ireland is an irrefutable reminder of deliberate 
 injustice still being perpetuated by the continuing effects of 
 that rule aided by fixed policy and administration ; that Eng- 
 land is profiting by her injustice to Ireland; that England's 
 spirit is unchanged; and that it is only the persistence of 
 the effects and the profits renders violently unjust measures 
 unnecessary now. In .these circumstances, to attribute Eng- 
 land's hostility to gaucherie or coincidence, might be charita- 
 ble, but would be highly fantastic. We charge her before 
 the nations with the supreme crime of wilful destruction of 
 a sister nation. We deny that she has any right to rule 
 Ireland, well or ill. Both on that ground and on the char- 
 acter of the rule, we ask the Peace Congress to declare Eng- 
 land disqualified and unfit to rule Ireland. 
 
 XIV. Ireland claims recognition and intervention by the 
 Peace Congress, restitution and reparation by England, and 
 an international guarantee for her future security. Every 
 section of this Statement which shows Ireland being treated 
 as a victim country enforces this' particular claim on grounds 
 of justice and morality as well as of international law. Sev- 
 eral of the facts revealed make intervention incumbent under 
 that law as a duty on civilized States. Of this character is 
 the policy of extermination. That policy imposes on the 
 
 15 
 
Irish a duty of resistance even when there is no prospect 
 of success. The indefinite continuance of such an unequal 
 and deadly struggle is, in many respects, a most undesirable 
 condition to allow. As it ought not to be borne by the victim 
 nation, neither ought it to be tolerated by nations which 
 hold that such victimisation is a breach of international law 
 and a danger to international peace. The outrage is aggra- 
 vated and the danger not lessened by the plea that the vic- 
 timisation of one nation by another is a domestic concern of 
 the latter with which other countries have no right to inter- 
 fere. The Congress will note that England, which uses the 
 plea, has herself frequently interfered, and indeed boasts of 
 her interference, in precisely similar cases under other powers, 
 insisting that the abuses were matters of international con- 
 cern. Her plea therefore assumes that international law is 
 subject to England's interests, and that the States represented 
 in the Congress are, like England, immoral entities. Inter- 
 national recognition of her plea would be conclusive proof 
 that civilisation was really in danger, and would make peace 
 necessarily unstable by divorcing it from justice. On all 
 these grounds Ireland now claims 
 
 SOVEREIGN INDEPENDENCE 
 
 comprising the rights and powers 
 
 Of designing, framing and establishing an Irish 
 national constitution ; 
 
 Of territorial inviolability, including islands and ter- 
 ritorial waters as internationally recognised ; 
 
 Of self-preservation by prevention of, defence 
 against, and resistance to, economic or military hos- 
 tility, war or peace, as self-preservation may demand ; 
 
 Of free development of national resources by in- 
 ternal action, and by commerce, treaties, and relations 
 with other States; 
 
 Of absolute control and jurisdiction over all per- 
 sons, things, and rights within Ireland and its islands 
 and territorial waters; 
 
 Of protection of her lawful citizens wherever situ- 
 ated; and 
 
 Of recognition of her government and her flag and 
 the external marks of honour and respect: 
 and she claims partial restitution and reparation to the 
 amount, namely, of 500,000,000 pounds, and an international 
 guarantee for the security of her independence. 
 
 16 
 
IRELAND'S CASE FOR FREEDOM 
 
 I. 
 
 The Irish Nation Earnestly Desires the International 
 
 Peace Congress to Be Pure and Impartial in 
 
 Its Constitution and Proceedings 
 
 Assuming that this Peace Congress for the adjustment 
 of differences amongst nations in the interest of future peace 
 and progress will be constituted as its high purposes require, 
 and will be guided by the spirit of justice, it will have con- 
 science, competence, knowledge, and impartiality commen- 
 surate with the magnitude and complexity of its task, and 
 therefore with every part of the task and every international 
 dispute submitted to it and within its jurisdiction, with 
 or without the concurrence of any party to such dispute, 
 such party having been given due notice of the submission 
 of the case. Fully realising the greatness of this occasion 
 and its vast possibilities for good, we thank God that we live 
 to witness it when, for the first time, an international tribunal 
 of this character assembles for purposes so worthy. Knowl- 
 edge of one of the cases to be submitted to it compels us to 
 realize also the possibility and danger of the beneficent pur- 
 poses of the Congress being frustrated ; an event which man- 
 kind would rightly regard as a calamity of the first magnitude. 
 
 It is commonly assumed that the Peace Congress will 
 comprise representatives of States that have indulged for 
 several years in physical conflict and in accusations of the 
 basest crimes against each other. Of these States also some 
 have been exposed as principals and some as accomplices in 
 secret treaties conflicting with their professed purposes in 
 the war, and even conflicting with each other; and shown 
 by their secrecy and by their character to have been entered 
 into without any popular sanction; and therefore that vast 
 numbers of men have been induced to fight and slay each 
 other on a false issue. When Governments and States stand 
 revealed in this enormous guilt, stealthily leagued together in 
 an immoral and unconstitutional conspiracy against the free 
 will of their own democracies, and against the self-determina- 
 tion of nations for whose independence the democracies have 
 been induced to fight; gambling in the lives and liberties of 
 peoples they misled; deflecting in advance the proceedings 
 of this Congress; complicating its task and treating it with 
 contempt which the pettiest court of justice would within 
 
 17 
 
its own jurisdiction restrain and punish, the vilification of 
 character during the war is seen to be justified as applied to 
 such States; and the question arises, important for the Con- 
 gress and for all to be affected by its decisions, whether the 
 Congress will admit to its deliberations, and to the power of 
 adjudicating within it, representatives of those States stained 
 with the lifeblood of countless innocent men; and if they 
 be admitted, subject to what conditions. Surely not on an 
 equality with representatives of States and nations approach- 
 ing the Congress with profound respect, clear conscience, 
 and clean hands. 
 
 We respectfully suggest to the latter States and nations 
 — who alone are competent to do it — to hold a preliminary 
 session consisting of themselves exclusively, and consider and 
 settle the composition of the Congress, and devise means of 
 preventing the scandal and misfortune of the adjudicating 
 function on this unique and solemn occasion being to any 
 extent entrusted to, or exposed to the influence of, repre- 
 sentatives of States guilty of the gravest and most dishon- 
 ourable offences against mankind and against the Congress 
 itself. Should it be pleaded in extenuation of the making 
 of secret treaties that the practice has hitherto been general, 
 the States in preliminary session will observe, in the first 
 place, that that plea amounts to an admission that nations 
 have been generally deceived by their rulers, conduct intrin- 
 sically indefensible which the Congress hopes to stop and 
 prevent; in the second place, that indefensible secret treaties 
 can be no excuse for other secret treaties in conflict with 
 them and for public promises in conflict with both, as in the 
 case of Poland, by which the lives of countless innocent men 
 have been sacrificed on a false issue ; in the third place, that 
 the plea is a notice of intention to continue secret treaties to 
 frustrate the labours of the Congress; and in the fourth place, 
 that to allow the guilty States to adjudicate on those acts 
 and on matters arising out of that conduct would be an out- 
 rage on the conscience of mankind. Whichever offence came 
 first, it is enhanced by the second, third and fourth; and as 
 the war in connection with which those offences have been 
 committed is the most costly of human life in all history, the 
 offences are proportionately great. 
 
 Friends of the Peace Congress, of its highest purposes 
 and of its character, without which all else were vain, have 
 a right to know the company they seek to enter; whether a 
 State unable to justify or defend its conduct will be allowed 
 to question the status and oppose the recognition and repre- 
 sentation of a nation older than itself and guiltless ; and 
 whether adequate and effective precautions are taken to pre- 
 vent any exercise of the power of undue influence and cor- 
 
 18 
 
ruption permanently inherent in a powerful, wealthy, and 
 experienced State temporarily reduced to the status of a party 
 in a contest with a nation submerged by that State. Other 
 nations may deal with other offenders, if such there be. The 
 offender whose conduct and status we challenge is England, 
 called by herself Great Britain. These and further questions 
 of a like character would arise spontaneously in any event. 
 But that would be at a stage of the proceedings too late to 
 deal with them ; and unless dealt with in advance the pro- 
 ceedings would be vitiated and any decision discredited. Be- 
 sides, they are raised with acuteness which cannot be over- 
 looked by the declarations of English statesmen and the 
 press of England — one of the States exposed as conspiring- 
 in secret treaties — to the effect that England, notwithstand- 
 ing her contempt of the Congress, will be represented in it 
 and have such influence over it as will prevent Ireland — one 
 of the primary sovereign States of Christendom — being rep- 
 resented in it. This project, which is England's will and 
 purpose, would amount to supporting might and crime against 
 right, and in the interest of might and crime pre-judging 
 Ireland's case without hearing it. We invite the preliminary 
 session of uncontaminated States to estimate the amount of 
 sincerity there is in England's championship of the Liberty of 
 Small 'Nations submerged and oppressed by other Powers, 
 while herself submerging and oppressing this small nation, 
 preventing its voice being heard outside its own borders, and 
 plotting to exclude it from this unique Congress in which 
 England herself expects to sit in judgment. England's as- 
 sumption of power to do in advance what the Congress alone 
 is competent to do would be presumptuous on the part of any 
 State; but is especially so on the part of a State which has 
 conspired against its own professions, against freedom, against 
 justice, and against the impartial action of the Congress. 
 Such conduct can have no other aim than to make the Con- 
 gress a trap under English control, instead of an international 
 tribunal of impartial justice. It therefore seems to amount 
 to a further contempt of the Congress. We are bound to 
 assume that both parts of the English Statement in question 
 are false; in which case the making of them is a grave offence, 
 but the executing of them would be an international crime. 
 
 The chief purposes professed by England in the war, and 
 used successfully by her for recruiting for her armies, were 
 "to save civilization," and "to liberate small oppressed na- 
 tions." The latter purpose she could have achieved without 
 war to the extent of the small nations oppressed by herself 
 If the Peace Congress should allow a State which has profited 
 by the professions of these purposes to the extent of getting 
 what it wanted, to deceive and continue to oppress those who 
 
 It 
 
trusted its profession, without suffering in status before the 
 Congress, the resulting harm would not be limited to the 
 discredit of the offending State. The power of this Congress 
 for good would be gravely impaired, and not peace but intol- 
 erable tyranny and just resistance would ensue. Resistance 
 is the shadow of injustice, and peace can be assured only in 
 the degree in which injustice is eliminated. There is no rule 
 or principle of international law necessitating the admission 
 to an international Congress of representatives from a State 
 which adds to previous offences that of treating the Con- 
 gress and its purposes with flagrant contempt; and still less 
 is there any rule or principle justifying a Congress compris- 
 ing such representatives excluding from its deliberations and 
 decisions freely chosen representatives of an offending nation 
 vitally concerned. 
 
 We condense this Statement of Ireland's case to the 
 smallest dimensions consistent with intelligibility, holding our^ 
 selves ready to expand and explain it, or any part of it, to 
 furnish the Peace Congress in every way in our power with 
 whatever further information it may desire. And here at 
 the outset, in order to put this august Tribunal in a position 
 to deal conclusively with the whole case, we reduce it to 
 its elements by unequivocally impeaching English government 
 of Ireland, historically, constitutionally, civilly and criminally. 
 We are able and compelled by interdependent facts to sustain 
 the charges made in this Statement on these grounds in every 
 instance of English aggression that we submit, and in every 
 additional instance that the Congress may judge to arise out 
 of the case and call upon us to substantiate. Desiring that 
 the Congress should ennoble itself in the esteem of posterity 
 by the performance of an overdue duty to an ancient nation, 
 to humanity, to justice, we earnestly ask all its members, 
 jointly and individually, to receive the representatives of 
 Ireland and give favourable consideration to their claim for 
 the restoration of Ireland to its ancient honoured place in 
 the family of sovereign States. We are willing that England 
 be afforded an opportunity of making any defence she con- 
 ceives she can make. Conscious of the righteousness of our 
 demand, we ask that both parties, England and Ireland, be 
 heard and treated alike, with equal impartiality in all respects ; 
 neither party being suffered to assume the attitude of judge. 
 We ask the Congress to remember the common phenom- 
 enon of private life, that a' wrong-doer rarely forgives his 
 victim, has its analogy on a great scale in the matters which 
 the Congress is about to consider. 
 
 We submit for consideration by the representatives of 
 nations not involved in the secret treaties or in the false 
 promises, assembled in preliminary session, the following 
 
 20 
 
facts which appear to us to disqualify England for adjudicat- 
 ing in the case between herself and Ireland, each of which 
 facts is developed in the appropriate parts of this Statement. 
 They are all such as England herself, if she had clean 
 hands and another State were guilty, would certainly de- 
 nounce as strongly as we do: 
 
 (i) England's frequent infidelity to treaties, of which those relating 
 to Ireland and to Egypt are examples. 
 
 (2) England's treaty policy of silence on disputed questions of mari- 
 time international law, and afterwards acting in her own interest, 
 regardless of the law. 
 
 (3) England's infidelity to the public professions on which she entered 
 upon the Great War. 
 
 (4) England's complicity in secret treaties, deceiving those fighting 
 and dying for her, and trafficking in the rights and lives of inno- 
 cent people. 
 
 (5) England's agreement in advance with Italy to frustrate a pro- 
 posal for European peace, because made by the Pope, irrespective 
 of its merits. 
 
 (6) England's persistent policy of exterminating the Irish by arms, 
 by fire, and by State-produced famine. 
 
 (7) England's wanton destruction of Irish civilization, and her treat- 
 ment of religion and learning as felony. 
 
 (8) England's persistent policy, still in vigorous operation, of defam- 
 ing Irish national character. 
 
 (9) England's permanent policy of military occupation and oppression 
 of Ireland. 
 
 (10) England's prevention of commercial intercourse between Ireland 
 and othter countries. 
 
 (n) England's breach of The Hague Convention, 1907, Clause c, by 
 executing in 1916 patriots, who, having fought for liberty, sur- 
 rendered, laid down their arms, and were prisoners of war in 
 her hands. , 
 
 (12) England, being the party accused in this case, is incompetent to 
 adjudicate in it. 
 
 21 
 
II. 
 
 Ireland is Entitled to Independence as One of the 
 Primary Sovereign States of Christendom 
 
 A nation once in the enjoyment of sovereign independence 
 can lose the right of sovereignty only by its own voluntary 
 act. Ireland has lost the independent exercise of its sov- 
 ereignty, but without the consent of the nation, and therefore 
 has not lost the right of sovereignty or its status as a sov- 
 ereign State, and therefore has not lost the right to resume 
 the exercise. Conquest alone confers only physical con- 
 trol. It cannot confer a right of sovereignty against 
 the will of the population. All legitimate power comes 
 from God to the people, and is vested by the people, expressly 
 or tacitly, in rulers of their choice. There is no question here 
 of president, prince, king, emperor, or form of government, 
 but of power. It is not a question of persons, but of the 
 thing, power. There is no legitimate power but from God. 
 From God all power of jurisdiction passes to the community, 
 and from the community to governments. There is no legiti- 
 mate power from any other source or through any other 
 channel. For the exercise of this power those upon whom it 
 is conferred are responsible to those who confer it. Any gov- 
 ernment denying its responsibility to the governed thereby 
 confesses its power illegitimate and unconstitutional. For 
 any right to grow out of conquest, just cause for the aggres- 
 sion, physical occupation of the country, and acquiescence 
 of the inhabitants would be essential. In the case of Ireland, 
 the first and third of these essentials are absent, and the 
 second was absent for three centuries and a half after the 
 invasion. 
 
 Ireland is not called upon to prove that she gave no just 
 cause for any of the instances of English aggression, because 
 it has never been alleged that she gave such cause. 
 
 There is no conquest apart from occupation. A country is 
 conquered only so far as it is occupied by the supposed con- 
 queror. Any part of such country not effectually occupied 
 is not conquered. For three centuries and a half after the 
 Anglo-Norman invasion no English power occupied more 
 man a small fraction of Ireland, consisting of the Pale and 
 a few other skirts of the country and port towns, as had pre- 
 viously been the case with the Danes and Norsemen a few 
 centuries before, when they conquered England, but only 
 made temporary settlements in Ireland. The Anglo-Norman 
 
invasion of parts of Ireland in the twelfth century was tem- 
 porarily successful in some of those parts and established 
 colonies in them. It was not, any more than the Norse, an 
 invasion of the whole country, nor successful in all the parts 
 invaded. Conquest, even when completed by occupation, 
 not being a right, but an expression of power, binds only while 
 the power is maintained. As soon as this is withdrawn or 
 ceases, the original rights of the conquered people revive 
 and resume their freedom of activity. A fortiori, this is the 
 case when a conquest has been achieved by vile and illegiti- 
 mate means. The right of sovereign independence is neither 
 destroyed nor lost nor forfeited by temporary and unwilling 
 dependence in obedience to superior force and without acqui- 
 escence beyond the submission extracted while that force is 
 maintained. Invasion and partial conquest by military force, 
 not followed by occupation for three centuries and a half, 
 never acquiesced in, the invaders partially absorbed and par- 
 tially repelled during that time, the extent of the English Pale 
 reduced until in the middle of the sixteenth century it com- 
 prised only Dublin, Meath, and Kildare, a district of only thirty 
 miles long by twenty wide, and even within that limit the 
 Irish language, laws and customs prevailed ; that being the 
 nature and extent of the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland, 
 it was a failure and never became a conquest of the country. 
 
 The political constitution of independent Ireland was an 
 electoral hierarchical monarchy, the election being determined 
 by qualifications rather than birth, the sovereignty being in 
 the people — "the men of Eirinn," — and the position of the 
 monarch resembling that of the president of a modern repub- 
 lic. The whole body of free clansmen, including kings, sub- 
 kings, and chiefs, made the laws. These were promulgated 
 at the great Feis for the nation; at local assemblies for the 
 local communities; and administered by the monarch, sub- 
 kings, chiefs, and brehons. The people were not subjects of 
 king, sub-king, or chief, but his fellow clansmen; or, as it 
 would now be expressed, his fellow citizens. The monarch 
 was assisted and the nation served by the sub-kings, and these 
 in turn were assisted and the local communities served by 
 th« lesser chiefs. The necessary qualifications for monarch, 
 sub-kings and chiefs were set out in the law; and comprised 
 efficiency in arms, a specially high standard of education, and 
 judicial training; so that Irish kings were competent to lead 
 their forces in battle when necessary, to administer justice 
 in certain cases, and to patronize learning and art, some of 
 them being themselves learned men. It is doubtful if there 
 is any instance in history in which the political and social 
 structure were so thoroughly democratic. The most striking 
 element in the whole Irish polity was its elaborate and admir- 
 
 28 
 
able system of indigenous laws, not equalled, nor approacched 
 by the native laws of any other ancient nation except Rome. 
 At the time of the invasion Ireland happened to be, like many 
 other countries then, temporarily bereft of a supreme mon- 
 arch, and consequently of the national solidarity which had 
 enabled it to overthrow the Danes and Norsemen in 1014. 
 Having lost the strong central bond, the congeries of sub- 
 kingdoms and local communities became exposed, especially 
 under inimical external influences backing rival claimants, 
 to develop jealousies toward each other, to think more of 
 local and personal, than of national independence, and to fall 
 short of the patriotism necessary for a joint national effort 
 to preserve the country's integrity. For her own local do- 
 mestic purposes, Ireland was better circumstanced in this 
 condition than any other country would be in a like condition, 
 owing to its homogeneity of territory, race, civilization, lan- 
 guage, law, religion, literature, history, music, and all the 
 elements of mutual interest and esteem. One indivisible coun- 
 try set apart from the rest of the world and thus endowed 
 formed a most distinct and apparently indissoluble nation. 
 It would be hard to name any other nation then or since 
 enjoying so many elements of unity and harmony. So great 
 was the binding force of all these elements common to the 
 whole country that the local fabric, political, social, and admin- 
 istrative, easily held together and maintained the local insti- 
 tutions of the country in efficiency for three centuries and 
 a half without any central authority to brace them together 
 for a national effort; and this, too, though an enemy was 
 clinging on to the skirts of the country and the port towns 
 all the time. It was her oneness in so many respects, but 
 especially in her unrivalled legal system, that maintained Ire- 
 land's local institutions and solidarity so long against hos- 
 tility. On the other hand, paradoxical as it may appear, this 
 condition was a cause of Ireland's fatal military weakness. 
 While the local system worked efficiently for local purposes, 
 the necessity for a strong central authority for national pur- 
 poses was less obvious ; and there grew up a fatal confidence 
 in what seemed their unbreakable interlaced cohesion. Of 
 all the elements that contributed to this remarkable achieve- 
 ment, the same excellent system of laws administered uni- 
 formly in all parts of the country by the brehons probably 
 contributed most. This in itself is conclusive proof of the 
 degree of suitability which those institutions and laws had 
 attained, and the attachment of the people to them, and the 
 character of the people so attached. This confiding attach- 
 ment, admirable in itself, by inspiring false local security, 
 helped with other causes to prevent the consolidation of the 
 nation for ridding the country of the foreigner. 
 
 24 
 
Settlers in the English Pale were occasionally summoned 
 by agents from the government of England to assemble in 
 conferences which they were" pleased to call "parliaments" 
 before tha^ word had acquired a national meaning, to adopt 
 resolutions drafted in England and dignified with the name 
 of "statutes," such as the "Statute of Kilkenny," with a view 
 to fresh aggression; and the importance of those documents 
 has ever since been magnified by England. Their operation 
 never extended beyond the narrow area of the Pale; and 
 according to the English themselves they did not operate even 
 within that. Nevertheless, the Irish kings, princes and people 
 became accustomed to imperfect conceptions of national duty, 
 to dissensions fomented among them by English agents, 
 and to drift instead of policy, until a stage was reached when 
 none of the royal families of Ireland could with hope of full 
 national support assume the sovereignty of the whole Island. 
 That office was left derelict. The princes of Connaught and 
 Munster attempted to revive it in 1258 in favour of O'Neill; 
 but after a brief struggle England's policy of Divide and Rule 
 prevailed. -In default of a sufficiently strong Irish personality, 
 the prince who was historically best entitled to succeed to 
 the monarchy — Donal O'Neill — conceived the patriotic idea 
 of abandoning his own claim in favour of an outsider more 
 likely than himself to command the obedience of the other 
 Irish princes and chiefs. With this view, he sent a consid- 
 erable force to help Robert Bruce at Bannockburn, of which 
 the grant to him of Kincardine-O'Neill made by that king of' 
 Scotland is striking testimony. O'Neill's real object was 
 that Ireland should benefit by the prestige of Robert Bruce's 
 victory by making his brother, Edward Bruce, King of Ire- 
 land. Edward landed at Glenarm in 1315, and, after two suc- 
 cessful military campaigns, was solemnly crowned at a coun- 
 cil of the principal princes and chiefs of Ireland held near 
 Dundalk, King of Ireland in 1316, Donal O'Neill surrender- 
 ing to him by deed all his rights in the sovereignty. On the 
 14th October, 1318, King Edward, contrary to the almost 
 unanimous advice of the Irish chiefs, entered into a rash en- 
 gagement with a large English army before the mass of his 
 own forces had arrived, and was slain. So ended Donal 
 O'Neill's experiment. An address sent to the Pope is extant 
 to show that until then at all events no right of England to 
 rule Ireland was recognized. 
 
 A century later Ireland's historical sovereignty was as- 
 serted in the face of Europe by the representative of the very 
 country that would rather deny it, by King Henry V of 
 England. Finding himself refused admission to the Interna- 
 tional Council of Constance in 1415, on the ground that Eng- 
 land was only a fragment of the German nation, and had never 
 
 25 
 
been recognized as a sovereign State, he boldly declared that 
 he had conquered Ireland, one pi the original sovereign States 
 of Christendom, and was entitled as the representative of 
 Ireland, and thus obtained admission. The pretence of con- 
 quest was at that time untrue. The fact of Henry having 
 successfully resorted to it estops England from denying Ire- 
 land pre-existing right as a sovereign State. Meanwhile the 
 counterforces of English aggression and disruption on one 
 side and the quiet absorption of the colonists by Irish civili- 
 zation on the other continued. 
 
 Henry VIII of England was the first English sovereign 
 to claim sovereignty of Ireland, 1541. In doing so, he made 
 no pretence that a right of sovereignty had descended to him 
 from Pope Adrian, or Henry II, or Henry V, or from any- 
 body else. Taking advantage of internecine strife which his 
 agents had carefully fomented, and of the consequent de- 
 spondency of Irish princes and chiefs, and departing from the 
 policy of his predecessors who had convened only parliaments 
 of the Pale, Henry had all the Irish princes and chiefs invited, 
 with promises of titles of earls and barons, to parliaments in 
 Dublin, together with the Anglo-Irish lords of the Pale; and 
 because of that invitation, whether the Irish attended or not, 
 the parliament was called an "Irish Parliament." No member 
 was elected. They were only summoned in the King's name. 
 Several parliaments of this kind were convened during 
 Henry's reign. Only a small number of the Irish chiefs 
 attended, and that stealthily, without the consent, or even 
 the knowledge, of their respective clans. The proceedings 
 were conducted in the English language, which few of the 
 Irish chiefs understood, Gaelic and Latin being the languages 
 they spoke. Matters on which they were desired to vote were 
 translated into Gaelic, a procedure obviously open to abuse. 
 A parliament of this sort in 1541, was induced to declare 
 Henry VIII King of Ireland and pledge the allegiance of 
 Ireland to him. As some years earlier in England, so in Ire- 
 land now, the inducement for complying with the king's 
 wishes was the prospect of getting a share of the church and 
 abbey lands in the Pale which Henry had appropriated and 
 was about to distribute. In this the lords of the Pale were 
 not disappointed. They did not enjoy the lands many years, 
 because of their failure to adopt the new religion. The prin- 
 cipal Irish chiefs of the time had not attended these Parlia 
 ments. Those who had attended had no authority whatever 
 from their people for the action in which they concurred 
 According to Irish constitutional law, without such authority 
 their action could not bind even their local clans, still less 
 the whole nation. But more than this, when the people heard 
 what their chiefs had done, they, in most cases, immediately 
 
 26 
 
assembled, denounced, repudiated, and deposed the renegade 
 chiefs and elected in their stead braver and truer men. The 
 new earls and barons on returning to their homes were 
 spurned by their peoples ; and the chiefs elected in their stead 
 in some cases, notably in that of John O'Neill — "Sean the 
 Proud" — maintained against all the power of England the 
 positions conferred upon them by their clans, and had to be 
 recognized by England as independent princes, in complete 
 disregard of the English title-bearers. Thus Ireland's right 
 of sovereignty was maintained unimpaired. 
 
 Even Queen Elizabeth, notwithstanding the politic achieve- 
 ments of her father, did not at first claim to have inherited 
 the sovereignty of Ireland. Afterward she and her English 
 parliament apparently perceived a necessity for some con- 
 stitutional foundation for their pretensions, and accordingly 
 invented one. The Statute II Elizabeth c. 1. of 1569, sol- 
 emnly traces Elizabeth's title to Ireland from King Gormund, 
 son of the noble King Belin of Great Britain — two personages 
 not known to either history or mythology. It is impossible 
 to attribute this invention to ignorance in the age and country 
 of Shakespeare and Bacon. If England had at that time a 
 good title to rule Ireland, it would have been stated, and not 
 a false one. Apparently their fiction did not help them much 
 in the conquest of Ireland ; for we read in >the English State 
 Papers of 1578 that "All the English, and for the most part 
 with delight, even in Dublin, speak Irish and gradually are 
 spotted in manners, habits, and conditions with Irish stains." 
 How calamitous! There is, however, more grim reality rela- 
 tive to England's title in Ireland in the records of the follow- 
 ing century. One of the counts in the indictment on which 
 Strafford, Deputy of Charles I, was tried and executed was 
 that he had described Ireland as a conquered country; and 
 one of the counts in the indictment on which Charles I was 
 tried and executed was that he had brought soldiers from the 
 foreign country, Ireland, to fight his own subjects. Thus 
 was the theory of an English conquest of Ireland repudiated 
 by England down to that date. On the other hand, the Tudor 
 attempt at conquest was at once the first effective rally of 
 the English to conquer Ireland, and therefore the first strong 
 incentive to the Irish nation to make a national effort, instead 
 of its previous local and spasmodic efforts. Resulting from 
 it was the subsequent formidable effort of Hugh O'Neill. The 
 battle of Kinsale, in which he was defeated in 1602, marks 
 the definite destruction of the Irish national polity. The 
 subsequent achievements of that great soldier and statesman, 
 Owen Roe O'Neill, were attempts at restoration, which also 
 
 failed. 
 
 A new phase was reached when a Stuart king of royal 
 
 17 
 
Gaelic race succeeded to the crown of England in addition to 
 that of Scotland. It was clearly within the rights of the 
 Irish, in accordance with their own system and with inter- 
 national law, if their circumstances rendered it desirable, to 
 adopt such a man as their legitimate king. Constitutionally, 
 their doing so did not involve any recognition of either Eng- 
 land or Scotland as a kingdom dominating Ireland, any more 
 than the accession of the Scottish king to the English throne 
 involved domination by Scotland over England. It seems 
 that such an idea no more entered the minds of the Irish peo- 
 ple than when they had adopted Edward Bruce two centuries 
 before. They never consciously acknowledged either Eng- 
 lish or Scottish supremacy. Their whole Jacobite literature, 
 the fullest and most authentic embodiment of Irish thought 
 on the subject, may be searched in vain for a single expression 
 of recognition of either England or Scotland as a kingdom 
 entitled to dominate Ireland. Not only that, but this literature 
 champions the Stuart cause as being the cause of the Gael 
 against the Gall (stranger) ; the only aggressive stranger 
 being the English. In all this the Irish may have made a 
 grave tactical mistake, having regard to the English char- 
 acter. Here we are not concerned with the tactical prudence 
 or imprudence of the course adopted, but with a nation's title 
 according to constitutional law. From that point of view, 
 and assuming that the law should be respected, the conduct 
 of the Irish was not open to question. Had that law been 
 respected, the course followed could have conferred no power 
 upon England, nor brought evil to Ireland. However much 
 their wisdom may be questioned, they neither violated con- 
 stitutional practice, nor conferred any right over them upon 
 either England or Scotland, nor surrendered the principle of 
 national independence. The egotistical James I., or his Eng- 
 lish advisers in his name, apparently took a map of Ireland, 
 marked on it places at which they imagined there ought to 
 be towns, but in many of which there has never been town 
 or village before or since, created at those places parlia- 
 mentary boroughs, convened a parliament of the whole of 
 Ireland, and took care that government clerks and other Eng- 
 lishmen should sit in the parliament for those imaginary 
 boroughs, and that they and the pro-English of the Pale 
 should constitute a safe majority to carry any measure the 
 king and his English government desired. So numerous were 
 the Englishmen eager to fill those seats, and such little regard 
 was had for constitutional law, that in the first of James's 
 parliaments, according to its own statement, men sat as mem- 
 bers and voted who did not represent any constituency real 
 or imaginary. All the Irish chiefs of note, except one, on see- 
 ing the composition of the body to which they had been 
 
 28 
 
invited, and in which it was the evident intention that they 
 should have no power, withdrew at the outset, and did not 
 attend any further parliament of James. The solitary excep- 
 tion was Roger O'Moore. He persisted in attending all those 
 parliaments in the character of an Irish sentinel. He thus 
 gained knowledge and experience which he generously placed 
 at the service of the national cause later. 
 
 The only Irish parliaments in the modern sense fairly 
 representative of the entire country that have ever been. held 
 were, however, held within the Stuart period and supported 
 the Stuart king as King of Ireland against England. The 
 first was the Confederation of Kilkenny, 1643-1648. The sec- 
 ond was the parliament of James II., 1689, in Dublin. The 
 Irish nation and the Pale were represented in both. 
 
 When the Stuart cause was defeated at the Battle of the 
 Boyne and the defeat confirmed by the capitulation of Lim- 
 erick, Ireland was at last conquered in the ordinary military 
 sense. The Irish thereupon reverted to their pre-existing 
 right which they had never forfeited. England reverted to 
 the want of right which was her condition before the Stuarts. 
 Queen Anne of England, though called a Stuart, never 
 reigned as a legitimate Stuart sovereign, but only under the 
 parliamentary title conferred upon William the Dutchman by 
 the Act of Settlement and inherited after by the Georges and 
 their descendants. The Irish nation was not represented in 
 the parliament creating or conferring that title, and has never 
 consciously recognized it as applying to Ireland, nor recog- 
 nised any sovereign under it, however absolute his or her 
 power may have been in Ireland. The 'only medium of ex- 
 pression then left to Ireland was her literature. That teems 
 throughout the eighteenth century, as at all other times, with 
 passionate assertions of Ireland's distinct nationality. The 
 nation stood at that time despoiled of all its property and 
 without arms, ruled by the colony as England's instrument 
 with England's power; denied every right properly belonging 
 to citizens; denied the right of education; disarmed men- 
 tally as well as physically, told from the judicial bench that 
 the law did not acknowledge their existence and that it was 
 only by tolerance of the colonists a Catholic could breathe in 
 Ireland; in short, the nation was outlawed and therefore not 
 in a position to make any national effort. "The policy of such 
 barbarous victors, who condemn a subdued people and insult 
 their feelings, has ever been, as much as in them lay, to 
 destroy all vestiges of the ancient country, in religion, in 
 polity, in laws, and in manners ; to confound all territorial 
 limits; to put up their properties to auction; to crush their 
 princes, nobles, and pontiffs; to lay low everything which 
 had lifted its head above the level, or which could serve to 
 
 29 
 
bind or rally in their distress the disbanded people under the 
 standard of old opinion." — Edmund Burke. 
 
 Take Dean Swiffs characteristic comparison of the Cath- 
 olic body with the Presbyterian body, towards which he was 
 equally hostile: "It is agreed among naturalists that a lion 
 is a larger, a stronger, and more dangerous enemy than a cat ; 
 yet if a man were to have his choice, either a lion at his feet 
 fast bound with three or four chains,' his teeth drawn out, and 
 his claws pared to the quick, or an angry cat in full liberty 
 at his throat, he would take no long time to determine." 
 
 Nevertheless, when the manhood of the colony, goaded by 
 English tyranny even against themselves, and encouraged by 
 the success of the American colonies against the same op- 
 pressor, realised the necessity for a national effort, and 
 reconciliation with the Catholic nation as a condition of its 
 success, and called for the emancipation of their estranged 
 brothers, the submerged nation promptly showed its appre- 
 ciation and, so far as it was allowed, and so far as the move- 
 ment was for national independence, sympathised with and 
 helped the colonists. They took much more than their pro- 
 portionate share in the insurrection promoted by the colonists 
 in 1798, as Wolfe Tone, the genius of that movement, well 
 knew. Since then the principle of that insurrection, with its 
 declared object of an independent Irish Republic under a 
 green-white-and-orange flag, has continued to be the ideal of 
 all Irish nationalists, so unmistakably manifested that no one 
 acquainted with Ireland doubts it. Some profess to doubt it 
 for preconceived purposes. For such as are not acquainted 
 with Ireland, the opinion of Lord Cornwallis — the Viceroy — 
 in whose interest it was to deny such a fact, must be con- 
 clusive. Writing on the 12th December, 1798, to Major Gen- 
 eral Ross, he said of the Catholics : "Their dispositions are so 
 completely alienated from the British Government, that I 
 believe they would be tempted to join their bitterest enemies, 
 the Protestants of Ireland, if they thought that measure would 
 lead to a total separation of the two countries." There has 
 never been a day in the history of the connection between 
 the two countries when the Irish nation did not desire total 
 separation from England with the same intensity. The 
 Viceroys of 1829, 1848, 1867 and 1916, if their writings were 
 available, would no doubt bear similar testimony to the inde- 
 structibility of Irish national sentiment. 
 
 A partial conquest of a portion of a country ; after a lapse 
 of three centuries and a half extended by deception and fraud 
 rather than by force; partial extermination. of the inhabitants 
 and plantation of alien colonists instead; the elevation of 
 those colonists to, and maintenance of them in, an artificial 
 ascendancy over the nation; the conquest never acquiesced 
 
 30 
 
in; always repudiated, resented, and resisted; always necessi- 
 tating the maintenance of a foreign army of occupation in 
 Ireland? that sort of unfinished and unfinishable conquest 
 never having escaped the taint of military force, and always 
 doomed to end with the withdrawal of that force, is never 
 capable of extinguishing a nation's inherent and historical 
 right to sovereign independence, and never capable of creating 
 any new prescriptive or other sovereign right in the aggressor. 
 No claim based upon either conquest or prescription could 
 avail against a pre-existing right so tenaciously held. 
 
 Grotius says (Mare Liberum), "That the last defence of 
 injustice is usually a claim based upon prescription or cus- 
 tom; that prescription is only of domestic application; that 
 there can be no prescription between free and independent 
 nations ; and that no lapse of time can give a prescriptive right 
 to anything unjust." Here we are content to rest Ireland's 
 constitutional claim to sovereign independence. 
 
 31 
 
III. 
 
 Ireland's Constitutional Right is Supported by Her 
 Meritorious Record When Independent 
 
 The Peace Congress, if it should so desire, is entitled to 
 know the general characteristics of the Irish nation while 
 independent, as an indication of what may be expected from 
 it when restored to independence. We the more willingly 
 supply a summary of the information, that it is of such a 
 character as constitutes in itself a powerful claim for the said 
 restoration. 
 
 At the beginning of the Great War and during its progress 
 the saving of civilization has been one of the professed ob- 
 jects of the Entente Allies. The war itself, in its sacrifice of 
 human life and otherwise, has furnished conclusive proof of 
 civilization being so badly in need of saving that no effort 
 towards that end should be spared and no available help 
 neglected. Whether war and the forces and passions let loose 
 by war are civilizing agencies and not the reverse, has always 
 been questioned by some, and is now doubted by many. The 
 interests of civilization and justice, which are akin, are not 
 limited by geographical or political boundaries, and are neither 
 represented nor safeguarded by military or naval force. The 
 greatest and most successful civilizers the world has known 
 had no such forces. Civilization everywhere suffers when 
 the heirs of a particularly high culture are reduced by armed 
 force to an inferior position in their own country. Of this, 
 Greece is the most familiar example. No one denies that the 
 degradation of the Greek nation and the destruction of Greek 
 art and literature were a calamity not only to Greece, but to 
 Europe, perhaps to the whole world. Similarly, if in a less 
 degree and less known, the destruction by England of the 
 Gaelic civilization and culture, and of the Gaelic polity which 
 nursed them and facilitated their diffusion, had been a crime 
 against Europe as well as against Ireland. Whether the 
 profession of solicitude for civilization as an object of the 
 war be sincere or not, Ireland rejoices at it; believing there 
 is sufficient spirit in Europe to compel the States to do some- 
 thing towards making their profession good; because that 
 is precisely the department in which Ireland achieved her 
 greatest distinction in the time of her independence ; because 
 she feels an impulsive desire to take part again in a work so 
 congenial to her ; and because the profession of such an object 
 
 32 
 
of the war renders relevant and necessitates a reminder to 
 Europe, by way of brief resume, of Ireland's contribution to 
 human progress and felicity, and of the destruction of her 
 activities and the organs of them by England. 
 
 The most fruitful result of the omission of imperial Rome 
 to conquer Ireland, and the most beneficial' to European 
 civilization, was that the fall of the Roman Empire, which 
 produced a cataclysm of civilization elsewhere, had no such 
 effect in Ireland, but contributed to a contrary effect by 
 making Ireland a safe and congenial refuge and hospitable 
 home for learned men driven from their own respective coun- 
 tries by frequent disturbances. Those refugees came, not 
 to teach, but to learn, to avail of the hospitality, schools, lec- 
 tures, and libraries in one of the few countries where these 
 were then to be found and from which teachers issued. "No 
 country had furnished a greater number of missionaries for 
 Christianity — from no other motive than pure zeal and an 
 ardent desire of communicating to foreign nations the opin- 
 ions and faith of their country. The Irish were great travel- 
 lers ; and always gained the hearts of those whom they visited, 
 by the extreme ease with which they conformed to their 
 customs and way of life. This facility of manners was allied 
 in them with an extreme love of national independence." 
 Augustine Thierry, Norman Conquest, u, 121, 122. It was 
 no ordinary service of this kind rendered to Europe that won 
 from the Emperor Charlemagne a handsome present sent 
 through the hands of a special envoy to the Irish university 
 of Clonmacnoise on the banks of the Shannorf. The father 
 of English history, the Venerable Bede, corroborates the 
 imperial appreciation when he says (liber 111, c. 27) : "The 
 Irish willingly received them all, and took care to supply them 
 with food, and also furnished them with books to read, and 
 their teaching gratis." Good cause he had for making this 
 acknowledgment, for his own countrymen flocked in such 
 large numbers to several of the Irish schools that in that of 
 Armagh alone they seem to have constituted a third of the 
 three thousand students there, since a third of the city, called 
 the Trian-Saxon, was allotted to their exclusive use. Stu- 
 dents" came from most European countries, but in smaller 
 numbers or single individuals. Ireland was then the only 
 country in which eminence in any department of learning 
 conferred a legal status equal to that of prince or noble. But 
 for Ireland and the living flame of learning and sanctity kept 
 aglow in Ireland, and generously poured out over Europe 
 from the sixth to the twelfth century, but especially during 
 the eighth, ninth and tenth, when the Continent most needed 
 such help, Europe might have lapsed into barbarism — a danger 
 from which the Great War has not delivered us, but has shown 
 
 38 
 
us how little removed we still are from the precipice. In those 
 centuries there were more and bigger schools in Ireland than 
 in any continental country. Indeed a large part of Europe 
 possessed nothing of the kind, big or little. No seat of learn- 
 ing then in Europe could rival the principal schools in Ireland 
 in the number and ability of teachers, the number of pupils, 
 or the character of the men sent forth; and there was none, 
 except in Italy, of which an Irishman was not founder or prin- 
 cipal of Staff. All this is attested by the fact that Charles 
 c en the Bald, having obtained an important Greek work which 
 he wanted translated into Latin, and failing to get any man 
 on the Continent competent to do it for him, got an Irishman 
 to do it most satisfactorily. 
 
 Ireland's lavish contribution to the civilization of Europe 
 was not undertaken or achieved in the modern egotistical 
 spirit of leaving prim records for home reading, or extending 
 trade "under the flag" with a view of imperialistic domination, 
 but for the self-sacrificing purpose of rendering the highest 
 service to mankind. Setting out with neither money nor 
 property of any kind, but two leathern satchels slung over the 
 shoulders, one of books, the other of religious articles, those 
 wandering philosophers — "Vendors of Wisdom" — went wher- 
 ever they chanced to get a trading ship to take them gratis. 
 They scattered themselves from Iceland through the Scandi- 
 navian countries, Gaul, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Germany, 
 Bavaria, Austria, Bulgaria; to encounter martyrdom in some 
 countries, success and honour in others. It is quite probable 
 that the very best of them may have been slain, leaving no 
 recognisable trace behind. Their work and its fruit are known 
 only to their Maker. But much is known, and the common 
 indebtedness to Ireland which contemporary and subsequent 
 records of some of those countries vouch, as well as the names 
 of Irish saints and scholars commemorated in those of 
 churches and schools founded by them or dedicated to their 
 honour, constitute at once the most authentic and the most 
 noble external evidence of the superior culture of Independent 
 Ireland, the extraordinary abundance of talent that could, from 
 a small nation, scatter itself over so many, and the boundless 
 charity that impelled it to render this help so opportunely 
 to nations which, in the utilitarian sense, she owed nothing. 
 
 The grand procession of Irish philosophers and evangelists 
 was maintained unbroken from the days of the Venerable 
 Siedhail (Sedulius), the Poet of Truth, who had read Greek 
 in Ireland in the fifth century, by such men as Saint Fursey, 
 Abbot of Peronne; Fiacre, whose name has been familiar in 
 France since the sixth century; Frigidian, Bishop of Lucca; 
 Gall (Gallus), whose name is commemorated in the school 
 he founded and the canton of Switzerland in which it is situ- 
 
 34 
 
ated; Colum (Columbanus), founder of the schools of Luzueil 
 and Bobbio; Cattal of Lismore (Cathaldus), Bishop of Tar- 
 entum; Dungal, founder of the University of Pavia in 822; 
 Dicuil, the Geographer, John Scotus Erigena, Arbogast, 
 Bishop of Strasburg; Donat (Donatus), Bishop of Lecce in 
 the seventh century; Donatus, Bishop of Fiesole in the ninth 
 century; Fridolin of Connaught, the Wanderer, Abbot of 
 Poitiers and Seskingen; Moengal (Marcellus) of, St. Gall; the 
 second Sedulius, of Liege and Milan; Maelbrigte (Marianus 
 Scotus), the historian of Fulda and Meyance; Muiridach 
 (Marianus Scotus) Abbot of Ratisbon; Sedna (Sidonius), 
 Archbishop of Bavaria; Fergal (Vergilius), the Apostle of 
 Carenthia and Archbishop of Salzburg ; Killian, founder of the 
 monastery and school of Wurzburg; Gilla-na-Naomh, who 
 laboured in the same place, and more of like character than 
 would Be reasonable to name here. 
 
 Of Joannes Scotus Erigena, the Master (ninth century), 
 Haureau says (Vol. 1, p. 112) that he was the "first born of 
 scholastic philosophers." "With what astonishment, nay, 
 more, with what respect does not the grand figure of this 
 teacher inspire us, he caused so much agitation in the Schools 
 and in the Church. He sowed the winds and reaped the 
 whirlwinds. He knew how to brave them. He did not leave 
 one direct heir of his teaching ; but he at least has the glory of 
 having announced, of having preceded Bruno, Vanani, Spin- 
 osa, the boldest logicians that ever have wandered under the 
 
 plane trees of the academy The appearance of 
 
 such a man in such an age is, in every respect, an extraordinary 
 phenomenon. It is as if one met some monument of art stand- 
 ing erect in the sands of the desert." Rousselot says (La 
 Philosophic dans le Moyen Age, p. 13) : "By his freedom of 
 thought, and by the relative beauty of his soul, he imparts to 
 his epoch a certain perfume of antiquity which distinguishes it 
 from all others. ..... He thought like a new man 
 
 while he spoke like the ancients." Heinrich Zimmer says (The 
 Irish Element in Mediaeval Culture, p. 103) : "Dungal, Jo- 
 hannes Scotus, Clemens, Sedulius, and Moengal are representa- 
 tives of a higher culture than was to be found on the Continent 
 of their day ; to a purely Christian training and a severely sim- 
 ple habit of mind, they joined the highest theoretical attain- 
 ments, based Upon a thorough knowledge of the best stand- 
 ards of classical antiquity. These Irishmen had a high mis- 
 sion entrusted to them ; and they faithfully accomplished their 
 task." 
 
 The Irish race should be unnatural if they did not feel 
 thrilled by the voices of those grand Irishmen calling across 
 the ages from the many lands in which they laboured, in uni- 
 son with our own, that when the civilization which they sowed 
 
 85 
 
and nurtured is in danger and needs saving, their dear native 
 land may be enabled to take some part in that great work by 
 having restored to her the sovereign independence which she 
 then enjoyed, of which they were the drifted flowers, and 
 which she used so generously and so well. The inherent right 
 of independence thus historically fortified constitutes such a 
 claim for recognition as we think no other nation coming be- 
 fore this Peace Congress can present, and one which no State 
 really concerned for civilization can on the merits disregard. 
 
 It must not be supposed that Ireland's energies were all 
 expended in intellectual efforts alone. Civilization has many 
 aspects. It was a standing rule at the monarch's palace that 
 no stranger should be allowed to enter unless he was an 
 ollamh (professor) of some branch of knowledge or a master 
 of some art or craft. The existence of such a rule, whether 
 enforced or not; even a belief that such a rule existed, was 
 wholesome. Significant also in a more homely way is the 
 ancient Irish proverb of the "three slender things that best 
 support the world, the slender stream of milk into the pail; 
 the slender blade of green corn above the ground ; the slender 
 thread over the hand of a skilled woman." All arts, both of 
 use and ornament, were encouraged and rewarded. In spite 
 of all the subsequent wilful and wanton destruction, we still 
 possess from the days of Ireland's independence creditable 
 specimens of Irish architecture, sculpture, illuminated manu- 
 scripts, and artistic metal work and woodwork, some of price- 
 less value as well for their beauty as for their antiquity. 
 
 From the most ancient times Ireland abounded in linen 
 and woolen cloth, all of domestic manufacture. All Irish 
 women were brought up to spin, weave, knit and embroider. 
 Foreign writers attest the great abundance of linen in ancient 
 Ireland. "Ireland!" they say, "abounds in lint which the na- 
 tives spin into thread and export in enormous quantities to 
 foreign nations. In former ages they manufactured very ex- 
 tensively linen cloths, the greater portion of which was ab- 
 sorbed by the home consumption, as the natives allowed thirty 
 or more yards for a single cloak, which was wound or tied up 
 in folds. The sleeves also were very capacious, extending 
 down to the knees. Need I mention the common linen cov- 
 ering in several wreaths on their heads, or the hoods used by 
 others ; for a woman was never seen without a veil or a hood 
 on her head, except the unmarried, whose long ringlets were 
 tastefully tied up in knots, or wreathed around the head and 
 interwoven with some bright coloured ribband. If to this 
 we add the linens for the altar, the cloths for the table, the 
 various linen robes of the priest, and the shrouds that were 
 wrapped around the dead, there must have been a great 
 abundance of linen in Ireland." We read of Saint Brigid that 
 
 86 
 
"she spun and wove with her own hands the linen cloths which 
 were wrapped around Saint Patrick's sacred remains." Dr. 
 Lynch, Cambrensis Eversus II., 169. 
 
 They had also an artistic sense of colour and a complete 
 system of dyeing, the secrets of which have been lost during 
 the ages of persecution. They extracted dyes from the roots, 
 flowers, and berries of certain native plants and herbs; and 
 they also cultivated certain imported plants for the same pur- 
 pose. Tributes were frequently paid in cloth. In suitable 
 cases the people competed with each other in beauty of colour 
 as well as of texture. Irish rugs, blankets and quilts were 
 highly appreciated in England and on the Continent for their 
 downy softness and warmth, texture and colour. Irish cloths' 
 were well known in continental markets from the tenth to the 
 fourteenth century. The finer varieties were famous in trade 
 and in song in Italy, and especially in Florence, the home of 
 the most artistic weavers in the world, not so much for their 
 value as ordinary drapery, but as articles of art and luxury. 
 They were used by royalty, aristocracy, civic functionaries and 
 their wives for the trimming and fabric of State robes and for 
 general ornamentation. Some Italian and Spanish poetical 
 laudation of Irish serges will be found in Mrs. Green's "Ire- 
 land's Making and Its Undoing," p. 53 et seq. In those days 
 the ports of Sligo, Galway, Limerick, Dingle, Bantry, Balti- 
 more, Kinsale, Cork, Dungarvan, and Waterford — all now 
 idle — were engaged in the various import and export trades 
 with the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and the 
 Levant. The exports comprised corn, meats, and kindred 
 products, fancy leathern articles, gloves, linen, and woolen 
 yarns and cloths, timber for furniture, etc. The imports com- 
 prised wines, silks, fruits, and spices from the southern coun- 
 tries. There are records showing the existence in Genoa of a 
 hospital for the Irish early in the twelfth century; a thing 
 which would not be if the trade were not considerable and the 
 Irish merchants solicitous for their countrymen. All this 
 is evidence of intellectual, commercial and industrial inter- 
 course between Ireland and the Continent. Tacitus observes 
 that Ireland was more accessible by sea than Britain. There 
 was more continental intercourse with Ireland, due partly to 
 that, partly to the character of the Irish people, and partly to 
 the fact that until the Norman conquest of England, overland 
 traveling was not always safe. Even under the Tudor shadow 
 down to' the reign of Queen Elizabeth of England, the Irish 
 continued to manufacture various textiles with such success 
 that the greatest ministers deemed Irish cloaks and mantles 
 worthy presents from one to another, and her poet Spenser 
 embellishes his "Fairy Queen" with the mention of some of 
 them ; though he was base enough to write his "View of the 
 
 37 
 
State of Ireland" in which he favours the extermination of the, 
 Irish, and actually took for himself a beautiful place on the 
 Munster Blackwater from which the Irish owner had been 
 expelled. 
 
 Irish Arms. In more modern times Ireland has been 
 forced by her circumstances to establish a collateral claim 
 upon international friendship by conduct entirely different 
 from that of her days of independence — a claim founded on 
 chivalry to support that founded on peaceful civilization. It is 
 not to be supposed that any of the gallant nations that are in- 
 debted to Irish arms for help in their respective periods of 
 stress will forget their indebtedness when at last an occasion 
 has arisen for showing practical gratitude by that simple act 
 of justice involving neither loss nor risk — recognition of 
 Ireland as a sovereign State. France will not forget the names 
 of O'Brien, MacCarthy, O'Neill, O'Donnell, MacMahon, 
 which stand in the roll of her heroes. Spain will not forget 
 the O'Donnells, O'Neills, O'Sullivans, O'Reillys, O'Dalys, 
 O'Doyles, O'Farrells. Austria will not forget the O'Donnells, 
 O'Reillys, O'Connells, O'Briens, Fitzgeralds,- Nugents, 
 Laceys, Lallys, Taaffes. Nor will magnanimous Russia for- 
 get the services rendered her by Count O'Rourke. The United 
 States of America, grown great in freedom, cannot forget 
 Ireland's contribution in brain, muscle, and courage, to the 
 forces that won that freedom for her, or the large part Irish 
 genius, virtue and ability constitute in America's present 
 greatness, stability, and benevolent purpose towards mankind. 
 
 38 
 
IV. 
 
 Ireland is Inherently Entitled to Sovereign Independ- 
 ence and International Recognition 
 
 The ancient sovereign State of Ireland long suppressed by 
 force, has always existed in abundant possession of all the in- 
 herent attributes and qualities of a Sovereign State ; her right 
 of sovereign status never having been lost or abandoned; dis- 
 tinct in her history, the character of her people, and her geo- 
 graphical position; amply endowed with all the physical, 
 moral, and intellectual resources proper to a State, as the 
 various sections of this Statement show ; all of which distinc- 
 tions have been recognized by the nation most interested in 
 denying them, namely, England; formerly recognized by 
 penal laws against religion and civilization; and by restric- 
 tions on Industries and Trade ; in modern times recognized by 
 English legislation and rule designed and calculated to prolong 
 the effects of that period; at present recognized by English- 
 made laws differing from those of England, such as the dis- 
 establishment of the Protestant Church, Land Acts, Coercion 
 Acts, Arms Acts, and the absence of English Divorce and 
 Polygamy Laws. Hence the onus of proof rests upon who- 
 ever denies that Ireland is a distinct national entity. England 
 has estopped herself from denying it, having always made our 
 distinct national characteristics, especially our love of nation- 
 al independence, her pretext for oppression. To us, what 
 England recognizes or denies is immaterial ; we mention them 
 only to confound our only enemy. 
 
 It is self-evident that if we have any right at all, we are 
 entitled to the conservation of our people, with all their capa- 
 bilities, all they can produce, all the available yield of land, 
 water, and air of Ireland; all her contents, powers, facilities 
 and rights, internal and external, unrestricted use of all with 
 which nature has endowed Ireland; unrestricted intercourse 
 with whatever countries we please; freedom of opinion and 
 action on all things affecting Ireland, subject only to the uni- 
 versal law of respect for the property and rights of other na- 
 tions; and of all these the Irish nation has the common right 
 which accompanies all persons and property — the right to de- 
 fend and protect herself and her property and rights, and to 
 treat as an enemy whoever interferes with her free exercise 
 of any of her rights. The possession of them bears with it 
 the right to their free enjoyment and defence. Accompany- 
 
 39 
 
ing the foregoing, Ireland has at present imperative necessity 
 for the exercise of her rights as a condition of her continued 
 existence; and a determination as unanimous as any country 
 has ever had to save herself from extinction by breaking the 
 power of the stranger and resuming exclusive self-control. A 
 country not having these rights would have no right what- 
 ever. The right of a nation to exclusive self-control is as ob- 
 vious as the right of personal liberty to individuals. The ele- 
 mentary international law which recognizes every nation's 
 right to use its liberty in any way not detrimental to any 
 other nation, is universal, comprising Ireland's right to rule 
 herself and enjoy what nature has made hers; and as a con- 
 sequence sweeps away any pretence in any other country to 
 rule Ireland. But, as English statesmen or journalists may 
 say, all those rights taken together would amount to absolute 
 independence. Certainly! the sum of them, absolute inde- 
 pendence, is neither less nor more our right in Ireland than a 
 similar sum is England's right in England. It also happens to 
 be antecedent and superior to England's right in England 
 historically; and has never been forfeited, as England's has 
 been. It is only voluntarily a nation's right to independence 
 can be lost. Ireland never having lost her independence vol- 
 untarily, has never lost her right to resume it. If any right 
 were recognized in one nation to rule another, without the 
 consent of the latter, many unanswerable questions would im- 
 mediately arise, such as the extent of the rule, who should 
 set a limit to it, whether there should be any limit, whether 
 the dominant nation might extirpate or devise the extinction 
 of the other — a vital question actually raised in the present 
 case. Wherever and to whatever extent such vital matters 
 are left in doubt, there is tyranny and anarchy and absence of 
 international law. No nation has or can acquire a right to rule 
 another nation against its will. So strong are these reasons 
 that the proposition of this section stands by its own strength. 
 It is only an imbecile, nation or individual, that voluntarily 
 submits to external control. Every controller, whether indi- 
 vidual or nation, controls for selfish interest. Aliens to make 
 elaborate use of powerful machinery for misrepresentation, 
 defamation, and villification, and to prevent the victim nation's 
 voice being heard, and to call the victim's condition "British 
 Liberty", does not make it liberty of any kind. It is slavery 
 wherever and whenever practised, and no matter what ad- 
 jective is applied to it. Aliens to destroy and restrain the 
 lawful industries and trade of a people, and reduce them to 
 the status of unskilled laborers, in order to eliminate com- 
 petitors with the aliens, and to call that restraint "British 
 Liberty" does not make it liberty of any kind. It is slavery 
 wherever and whenever practised and no matter what adjec- 
 
 40 
 
tive is applied to it. Aliens to devise skilful means for drain- 
 ing all the financial resources of the people into alien coffers 
 for alien purposes, including the strengthening of the aliens' 
 power over the victim people, and to call that "British Lib- 
 erty" does not make it liberty of any kind. It is the negation 
 of liberty. It is slavery wherever and whenever practised, and 
 no matter what adjective is applied to it. Aliens of whose 
 entire conduct in great and in small things in the country 
 whose rule they have usurped, of which these are typical ex- 
 amples, to call the misery and desolation their conduct pro- 
 duces "British Liberty", is to insult the intelligence and out- 
 rage the moral sense of mankind. They are violating the laws 
 of nature, of nations, and of morality, and are enemies not 
 alone of the victim nation but of mankind. 
 
 Ireland is jealous of her inherent rights, material and im- 
 material, gross and sentimental. The sum of them — sov- 
 ereign independence — is her demand. When she comes to 
 consider her inherent rights separately she begins with her 
 good name. In normal times and circumstances opinions 
 may differ with regard to the comparative merits of treating 
 slander with reasoned encounter or with silent scorn, the per- 
 son or nation slandered being the proper judge. "It is not 
 with much credulity I listen to any when they speak evil of 
 those whom they are going to plunder," says Burke. That has 
 been largely the attitude of Ireland. But the same reasons 
 do not apply in abnormal times, least of all on the occasion of 
 an International Congress assembled to adjust international 
 relations with a view to a durable peace, when all that seri- 
 ously militates against peace and mutual respect should pass 
 under review and be included in the adjustment. A slanderous 
 State must be as dangerous to international peace as a slander- 
 ous person to social peace. To such a State nothing is sacred. 
 Slander, by striking at the very foundation of mutual respect, 
 renders peace impossible, and creates a situation in which 
 peace ought not to exist among self-respecting nations. Such 
 nations do not hold their honor cheap, and cannot transact 
 business affecting their relations while allowing one of them 
 license to villify another. As the honor of a nation, like that 
 of an individual, is more precious than its property, and far 
 more sensitive and delicate, second only to its life, so the 
 wilful slander of agnation and destruction of its reputation is 
 worse than any specific material injury; in addition to which, 
 it always carries with it material injury impossible to meas- 
 ure, incalculable as to extent and duration. When one of two 
 nations desiring to participate in an International Congress 
 assembled for a purpose of the utmost importance to man- 
 kind slanders the other, either one or the other is unfit to be 
 admitted to that Congress. If the slander is true, the slandered 
 
 41 
 
nation is unfit ; if untrue, the slandering nation is unfit — doubly 
 unfit if the immediate purpose of the slander be to have the 
 slandered nation excluded. Thus a situation is created by the 
 slander which must necessarily produce great injustices un- 
 less investigated. A skilful slander widely diffused is pro- 
 verbially difficult to overtake and correct. 
 
 English rule in Ireland is in its entirety an abuse of power. 
 It is also an abuse of power in every part of it. The first of 
 the abuses of power with which we charge England, because 
 the one of earliest origin, longest continuance, and least lim- 
 ited in extent and duration, is her systematic slander, defama- 
 tion, and villification, of our national character. It began so 
 long ago as the twelfth century, and is in operation, increased 
 a thousand fold in volume and malice, in the twentieth. The 
 first invaders, having found Ireland a desirable country to 
 make their homes in, acquired as much of the country as they 
 could by the sword and by prudent Irish marriages, and had 
 no interest in telling falsehoods of the people with whom they 
 immediately began to amalgamate. The same remark ap- 
 plies to most of the subsequent permanent settlers. As soon as 
 they and their children had shed their foreignness and were 
 absorbed in the superior civilization of Ireland, marrying Irish 
 wives in successive generations, the foreign blood and spirit 
 were replaced by the Irish, and the efforts of the newcomers 
 to restrain them from amalgamating were mostly futile. In 
 spite of these efforts, the Fitzgeralds, Burkes, Powers, and 
 many others became indistinguishable from their purer Gaelic 
 neighbors, except by their names. Having come and lived 
 among the Irish, they loved them and desired to form part of 
 them. The English at home kept jealousy alive in their hearts, 
 as though they could never forgive the unmeasured hospital- 
 ity with which their poor scholars had been treated in the 
 ancient Irish schools, according to their own historian, the 
 Venerable Bede. What a characteristic English return when, 
 in 1428, the English Act of Parliament, I Henry VI., c. 3, ex- 
 pelled all Irish students as such from Oxford University. That 
 their expulsion' was for no cause but their being Irish is con- 
 clusively shown by the readiness with which the expelled stu- 
 dents were received in continental universities. In spite of 
 not very creditable efforts in England and in Ireland to per- 
 petuate estrangement and enmity, the amalgamation of the 
 races went on in Ireland. The English slanderers of Ireland, 
 clerical and lay, down to the Tudor period, were ill-mannered 
 English sojourners who came with hardened hearts and fixed 
 purpose to resist the assimilative character of the Irish to 
 which the settlers had succumbed, and to find in all things 
 Irish material for their idle pens to turn to base uses. Their 
 race is far from being extinct. 
 
 42 
 
With the Tudors the influx of an inferior class of people 
 from England, impelled by the commercial spirit, attracted by 
 the natural wealth of Ireland, and covetous to make it their 
 own, increased to the extent of forming for the first time, a 
 self-sufficient colony determined to adopt nothing Irish but 
 the people's property, and to dominate instead of amalgamat- 
 ing with the nation. Their complete want of conscience and 
 their inordinate avarice killed in them the ability to appreciate 
 anything less material than wealth and power. They steeled 
 mind and heart against every manifestation of human feeling 
 and aspiration and against the natural and unconscious at- 
 traction of the Irish character. This community consisting of 
 enemies and critics enormously increased the slander in vol- 
 ume and in malignancy. It was an instance of a community 
 undertaking a policy of slander previously conducted by iso- 
 lated individuals. Intending, as their conduct showed they 
 did, to deprive the Irish of their property and appropriate it, 
 determined by sheer success of brute force to overcome or out- 
 live the common knowledge that falsehood is evidence of a bad 
 cause, and there being no real pretext for their conduct, one 
 had to be invented. That of slander seemed the easiest and 
 most adaptable to any set of circumstances. To be sure, it 
 could at best be only a weak justification for appropriating 
 other people's property; and besides it had to encounter ob- 
 stacles. Therefore, as soon as the Saxons had acquired suf- 
 ficient power their first care was to destroy Irish institutions, 
 churches, schools, and other evidences of civilization which 
 had prevailed until then ; knock out the brains of priests, 
 brehons, ollamhs, and schoolmasters; seize and destroy the 
 precious manuscript books; reduce the people to a condition 
 in which revival should be impossible; and then proclaim to 
 the world that Ireland had never had any civilization until 
 those colonists arrived to impart one. It was. a vast under- 
 taking, and a strange one for colonists professing to have 
 come over for "Godly purposes." England has the distinction 
 of being the only country mentioned in history as having treat- 
 ed learning as a crime, forbidden it in a country in which Eng- 
 land's own sons had got free education, then told the world 
 that Ireland had never had any learning, and used that slander 
 as a pretext for persecution. Apart from the consequences of 
 which it was made the pretext, a policy combining such in- 
 gratitude and malice has never had a precedent in the records 
 of tyranny ; and it is to be hoped it will never have a copy. 
 When the worthy Elizabeth became their Queen, she saw 
 worn in her court, amongst the fairest there, robes woven and 
 dyed by pure and modest Munster and Connaught girls, who 
 were incapable of conceiving that there were monsters in the 
 world who would aim at their destruction for no cause. Be- 
 
 43 
 
fore Elizabeth had reigned long Munster and Connaught were 
 devastated and strewn with human carcasses and ashes; the 
 artistic artisans, male and female, who had been so innocently 
 proud of their work, and so inoffensive, were in untimely 
 graves or hiding themselves in hunger and thirst and naked- 
 ness from Elizabeth's terrible soldiery; and all for no cause 
 but their being Irish in need of 'civilization.' 
 
 "When antagonism has bred hatred towards another na- 
 tion, and has consequently bred a desire to justify the hatred 
 by ascribing hateful characters to members of that nation, it 
 invariably happens that the political arrangements under 
 which they live, the religion they profess, and the habits 
 peculiar to them, become associated in thought with these 
 hateful characters — become themselves hateful, and cannot 
 therefore have their natures studied with the calmness re- 
 quired by science." Herbert Spencer, Study of Sociology. 
 
 The policy of slander once entered upon, there was no 
 going back. The greedy English crowd that swarmed for 
 lucre into Ireland became intoxicated with the richness of 
 their spoil, and proclaimed that Ireland had never had any 
 civilization and industries, and that they themselves had, of 
 their goodness, come to redeem a savage people. It is to pre- 
 vent contradiction of this atrocious falsehood that they 
 evinced special zeal in the destruction of all the manuscript 
 books they could lay hands upon. Their policy persisted in 
 for generation after generation strengthened their grip on the 
 country and gradually disabled the people from counteracting 
 their slander, until at present the world is witnessing the ap- 
 plication of the resources of a mighty empire to the vile policy 
 of slandering and representing as not entitled to common 
 justice a nation victimized, drained, and exhausted for the 
 maintenance of that empire and for the payment of the cam- 
 paign of slander itself; this system of misrepresentation and 
 propaganda of falsehood being combined with superlative ar- 
 rangements for preventing any independent Irish man or 
 woman, or a word of truth from Ireland, reaching the outer 
 world. England has cut us off even from our own kindred, 
 exiled by her oppression. We believe that England's elab- 
 orate organization of wilful falsehood and calumny is itself 
 evidence to the world of injustice in her system ; that it is a 
 grave danger to the future peace of the world ; and that it fur- 
 nishes indirect and unwilling evidence of the inherent right of 
 the Irish nation to be freed from those toils by sovereign in- 
 dependence. 
 
 44 
 
V. 
 
 Ireland Possesses Adequate Manpower to Maintain 
 Sovereign Independence, Once Established 
 
 Ireland's fertility in manpower is best shown by a cursory 
 review of England's policy of extermination, and the en- 
 durance of the Nation in spite of that policy; and the evidence 
 has the quality of irrefutability, being furnished by the enemy, 
 England. 
 
 The expropriations and colonizations attendant on the in- 
 vasion under King Henry II of England, which did not ex- 
 tend far, were effected by the sword's edge, were soon to con- 
 siderable extent reversed by the same weapon, and need not oc- 
 cupy us further here. Of Henry's licenses to his followers to 
 conquer and seize all the lands they were able, most remained 
 unexecuted. 
 
 Henry VIII was the first English sovereign to plan and 
 put into operation feasible methods for a conquest of the whole 
 of Ireland, the substitution of English for Irish tenure of land, 
 and, if possible, the. substitution of English planters for the 
 Irish people. This bold design of exterminating a nation 
 sharply differentiated England's modern policy in Ireland 
 from the previous policy of military conquest, which had 
 failed. It was a policy which could not be proclaimed in a 
 Christian world, nor admitted if challenged, especially in for- 
 eign countries. It needed cautious beginning and the prepara- 
 tion of pretexts. It was suggested to Henry to "take first 
 
 from them their corn so that the Irishy shall 
 
 not live thereupon, then to have their cattle and beasts . . . 
 and then they shall be without corn, victual, or cattle, and 
 therefore shall ensue the putting in effect of all these wars 
 against them;" State Papers, 2, III, 329. The magnitude of 
 the undertaking was also recognized: "Thus to enterprise the 
 whole extirpation and total destruction of all the Irishmen of 
 the land it would be a marvelous sumptuous charge and great 
 difficulty;" State Papers, 3, III, 176. Henry himself wrote: 
 "Now at the beginning politic practice may do more good than 
 exploit of war, till such time as the strength of the Irish ene- 
 mies shall be enfeebled and diminished;" State Papers, 2, III, 
 34. His successors, Tudor, Stuart, Republican, Dutchman, 
 and Hanoverian, did all they could, consistently with some 
 politic regard for the feelings of Catholic continental nations, 
 to carry out the policy of extermination. They disregarded 
 Henry's politic practice towards the Irish ; but then that was 
 
 45 
 
expressly intended for the beginning and until the Irish should 
 be enfeebled and diminished. From that time to the present, 
 English government of Ireland has been a continuous war 
 upon the Irish nation — frankly open war until 1779, gradually 
 concealed war since then. 
 
 Whoever looks for the first time into the State Papers and 
 other raw materials for the history of English rule in Ireland 
 from the accession of Henry VIII until 1779 — the materials, 
 because Irish history remains substantially unwritten — will 
 be astonished to find there revealed on an immense scale a 
 form of legal fraud of which he probably never read or heard 
 or dreamt, namely, the art of finding, inventing, creating, and 
 utilizing without scruple or remorse technical flaws in titles 
 to land, though held by the owner in unbroken succession 
 through his family, as actually proved in several cases, for 
 periods extending to five hundred years. Under the Gaelic 
 (Brehon) laws which had prevailed in Ireland from before 
 the dawn of history, all the land of each clan's territory be- 
 longed to the entire clan; portions being set apart for the 
 use of the chiefs and other clan officials, to whose successors — 
 not necessarily their heirs — it descended, for their services to 
 the community; the rest of the arable land being subject to 
 periodical distribution to meet the requirements of the young 
 men on attaining manhood and entitled to a sufficiency of land 
 as a birthright. There was neither landlord, nor tenant, nor 
 rent, to pay, nor power of eviction — except by expulsion from 
 the territory for a heinous crime — the title of all being good 
 according to the law, and the chief being only life-owner of his 
 demesne. The English pretense that this simple system was bar- 
 barous and unintelligible was refuted by the fact that every 
 clansman knew, or could ascertain whenever he desired, the pre- 
 cise acreage of land to which he was entitled. There were trib- 
 utes to pay for expenditure on public purposes, such as the mak- 
 ing of roads and the sinking Of rivers, but no rents. The preci- 
 sion and justice of the system was attested by the comparative 
 absence of friction or legal disputes regarding land. No English 
 authority was ever invoked on such a subject, nor did any clan 
 appeal for English help or protection against its chief. As Eng- 
 lish power spread over the country, chiefs began to fall away, no 
 doubt some of them tempted by the prospect of being declared 
 owners of the lands owned by their clansmen, as well as of their 
 demesnes. Each such renegade when made an English peer under- 
 took an oath to "forsake and refuse his own name and state" ; adopt 
 a title instead, and hold any land the king or queen gave him as a 
 "mere gift." When subsequently they found themselves mere tools 
 of England for plundering themselves as well as their country, 
 they learned the truth of the bard's warning, "best reject the for- 
 eign designation, lest thou and thy patrimony part company." The 
 
 46 
 
English, as soon as they had acquired sufficient power, declared 
 all Irish titles to land bad, offered English titles in substitution 
 for them, and by guile and threats of confiscation induced many 
 to accept their titles. Under English law these new titles to land 
 required registration to validate them, a ceremony of which the 
 Irish were not informed. The ceremony was conveniently omit- 
 ted. Owing to that omission, or some other technical flaw or 
 pretext, the new English titles were soon declared bad. Or, after 
 an Irish owner's death an English spy challenged the title of 
 his family to succeed to the property on the allegation that the 
 deceased owner had not been married and had therefore no 
 legitimate heirs, and that his property lapsed to the Crown, which 
 meant in practice to the spy himself or some other of his class. 
 The usual ground for the allegation was that the deceased owner 
 had not been married in a Protestant church ; an institution which 
 in most cases had not existed in his parish at the date of his 
 marriage. In various ways titles were attacked in detail and 
 lands confiscated and given to Englishmen, or, if more conve- 
 nient for the cheats, an enormous fine was imposed on the owner 
 to take out an English title for his land ; which English title 
 in turn might be subsequently declared defective, and a similar 
 ordeal had to be gone through again. Such was the nature of 
 what the English called "Settlement." 
 
 The first confiscation in bulk was that of the Fitzgerald 
 estates in County Kildare following the rebellion of Silken 
 Thomas. It did not involve many of the inhabitants. On an 
 opportune pretext, extensive confiscations and extermination of 
 rich and poor were called out in Leix and Offaly under Queen 
 Mary, the O'Connors and O'Mbores being expelled, their lands 
 seized, English settlers planted, Queen's and King's counties 
 formed, and their capitals named Maryborough and Philipstown 
 after the Queen and her husband. If the modern dictum be 
 true, that a notice to quit was equivalent to a sentence of death, 
 it would be difficult to find a phrase strong enough to character- 
 ize wholesale extermination without notice. But much worse was 
 to follow. Immediately on the accession of Elizabeth the fierce 
 and bloody work began in Munster on invented rumors of Ger- 
 aldine plots, with the result that when her Deputy, Sir Henry 
 Sydney, made a tour of inspection in 1567, he was able to report 
 to her that "such horrible and lamentable spectacles are there to 
 behold as the burning of villages, the ruin of churches, the wasting 
 of such as have been good towns and castles; yea, the view of 
 the bones and the skulls of dead subjects who, partly by murder, 
 partly by famine, have died in the fields, as in troth hardly any 
 Christian with dry eyes could behold." The policy of extermina- 
 tion had been put in force there by burning of corn in fields and 
 haggards, the slaughter or removal of people's cattle, the destruc- 
 tion of their homes, the slaying of themselves. 
 
 47 
 
On the murder of John O'Neill, Sean the Proud, King of 
 Ulster, the Act II Elizabeth, c. 1. 1569, attainted him and all his 
 adherents and confiscated their property, thus opening up a wide 
 area for- English agents to prey upon. 
 
 In 1574 the Earl of Essex wrote home thus: "In the end 
 it may be put to her (the Queen's) choice whether she will suffer 
 this people to inhabit here for their rent, or extirpate them and 
 plant other people in it. The force which shall bring about the 
 one shall do the other; and it may be done without any show 
 that such. a thing is meant." Elizabeth did not long leave any 
 doubt as to what her choice was. In 1577 Captain Cosby, an 
 Englishman planted on confiscated land on the borders of Kil- 
 dare, purported to prepare a banquet on a large scale on the 
 Rath of Mullaghmast, to which he invited all the Irish nobility 
 and gentry of a wide area round about, privately spreading a 
 rumor that refusal to accept the invitation would be regarded as 
 want of amity. Of more than 400 guests only one man escaped 
 with his life. All the rest were massacred in cold blood. Many 
 families were wholly wiped out. Of the O'Moores alone 180 
 were slain. Little wonder the name O'Moore is scarce now. 
 Such was the policy of extirpation. 
 
 In 1579, after the suppression of the Geraldine League, 
 Raleigh and Wingfield at the head of English soldiery captured 
 800 prisoners of war who had surrendered and laid down their 
 arms, and had them all thrown off the rocks into Smerwick 
 Harbor — a further exhibition of English chivalry and the policy 
 of extirpation. 
 
 In 1583 the Act 23 of Elizabeth, cc. 7 & 8, attainted the Earl 
 of Desmond and a vast number of his adherents by name, and 
 confiscated and cleared at least 570,000 acres of land, extirpating 
 the inhabitants, as the lands were all deemed to belong to the 
 chief and therefore all inferior titles null. A president was sent 
 to Munster and another to Connaught to execute the Queen's 
 choice. With armed bands they scoured the country, as a few 
 indisputable authorities will explain; each confiscation and 
 destruction of foodstuffs producing famine and pestilence. 
 
 "As they went, they drove the whole country before them into 
 the Ventrie, and by that means they preyed and took all the 
 cattle in the country, to the number of 8000 kine, besides horses, 
 garrons, sheep and goats ; and all such people as they met they 
 did without mercy put to the sword; by these means the whole 
 country having no cattle or kine left, they were driven to such 
 extremities that for want of victuals they were either to die and 
 perish for famine or die under the sword. ... By means of 
 the continual persecuting of the rebels, who could have no breath 
 nor rest to releave themselves, but were alwaies by one garrison 
 or other hurt and pursued ; and by reason the harvest was taken 
 from them, their cattclls in great numbers preied upon, and the 
 
 48 
 
whole countrie spoiled and preied ; the poore people, who lived 
 onlie upon their labors, and fed by their milch cowes, and were 
 so distressed, that they would follow after the goods which were 
 taken from them, and offer themselves, their wives, and children, 
 rather to be slaine by the armie, than to suffer the famine where- 
 with they were now pinched." Holliiished, VI. 33 and 427. 
 
 "The President having received certaine information, that the 
 Munster fugatives were harboured in those parts, having before 
 burned all the houses and come, and taken great preyes in Owny 
 Onubrian and Kilquig, a strong and fast countray, nor farre from 
 Limerick, diverted his forces into East Clanwilliam and Mus- 
 kerryquirke, where Pierce Lacey had lately been succoured; and 
 harrassing the country, killed all mankind that were found 
 therein, for a terrour to those as should give releefe to the runa- 
 gate traitors. Thence we came to Arleagh woods, where we did 
 the like, not leaving behind us man or beast, corne or cattle, 
 except such as had been conveyed into castles. . . . They 
 wasted and forraged the country, so as in a small time it was not 
 able to give the rebells any reliefs; having spoiled and brought 
 into their garrisons the most part of their corne, being newly 
 reaped. The next morning Sir Charles (Wilmot) coming to seek 
 the enemy in their camp, he entered into their quarter without 
 resistance, and where he found nothing but hurt and sick men, 
 whose pains and lives by the soldiers were both determined;' 
 Sir George Carew, Pacata Hibernia, 189, 584. 
 
 "No spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of the towns, 
 and especially in wasted countries, than to see multitudes of these 
 poor people, the Irish, dead, with their mouths all covered green 
 by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend above 
 ground." Fynes Moryson. 
 
 "Notwithstanding the same (Munster) was a most rich and 
 plentiful countrey, full of corne and cattle, yet ere one year and 
 a halfe they were brought to such wretchedness as that any stony 
 harte would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the 
 woods and glynnes they came creeping forth upon their hands 
 for their legges could not bear them ; they looked like anatomies 
 of death ; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves ; they 
 did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find them, yea 
 and one another soon after ; insomuch as the very carcasses they 
 spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot 
 of watercresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast 
 for the time ; that in short space of time there were none almost 
 left, and a most populous and plentifull countrey suddainely left 
 voide of men and beast." Edmund Spenser. 
 
 So, at once, Ireland's manpower and the feasibility of extir- 
 pating the nation were being tested. 
 
 "The English nation were shuddering over the atrocities of 
 the Duke of Alva. The children in the nurseries were being in- 
 
 19 
 
flamed to patriotic rage and madness by tales of Spanish tyranny. 
 Yet Alva's bloody sword never touched the young, the defence- 
 less, those whose sex even dogs can recognise and respect. Sir 
 Peter Carew had been murdering women, and children, and 
 babies that had scarcely left the breast. . . . Gilbert, who was 
 left in charge at Kilmallock, was illustrating yet more signally the 
 same tendency. . . . He regarded himself as dealing rather 
 with savage beasts than with human beings ; and when he tracked 
 them to their dens he strangled the cubs and rooted out their 
 entire broods. . . . Gilbert's method of treatment has this 
 disadvantage, that it must be carried out to the last extremity, 
 or it ought not to be tried at all. The dead do not come back; 
 and if the mothers and babies are slaughtered with the men, the 
 race gives no further trouble. But the work must be done thor- 
 oughly. Partial and fitful cruelty lays up only a long debt of 
 deserved and ever-deepening hate. ... In justice to the Eng- 
 lish soldiers, however, it must be said that it was no fault of 
 theirs if any Irish child of that generation was allowed to live to 
 manhood. . . . The inference is but too natural that work of 
 this kind was the road to preferment, and that this, or something 
 like it, was the ordinary employment of the Saxon garrison in 
 Ireland." Froude, History of England, X., 508, 512. 
 
 As regards Connaught, Malby, the President of that province, 
 made a report in 1576, from which Mr. Froude quotes thus: 
 "At Christmas I marched into their territory, and finding cour- 
 teous dealing with them, had like to have cut my throat. I thought 
 good to take another course, and so, with determination to con- 
 sume them by fire and sword, sparing neither old nor young, 
 I entered their mountains. I burned all their corn and houses, 
 and committed to the sword all that could be found, where were 
 slain at that time above sixty of their best men, and among them 
 the best leaders they had. This was Shan Burke's country. Then 
 I burned Ulick Burke's country. In like manner I assaulted a 
 castle where the garrison surrendered. I put them to the miseri- 
 cordia of my soldiers. They were all slain. Thence I went on, 
 sparing none which came in my way, which did so amaze their 
 followers that they could not tell where to bestow themselves. 
 Shan Burke made means to me to pardon him, and forbear killing 
 of his people. I would not hearken, but went on my way. The 
 gentlemen of Clanrickard came to me, I found it was but dallying 
 to win time; so I left Ulick as little corn and as few houses 
 standing as I left his brother, and what people was found had 
 as little favour as the other had. It was all done in rain and 
 frost and storm, journeys in such weather bringing them the 
 sooner to submission. They are humble enough now, and will 
 yield to any terms we like to offer them." 
 
 Such was the policy of extermination in Connaught. Some 
 years later Sir John Perrot effected what was called the "Com- 
 
 50 
 
position of Connaught,"all the settlements being called "godly." 
 Henry Harvey, Secretary to Lord Deputy Essex, reports the 
 latter as saying, "There exists but one weapon would avail here. 
 It is famine ! famine ! Famine with the grisly face, the clatter- 
 ing bones, the hollow eye sockets. Famine which eats up, not 
 the fighting men alone, but trie women and the children, too, 
 till there be not one of them left." 
 
 Ulster next. It was under the ungrateful Stuart that the 
 policy of extermination reached a development till then un- 
 equalled in history. The extermination of the whole Irish popu- 
 lation from the major part of Ulster and the plantation of that 
 province with English and Scottish settlers was a human tragedy 
 on an enormous scale and of consequences affecting the whole 
 course of subsequent British and Irish history. Carried out 
 under the first of the Stuart kings of England, whom as a prince 
 of royal Gaelic race the Irish desired to accept as their king, it 
 had in it an element of peculiar ingratitude. One of James's 
 motives for it was to obtain money for the land from wealthy 
 citizens of London to enable him to live extravagantly. It was, 
 however, destined, though without the help of the Irish, and 
 indeed in spite of them, to bring its own retribution before the 
 end of the century by turning the balance against the Stuart 
 dynasty at two critical moments, costing Charles I his head, 
 James II his throne, and the Irish nation sacrifices of life and 
 property to the verge of extinction. A single quotation will suffi- 
 ciently illustrate the working of the policy of extermination in 
 Ulster. It is from a letter written by Lord Deputy Chichester 
 toward the end of 1607 : "I have often said and written, it is 
 famine that must consume the Irish; as our swords and other 
 endeavours worketh not that speedy effect which is expected. 
 Hunger would be a better, because a speedier, weapon to employ 
 against them than the sword. ... I burned all along the 
 Lough (Neagh) within four miles of Dungannon, and killed 100 
 people, sparing none, of what quality, age, or sex soever, besides 
 many burned to death. We killed man, woman, and child, horse, 
 beast, and whatsoever we could find." Godkin, Land War. 
 
 At first the extermination in Ulster comprised the territories 
 now known as the counties of Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, most of 
 Armagh, and part of Monaghan. Cavan and Fermanagh were 
 subsequently added; all amounting to about 3,683,000 acres. 
 Antrim and Down did not come into this scheme; immigrants 
 from Scotland, most of them of Gaelic race and speech, but of 
 the new religion, having otherwise planted themselves in those 
 counties at an earlier date. Of the confiscated lands, 1,141,000 
 acres were allotted to the undertakers, Scotch and English, who 
 were all bound by their grants not to retain any Irish tenants on 
 the lands ; 366,800 acres to the London companies ; 350,000 acres 
 to the servitors, that is, persons'in the military, civil or other serv- 
 
 51 
 
ice of the Crown. Grants to corporate towns, Trinity College. 
 Dublin, churches and schools; and remnants of inferior land, 
 bogs, swamps and barren hills left for special reasons to a small 
 number of the Irish, absorbed the remainder. Permanent com- 
 missions were set up, ostensibly for plausible purposes, such as 
 protection of Crown property, i. e", confiscated property, enforc- 
 ing laws against church and monastic lands ; seeing that no new 
 confiscations were made without attainder and inquisition; rem- 
 edying defective titles; receiving surrenders and making new 
 grants, and so on. But the real purpose of those commissions was 
 to promote the policy of extermination, not alone in doomed areas 
 like Ulster, but over the entire country, as we shall see. Another 
 cognate institution was the Court of Wards, whose function was 
 to have the infant sons of Catholic land owners in certain cases 
 seized, kidnapped, sent to England, brought up as Protestants 
 and when they reached manhood brought back to Ireland to work 
 England's purposes against their own relatives, and in various 
 ways. 
 
 How did Leinster fare? In 1609 the land-owners of North 
 Wexford innocently allowed themselves to be induced by a 
 panic organized for the purpose to surrender their lands to the 
 commission for the remedy of defective titles, and asked to have 
 the lands re-granted to them. The surrenders were officially 
 accepted in 1610. Before any re-grants were made, lo, a hitherto 
 unknown title of the King of England to the entire district was 
 faked or "discovered." Before the end of that year an order 
 came that the lands were the King's property, and should be 
 granted, not to their Irish owners, but to two Englishmen — Sir 
 Edward Fisher and Sir Lawrence Esmond. The owners, hav- 
 ing surrendered their titles, were helpless. After a long and 
 bitter struggle, a compromise was arranged between the owners 
 and the two strangers. But the confiscation was widened be- 
 yond their requirements. Of the owners, those who were old 
 English, that is, colonists born in Ireland, got, as usual, more and 
 better land than the old Irish. By this transaction about 100,000 
 acres of arable land with appurtenant mountain land not meas- 
 ured, were wholly cleared of Irish and planted with English set- 
 tlers. Many of the old Irish owners were driven out altogether ; 
 all that remained were on greatly reduced areas, some being re- 
 duced to the status of tenants-at-will, cottiers, and laborers. We 
 are gravely told, that after this the Irish lost all confidence in 
 English justice. Apparently slow to lose it, they are slower to 
 recover it, not having been yet given any reason for doing so. 
 
 The Wexford method of confiscation was followed in Ely 
 O'Carroll and Annaly, and in every county in Leinster except 
 Wicklow. Wicklow's turn was, however, at hand. The same 
 method was followed in County Leitrim, which the English al- 
 ways coupled with Meath, because the King of Breffni- 
 
 52 
 
O'Rourke had been King of Meath also at the time of Henry II. 
 Ormond and other parts of Munster not yet confiscated were next 
 dealt with on the North Wexford plan. A national effort at 
 resistance was avoided by taking the country in districts and 
 "without any show that such a thing was meant." 
 
 In the course of the confiscation in Connaught under Charles 
 I, his Deputy — Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford — bribed 
 the judges of the Court of Claims with a percentage for them- 
 selves of the area of estates he wanted them to declare for- 
 feited. We are told that "The estates were found by local juries 
 to have been forfeited." Of course they were. Little wonder, 
 seeing that jurors who refused to produce the verdict that Straf- 
 ford desired were fined 4000 pounds each, their estates seized 
 until the fine was paid, and they had in addition to acknowledge 
 their offence in public court on bended knees. Little wonder 
 they found agreeable verdicts when the lawyers who had in the 
 earlier cases defended the owners were tendered the Oath of 
 Supremacy, and on their refusal as Catholics to take it were 
 turned out of court and allowed to plead no more. Thus the 
 owners attacked, knowing nothing of English law and little of 
 the English language, were left without legal assistance. On 
 Strafford's subsequent impeachment in London, one of the counts 
 in the indictment was, "That jurors who gave their verdict ac- 
 cording to their consciences were censured in the Castle Chamber 
 in great fines, sometimes pilloried, with loss of ears, and bored 
 through the tongue; and sometimes marked in the forehead with 
 infamous punishments." The thieves quarrelled in England, 
 but the thieving went on in Ireland unabated. Strafford prac- 
 tised his system in Connaught, Clare, Limerick and Tipperary. 
 
 The composition of Connaught carried out by Sir John Per- 
 rot in 1585 comprised the granting of English titles to the land 
 owners. In 1641 Lords Justices ruled that all the titles to land 
 given by Perrot were invalid. Thus again was opened up 
 another extensive field for legal chicanery, the imposition of new 
 fines for titles, confiscation of the most desired lands and end- 
 less corruption and misery. 
 
 Every confiscation involved an infinity of human suffering 
 among high and low, and absolute starvation and death among 
 the working farmers and poor generally. If to kill be more mer- 
 ciful than to keep alive for the purpose of torture, then Crom- 
 well was more merciful as well as more logical than his pre- 
 decessors in aiminig without disguise at the utter destruction of 
 the Irish nation. There is no doubt now that this was his aim, 
 and that he was prevented from carrying it to completion by the 
 magnitude of the task being greater than he as an Englishman 
 had previously realized, beyond what his resources enabled him 
 to do, and also by some regard for certain Catholic States from 
 whych he expected to derive some advantages. Though falling 
 
 BS 
 
short of his purpose of completing the extermination, Crom- 
 well's was the most extensive and heartless campaign of the 
 whole series, never approached in brutality anywhere before or 
 since. Like the campaign under Elizabeth, it swept over three 
 provinces, and more ruthlessly. It was not war, but broadcast 
 murder. His soldiers were a band of hungry murderers let loose 
 on the country, robbing for their living in lieu of pay, murder- 
 ing men, especially priests and monks ; outraging women and 
 girls whose food they had eaten, then murdering the women 
 and children ; tossing babies in the air and catching them on the 
 points of their swords in the presence of their mothers, in pur- 
 suance of a hint given by Cromwell himself that "nits will be 
 lice." They were answerable to no authority whatever. 
 
 In August, 1652, before the Cromwellian massacres were 
 fully ended, the English Roundhead Parliament passed the "Act 
 for the Settlement of Ireland," the most murderous measure that 
 ever emanated from a legislature. It divided the whole popula- 
 tion into classes, and meted out specific punishment to all those 
 classes, except only such persons as could prove - that they had 
 been constantly faithful to the interests of England as repre- 
 sented by the parliament. Want of fidelity to the parliament 
 was the offence. As practically the whole nation, Catholic and 
 Protestant, had at some time of the war fought for the king 
 against the parliament, especially owing to the revulsion of feel- 
 ing caused by the execution of Charles I, scarcely any person in 
 Ireland was in a position to prove constant fidelity to the parlia- 
 ment. To overcome this difficulty, the ordinary course of law 
 was reversed. Every person in Ireland was held to be guilty 
 and to have forfeited life or property, or both, according to the 
 category to which he belonged, unless he proved his innocence. 
 This is the special note which distinguishes the Cromwellian con- 
 fiscations from all others. Amongst the persons excepted from 
 pardon, that is, condemned to death by the statute, were all 
 priests, secular and regular. Under this it is acknowledged that 
 three bishops and more than 300 priests were massacred, in addi- 
 tion to the casual murders committed by the troops during the 
 war. All was done in the name of God and religion. It was, 
 as Carte the historian says, "extermination preached by gospel." 
 An English authority estimates that the sections 1 and 4 of 
 the Act condemned to death about 100,000 Irishmen. The women 
 and children murdered were treated as negligible and not counted. 
 "Sir William Cole, ancestor to Lord Enniskillen, proudly boasted 
 of his achievement in having 7000 of the 'rebels' famished to 
 death within a circuit of a few miles of his garrison." Godkin, 
 Land War. 
 
 There was a final provision in the Act that any person who 
 on any ground had been spared his life might be transported 
 to wherever the government pleased. This was the authority, for 
 
 54 
 
exterminating the people and confiscating their property and 
 planting English settlers thereon. In September, 1G53, the scheme 
 was finally settled. The river Shannon was made the boundary 
 between Catholic, and Protestant Ireland, with the view that the 
 land to the west being largely barren or poorer than that to the 
 east, and famine and plague being then prevalent in all poor 
 parts of the country from the previous ten years of war, the 
 excess population thrown onto the west should soon die of want 
 and their unburied corpses would not offend the English planted 
 on the lands thus cleared of their owners. As a result of the 
 long withdrawal of labor from agriculture and other industries 
 during the war, the country was little -better than a wilderness. 
 Though the actual residents in Connaught and Clare were sub- 
 ject to the same inquisitions and transplantations as elsewhere, 
 the operation in their case consisted largely in contracting the 
 area of their lands in order to create spaces of refuge for the 
 dispossessed. Thus was created the congestion in the west of 
 Ireland of which we have heard so much from that time to the 
 present. The governor and commissioners were directed by the 
 statute to publish and proclaim "this present declaration" that 
 "all the ancient estates and farms of the people of Ireland were 
 to belong to the adventurers and the army of England, and that 
 the parliament had assigned Connaught for the habitation of the 
 Irish nation, whither they must transplant, with their wives and 
 daughters and children before the 1st May following (1654), 
 under penalty of death if found on this side of the Shannon after 
 that day." Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement. Any Catholic 
 found east of the Shannon after that day might be shot at sight 
 by any Englishman, without trial whatsoever. It having been 
 found impossible to have the country cleared by that date, Prot- 
 estants were allowed wherever they had reason to think any 
 money remained among the Catholics to extract it from them 
 by compounding, and then as soon as the Catholics were fully 
 stripped of means, their lives were spared, but they were ban- 
 ished beyond the Shannon. 
 
 As usual in such cases,- the Act was not uniformly worked. 
 The Catholic land owners, large and small, were expelled from 
 all counties; but there was a difference in the treatment of the 
 clansmen become tenants. As a rule these were cleared off 
 only the fertile lands. If they burrowed homes for them- 
 selves in the bogs and barren hills, they were not deemed worth 
 killing; and besides, the new owners would be able to extract 
 money from them indefinitely as rent of land on which no 
 Englishman would live, and the poor wretches would be con- 
 venient for agricultural labor without pay except scraps of coarse 
 food. The more fertile parts of Tipperary and Kerry were 
 wholly cleared of Irish, rich and poor. All the grantees were 
 bound to plant a certain number of British Protestant families 
 
 56 
 
on the lands granted to them. These plantations were always 
 made on superior land, and can be pointed out in all parts of 
 the country to the present day. Of some 10,000 Catholic land 
 owners in Ireland at the beginning of the war, all but twenty-six 
 were deprived completely of their land, and themselves and their 
 children ruined by being driven either beyond the Shannon or out 
 of the country altogether, or to poverty and the grave. There 
 were actually transplanted beyond the Shannon 1200 of them 
 with their families, and it is estimated about 40,000 other de- 
 pendents. The rest of the population who had not fallen in the 
 war were disposed of in characteristic ways. Some 40,000 Irish 
 soldiers, on surrendering in utter want of food, were allowed to 
 enter any foreign service they chose, and foreign vessels were in 
 the harbors to take them away, some to France, some to Spain, 
 some to Austria, some to Venice, some to Sweden. Bands of 
 soldiers were sent all over the country, not to slay this time, but 
 to collect children and youths for sale through Bristol merchants 
 to slave-owners in Barbadoes, Jamaica, and the colony of Vir- 
 ginia; the girls for a worse fate. It was found that 25 pounds 
 each could be obtained for them, and Cromwell's government was 
 in need of money. By all the various methods the population was, 
 under Cromwell, reduced to one-third. At the end, more than 
 30,000 Irish, apart from soldiers, were known to be wandering 
 homeless in various countries of Europe. 
 
 The total area confiscated is estimated at 8,000,000 acres. 
 Cromwell's officers and men were given grants of land in lieu 
 of pay, which was long in arrears. First, lots were drawn as to 
 the provinces in which they were to get the land; next as to 
 the counties. Contractors and others who had catered for the 
 army and had not been paid; adventurers who had lent money 
 for the support of the army as a speculation, and all who were 
 willing to advance money to the government or its representa- 
 tives, all these were rewarded with Irish land. The regicides, 
 that is those who had been useful in connection with the execu- 
 tion of Charles I, seventy in number, were rewarded with twenty 
 thousand (20,000) acres of the best land in Ireland, chiefly in 
 Tipperary. 
 
 In 1641 the value of the cattle and stock in Ireland was esti- 
 mated at 4,000,000 pounds, and in 1652 they were estimated at 
 only 500,000 pounds. If, as is now generally admitted, its peo- 
 ple are a country's truest wealth, who can estimate the gross loss 
 inflicted upon Ireland by Cromwell? Still, the extermination of 
 a nation, especially <of an intensely home-loving nation, proved 
 a vast enterprise. By means accountable only by their strong 
 attachment to home, the people found their way back to their 
 respective districts as near as they could with safety approach 
 to their old homes. % 
 
 'Oil th6 restoration of the Stuart dynasty in the person of 
 
 56 
 
Charles II, from whom the Irish Catholics had deserved and 
 expected much, that king, under the guidance largely of the 
 Duke of Ormond, confirmed most of the Cromwellian titles to 
 land in Ireland. In one of his proclamations he went so far as 
 to describe as "rebels" the Irish who had fought for him against 
 Cromwell. As Lord Chancellor Eustace said in a letter to 
 Ormond, "Those who fought against his majesty are to have 
 the estates of those who fought for him." This ungrateful 
 policy was carried out under the Act of Settlement and Expia- 
 tion. It is true that Charles issued many letters, as he was then 
 legally entitled to do, ordering the restoration of individuals to 
 their estates, and sometimes of corporations, as those of Cork 
 and "Galway, in accordance with treaties and solemn agreements 
 entered into with his father before the outbreak of the war; 
 but his letters were disregarded by the Cromwellians in posses- 
 sion of the lands and in possession of arms to defend them, of 
 the garrisons and of the entire machinery of government in 
 Ireland. Charles had got enough of exile to spoil his taste for 
 more of it. In response to numerous appeals, irresistible if logic 
 or justice counted, he appointed a commission in 1661 to examine 
 claims. The negative result can easily be guessed when we add 
 that of its 36 members, every one was in possession of land 
 taken from the Irish. The Cromwellians made plain to all con- 
 cerned their intention to hold all they had got, and the king 
 was in no position to deal with them, even if inclined. A plot 
 to seize Dublin Castle and overthrow the government gave him 
 to understand what he might, expect if he went further. He 
 turned his attention to pleasanter matters and no one was pun- 
 ished for the plot. "Not 100 of the Irish nobles at this day 
 possess as much land as he could be buried in, though they 
 expect it in this year, 1660 ;" so wrote Dugald MacFirbis. Vain 
 was the expectation ; and this neither from lack of land nor from 
 lack of rightful claimants. Notwithstanding the voracious grab- 
 bing, a considerable amount of land remained in the hands of the 
 government officials not finally disposed of, and many of the 
 outcast owners would have been glad to take small portions com- 
 pared with their former estates. But Charles found other use 
 for it. He made a present of 100,000 acres to the Duke of 
 Ormond, in addition to the extensive territory which he, as a 
 Protestant and trimmer, had been able to retain. Over 170,000 
 acres still remained, the final remnant of property lost through 
 fidelity to the Stuart cause. Instead of distributing even this 
 among the outcast owners, the Stuart king had the meanness to 
 concur in the grant of it to his own brother, the Duke of York, 
 afterwards James II, thus making him a Cromwellian planter, the 
 lowest degradation to which a Stuart could fall. It is due to 
 James to say that when he came to Ireland in 1689 he did what 
 he could in the short time left him to restore those lands to 
 
 57 
 
their original owners. The lands were, however, almost imme- 
 diately confiscated again by William III, together with other 
 lands, amounting in all to nearly 2,000,000 acres. He, of his good- 
 ness, made a present of 95,000 acres to his favorite mistress, 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Villiers, Countess of Orkney. 
 
 The landlordism resulting from all this shuffling of human 
 beings was such a product of iniquity as has never been equalled 
 in any country for the scope and degree of absolute and irre- 
 sponsible power placed in the hands of the new land-owning class, 
 a class least of all mankind fitted for irresponsible power, the 
 thorough use they made of their power, as though they were 
 not dealing with human beings, and the utter degradation and 
 misery of their Catholic peasant victims. Excepting the Prot- 
 estants of Ulster, who were insisting upon rights which subse- 
 quently came to be recognized as the Ulster Custom, the entire 
 rural population of Ireland were reduced to the lowest conceiv- 
 able form of servitude. As the wildest animal, wounded and 
 broken, struggles back, even in face of danger, to its original 
 home, on any terms or without terms, so did many of the unfor- 
 tunate Irish, having no means to take them anywhere else. The 
 hierarchy of new landlords were all English Protestants, the 
 larger of them being Absentees. Four times the colonial parlia- 
 ment enacted an Abstentee Tax upon English grantees of Irish 
 lands, who were well pleased to receive rents from Ireland, but 
 preferred to spend them in their own country. These taxes 
 were so successfully evaded that there was no substantial yield 
 of revenue from them ; and though Englishmen cried out against 
 certain penalties they threatened, no grantee lost his land under 
 them. Of those new landlords who resided in Ireland in the 
 eighteenth century, this is a description by Mr. Froude, the 
 English historian: "The gentry hated labor. Everyone who 
 could subsist in idleness set himself up for a gentleman. Every- 
 one who held a farm that he could divide or sub-let became a 
 landlord and lived on his rents. The land was let, and under-let, 
 and under-let again, till six rents had sometimes to be provided 
 by the actual cultivator before he was allowed to feed himself 
 and his family, whilst the proprietor and quasi-proprietor grew 
 into the Irish blackguard, the racing, drinking, duelling, swearing 
 squireen, the tyrant of the fair, the shame and scandal of the 
 order to which he affected to belong." A strange contrast, 
 this "godly" system, with the "barbarous" system administered 
 by the brehons. Mr. Froude proceeds: "The English delib- 
 erately determined to keep Ireland poor and miserable as the 
 readiest means of preventing it becoming troublesome. They 
 destroyed Irish trade and shipping by navigation laws. They 
 extinguished Irish manufacture by differential duties. They laid 
 disabilities even on its wretched agriculture, for fear that Irish 
 importations might injure the English farmers. The people, re- 
 
 58 
 
taining their tribal traditions, believed they had rights upon 
 the land on which they lived. The owner believed that there 
 were no rights but his own. In England the rights of landlords 
 have similarly survived their duties, but they have been modi- 
 fied by custom or public opinion. In Ireland the proprietor was 
 an alien with the fortunes of the residents upon his estates in 
 his hands and at his mercy. He was divided from them in creed 
 and language; he despised them as of an inferior race, and he 
 acknowledged no interest in common with them. Had he been 
 allowed to trample on them and make them his slaves, he would 
 have cared for them, perhaps, as he cared for his horses. But 
 their persons were free, while their farms and houses were his, 
 and thus his only object was to wring out of them the last 
 penny which they could pay, leaving them and their children 
 to a life scarcely raised above the level of their own pigs." 
 Romanism and the Irish Race, p. 36. 
 
 Evictions, destitution, famine and the diseases that accom- 
 pany famine followed every confiscation and every instance of 
 economic pressure caused by hostile legislation. The first arti- 
 ficial famine produced by English law in Ireland was when 
 Elizabeth's soldiers devastated Munster and Connaught, wan- 
 tonly burning the corn in the fields and haggard, and killing the 
 cattle as well, as the people. James, the two Charles's, Cromwell, 
 William III, the Georges and Victoria have followed Eliza- 
 beth's example in the policy of extermination, if not by the 
 sword, by the baser and more horrible means of State-created 
 famine and plague. The legislation of 1699, which destroyed 
 the woolen industry and. left people without employment and the 
 country without money, was followed by famine lasting continu- 
 ously in many parts of the country for fully sixty years, cover- 
 ing the whole country periodically owing to bad harvests conse- 
 quent on the inferiority of the tillage the people were able to 
 practise, and carrying away immense numbers of victims in 
 1726-27, 1740-41 and 1761-62. "Of that famine— the famine of 
 1740-41= — we have many contemporaneous descriptions. Accord- 
 ing to one writer, 400,000 persons died. Bishop Berkeley has 
 left touching descriptions of the misery that came before his 
 own eyes and smote his loving heart; and another writer gives 
 a picture as terrible as any even in the history of famines : 'I 
 have seen,' says this writer, 'the laborer endeavoring to work at 
 his spade, but fainting from want of food, and forced to quit it. 
 I have seen the aged father eating grass like a beast, and in 
 the anguish of his soul wishing for his dissolution. I have seen 
 the helpless orphan exposed on the dung heap, and none to take 
 him in for fear of infection, and I have seen the hungry infant 
 sucking at the breast of the already expired parent.' " Lecky, 
 Eighteenth Century II, 218, 219. 
 
 There was a continuous stream of emigration of as many of 
 
 59 
 
the poor as could scrape together the passage money to banish 
 themselves. Throughout the eighteenth century we read casual 
 remarks about, numerous deaths from famine; while the gov- 
 ernment, whether it was in London or in. Dublin, having put 
 the rent-extracting and exterminating machinery in operation, 
 occasionally by statute increased the machine's efficiency, abused 
 the Irish for being still alive and went its way absolutely heed- 
 less, until at last the whole civilized world 'was shocked at the 
 wanton destruction of a whole population by the most terrible 
 of all deaths in 1846, 7 and 8. There was never any reason 
 save criminal misgovernment why one of the most fertile coun- 
 tries in the world should be afflicted with want of food. 
 
 In the 19th century, so long as the Napoleonic wars lasted, 
 the prices of farm produce enabled Irish agriculturists to live, 
 in spite of inflated rents; when peace came and prices fell, the 
 inflated rents were no longer payable, eviction clearances and dis- 
 tress became general, and no year passed in which large num- 
 bers of the peasantry did not die of famine. The report of an 
 English Select Committee in 1819 opens with the grim and sig- 
 nificant statement that the general distress and want of employ- 
 ment "are so notorious as to render the production of any par- 
 ticular evidence to establish the extent and variety of the evil 
 unnecessary." 
 
 Another Select Committee in 1823 report the state of the 
 country as "wretched and calamitous to the greatest degree." 
 
 A similar committee in 1824 reported that the numerous ten- 
 ants, evicted and reduced to the status of laborers, could find 
 no employment, and that such laborers as found fairly constant 
 work received not more than four pence or five pence a day. 
 
 In 1830 a further committee reported that from one-fourth 
 to one-fifth of the Irish population were without employment 
 and were exposed to "misery and suffering which no language 
 can describe, and which it is necessary to witness in order to 
 fully estimate." Even in those counties in Ulster where the 
 linen industry was a general advantage and where Protestant 
 tenants had the protection of the Ulster Custom in land tenure, 
 agricultural laborers could not find employment for more than 
 three days in a week. 
 
 The French publicist Gustave de Beaumont, having visited 
 Ireland in 1835, wrote: "I have seen the Indian in his forest 
 and the negro in his chains, and I thought that I beheld the 
 lowest term of human misery; but I did not then know the lot 
 of Ireland. . . . Irish misery forms a type by itself, of which 
 there exists nowhere else either model or imitation. In seeing it, 
 one recognizes that no theoretical limits can be assigned to the 
 misfortunes of nations." 
 
 The report of the poor inquiry commission in 1836 says: 
 "We cannot estimate the number of persons (heads of families) 
 
 60 
 
out of work and in distress during thirty weeks of the year at 
 less than 585,000, nor the number of persons dependent on them 
 at less than 1,800,000 ; making in all 2,385,000." The repeal of 
 the English corn laws and the establishment of "free trade," 
 while highly beneficial to industrial England, was ruinous to 
 agricultural Ireland, checking her only considerable industry 
 killing such other little industries as continued to linger in towns 
 and intensifying the distress. At no season throughout those 
 years had the Connaught peasantry sufficient food. The intro- 
 duction of the degrading English poor law system in 1838 ac-. 
 centuated the distress of the poor, classed state-created poverty 
 as a crime, and ostensibly extended the cost of its maintenance 
 to the landlord class. They, however, in some cases, success- 
 fully shifted their part of the burden to their tenants. 
 
 On the 16th February, 1844, Mr. Disraeli (afterwards Lord 
 Beaconsfield) said in the English House of Commons : "He 
 wished to see a public man come forward and say what the 
 Irish question was. Let them consider Ireland as they would 
 any other country similarly circumstanced. They had a starving 
 population, an absentee aristocracy, an alien church, and the 
 weakest executive in the world. This was the Irish question. 
 Gentlemen would say at once on reading of a country in such a 
 position the remedy is revolution — not the suspension of the 
 Habeas Corpus Act. But the connection with England prevented 
 revolution. Therefore England was logically in the position of 
 being the cause of all the misery in Ireland. What, then, was 
 the duty of an English Minister? To effect by his policy all the 
 changes which a revolution would do by force." Hansard, at date. 
 
 In 1845 a royal commission known as the "Devon Commis- 
 sion" reported the rural distress intensified and extended to all 
 ranks, as compared with the period of previous reports : "When 
 we consider this state of things and the large proportion of the 
 population which comes under the designation of agricultural 
 labourers, we have to repeat that the patient endurance which 
 they exhibit is deserving of high commendation, and entitles them 
 to the best attention of the government and parliament. . . . 
 Up to this period any improvement that may have taken place 
 is attributable almost entirely to the habits of temperance in 
 which they have so generally persevered, and not, we grieve to 
 say, to any increased demand for their labour." "Government 
 and Parliament," which would have attended promptly to a 
 report of less gravity relating to their own people, turned a deaf 
 ear to the Irish people, who were not their own, and whom it 
 was their policy to exterminate. 
 
 The Times, leading English newspaper, on 26th June, 1845, 
 said: "The facts of Irish destitution are ridiculously simple. 
 They are almost too commonplace to be told. The people have 
 not enough to eat. They are suffering a real, though an arti- 
 
 61 
 
ficial, famine. Nature does her duty. The land is fruitful 
 enough. Nor can it be fairly said that man is wanting. The 
 Irishman is disposed to work. In fact, man and nature together 
 do produce abundantly. The island is full and overflowing 
 with human food. But something ever interposes between the 
 hungry mouth and the ample banquet. The famished victim 
 of a mysterious sentence stretches out his hand to the viands 
 which his own industry has placed before his eyes, but no 
 sooner are they touched than they fly. A perpetual decree of 
 • sic vos non vobis condemns him to toil without enjoyment." 
 
 Ireland's experience of State-produced famine, chronic and 
 periodical, was about to be repeated on an unprecedented scale; 
 and in the presence of all the official reports it could never have 
 been pleaded that the guilty government was not aware of its 
 coming. Mr. W. E. Foster, a relief commissioner on behalf 
 of the Society of Friends (afterwards Chief Secretary for Ire- 
 land), wrote from Cleggan, Connemara, on 22nd January, 1847: 
 "Having heard an alarming account of this village, I had ordered 
 two bags of meal to meet me. . . . The distress was appalling ; 
 far beyond my power of description. I was quickly surrounded 
 by a mob of men and women, more like famished dogs than 
 fellow creatures, whose figures, looks and cries all showed that 
 they were suffering the ravening agony of hunger. ... I 
 went into two or three cabins. In one there were two emaciated 
 men lying at full length on the damp floor in their ragged clothes 
 too weak to move — actually worn down to skin and bone. In 
 another a young man lay ill of dysentery ; his mother had pawned 
 everything, even his shoes, to keep him alive, and I never shall 
 forget the resigned, uncomplaining tone with which he told me 
 that all the medicine he wanted was food." 
 
 Mr. A. M. Sullivan, the eminent Irish publicist, wrote with 
 reference to West Munster: "In our district it was a common 
 occurrence to find on opening the front door in early morning, 
 leaning against it the corpse of some victim who in the night had 
 rested in its shelter. We raised a public subscription, and em- 
 ployed two men with horse and cart to go around each day and 
 gather up the dead." 
 
 The Census Commissioners in their comments accompanying 
 the vital statistics a few years later said: "No pen has re- 
 corded the numbers of the forlorn and starving who perished by 
 the wayside or in the ditches, or of the mournful groups, 
 sometimes of whole families, who lay down and died one after 
 another upon the floor of their miserable cabins, and so re- 
 mained uncofflned and unburied till chance unveiled the appal- 
 ling scene. . . . And yet, through all, the forbearance of the 
 Irish peasantry and the calm submission with which they bore 
 the deadliest ills that can fall on man can scarcely be paralleled 
 in the annals of any people." Official Census of Ireland, 1851. 
 
 62 
 
Lord John Russell, Prime Minister, in the English House of 
 Commons : "More than 50,000 families were in that year turned 
 out of their wretched dwellings, without pity and without ref- 
 uge. . . . We have made Ireland — I speak deliberately — we 
 have made it the most degraded and the most miserable country 
 in the world. . . . All the world is crying shame upon us, but 
 we are equally callous to our ignominy and to the results of 
 our mis-government." 
 
 John Mitchel, commenting in the United Irishman of the 4th 
 March, 1848, upon an inquest held on a family named Boland, 
 who, though they tilled about twenty acres of land, had died of 
 starvation. "Now what became of poor Boland's twenty acres 
 of crops? Part of it went to Gibraltar, to victual the garrison; 
 part to South Africa, to provision the robber army; part went 
 to Spain, to pay for the landlord's wine; part to London, to pay 
 the interest of his honor's mortgage to the Jews. The English 
 ate some of it, the Chinese had their share, the Jews and the 
 Gentiles divided it amongst them; and there was none for poor 
 Boland." 
 
 John Mitchel, in his Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps), 
 said: "At the end of six years I can set down these things 
 calmly, but to see them might have driven a wise man mad. 
 There is no need to recount how the assistant barristers and 
 sheriffs, aided by the police, tore down the roof -trees and 
 ploughed up the hearths of village after village . . . how 
 in some hamlets by the seaside, most of the inhabitants being 
 already dead, an adventurous traveller would come upon some 
 family eating a famished ass ; how maniac mothers stowed away 
 their dead children to be devoured at midnight . . . how 
 families, when all was eaten and no hope left, took their last 
 look at the sun, built up their cottage doors that none might 
 see them die or hear their groans, and were found weeks after- 
 wards skeletons on their own hearth." 
 
 The eviction clearances which accompanied and followed the 
 Great Famine were too appalling to be described here. Father 
 Lavelle estimates the number of houses leveled on the eviction 
 of their owners in Ireland in the twenty years 1841 to 1861 at 
 270,000. This is certainly an under-estimate, but at five persons 
 to a family it represents 1,350,000 persons left homeless. The 
 official returns of evictions are considerably under the true num- 
 ber, because they include no cases of eviction but those carried 
 out under the order of a court, whereas numerous evictions were 
 carried out all over the country by mere notice to quit, or by 
 landlord or agent in person without the intervention of any 
 court. Evictions and emigration from economic pressure con- 
 tinued on a large scale for more than thirty years after the 
 Great Famine, and continued down to 1914 on a scale almost 
 as large in proportion to the diminished population. 
 
The Great Famine in Queen Victoria's reign was, in terrible 
 truth, the last great effort of the English Government to exter- 
 minate the Irish nation. We call this treating Ireland as a 
 victim country, that is, worse than international law would allow 
 an enemy country to be treated, because if England had treated 
 the enemy country so badly, civilized States would have inter- 
 vened to stop the barbarity. Thus it was that in the middle 
 of the 19th century, in the reign of "Victoria the Good," the 
 policy of extermination commended to and graciously adopted 
 by Henry VIII of England three centuries before reached its 
 highest development so far. It is now in operation again in 
 another form, and is certain to continue so long as our connec- 
 tion with England lasts. That the Irish race or nation exists 
 at all to-day is a marvelous demonstration of its innate virtue 
 over English brute force. Where was, where is, that cosmo- 
 politan sympathy of which England boasts so much abroad, 
 where she is not so well known? Does anyone still wonder that 
 the Irish people even now fail to see the superiority of the Eng- 
 lish land system to that of ancient Ireland? Can anyone, on a 
 survey of the whole, wonder that the Irish nation desires release 
 once for all from a bondage so terrible? Anyone who still 
 doubts that the governing purpose of the rule which produces 
 these results was, and is, extermination of the Irish nation, may 
 take, not an Irish opinion, but that of the Times newspaper in 
 1863 : "The Celt goes to yield to the Saxon. This land of 160 
 harbours, with its fertile soil, its noble rivers and beautiful lakes, 
 with fertile mines and riches of every kind, is being cleared 
 quietly for the interest and luxury of humanity." The Saturday 
 Review of 28th November, 1863, gloats over what it deems the 
 delightful fact that "silence reigns over the vast solitude of 
 Ireland." 
 
 Arthur Young, an English social economist, states in his 
 Tour of Ireland, after a close study of the country from end to 
 end at its very worst period in the 18th century, that owing to 
 the fertility of the soil, its minerals and other resources, its 
 inland fisheries, its natural facilities for seafaring and trade, 
 its numerous other properties and conditions and the character 
 of its people, Ireland was capable of supporting in comfort a 
 population of 100,000,000. This is a large estimate, and cannot 
 be adequately discussed here. But there is little difference of 
 opinion among competent economists that under its own govern- 
 ment Ireland would be self-supporting with a population of 
 30,000,000. That happens to be about the number of the Irish 
 race at the present time. Unfortunately, owing to English rule, 
 owing especially to the policy of extermination, not quite one- 
 seventh of that number are now in Ireland. Some 20,000,000 of 
 our race are in America, North and South; 6,000,000 scattered 
 in other parts of the world, and a remnant of little more than 
 
 64 
 
4,000,000 cling on to the home of the race. Even these are 
 being attacked by England as these words are being written. Any 
 impartial reader of this section will admit that the existence of 
 the Irish race in such numbers to-day is a marvelous demonstra- 
 tion of manpower. 
 
 96 
 
VI. 
 
 Ireland is Apt for Industries and Trade as an Inde- 
 pendent State 
 
 As in the other departments, Ireland's aptitude for indus- 
 tries and trade is most convincingly illustrated by the number 
 and character of the measures found necessary in order to in- 
 capacitate Ireland. These we now proceed to set forth : 
 
 The Cattle Trade. Some of the Catholic land owners, de- 
 prived of their property as just described, and not fit or dis- 
 posed or personally free to enter foreign military service, thought 
 they might be able to make a living by engaging in the cattle 
 and provision trades, which Ireland, when independent, had al- 
 ways carried on. The English king and parliament had occa- 
 sionally enacted laws hostile to Irish commerce when Ireland 
 was independent and able to disregard them. But the first 
 operative English statute gravely hostile to Irish trade, and con- 
 sequently to her manufactures, was the Cattle and Navigation 
 Act of 1663. This Act was deplored by the most farseeing of 
 the Anglo-Irish, who, having their homes and permanent inter- 
 ests in Ireland were affected themselves by the country being 
 deprived of the only source of prosperity then available. 
 
 After a century of continuous turmoil and the expropriation 
 of the entire nation, there can scarcely have been any manufac- 
 tured products to export. Live stock and raw materials were 
 the only remaining wealth. The penalty the Act imposed for 
 sending large cattle into England was forty shillings a head, 
 and for sheep ten shillings a head; penalties approximately the 
 value of the animals, money being scarce then. The Act there- 
 fore amounted to absolute prohibition. Nevertheless, a Second 
 Cattle Act was passed in 1666, still further restricting Ireland's 
 freedom of trade. While the bill was being discussed in the 
 House of Lords, one of the lords opposing it gave expression 
 to the universal and eternal truism that Ireland, if it had the 
 power, would be as much entitled to desire the king to restrain 
 the trade of- England. Obvious as that truism is, scarcely one 
 in a million of Englishmen has at any time had, or has to-day, 
 the honesty to acknowledge it. That solitary ray of truth had 
 no effect on the progress or content of the bill, which became 
 law in mechanical order and was followed by numerous other 
 Acts; and by Orders in Council having the force of Acts, pro- 
 hibiting expressly or in effect the importation into England of 
 Irish cattle, sheep, swine, beef, mutton, bacon, pork, butter and 
 
 66 
 
cheese — almost all the articles that Ireland could then spare 
 for export. The statutes and orders of those years and of 1670 
 and 71 treated Ireland more severely than a foreign neutral 
 country; in some respects more severely than an enemy 
 country ; in short, as a victim country. The direct result of this 
 legislation was to leave on the hands of the Irish farmers live 
 stock which there was nobody to buy; to stop the normal course 
 of breeding stock; to reduce the value of horses so that many 
 were killed for dog meat; to spread among the poor in cities 
 as well as in the country distress and disease, and to force Ire- 
 land into sheep farming and the development of a woolen in- 
 dustry — the fate of which we shall consider later. For the 
 present, Ireland was prevented from exporting wool to any coun- 
 try except England, and allowed to export it to England on pay- 
 ment of prohibitive duties. Thus held in a vise, prevented from 
 exporting cattle, sheep and wool, she was forced to expand as 
 much as possible the trade of exporting dead meat and other 
 food stuffs and hides as the only available means of obtaining 
 money, and this trade necessarily took time to develop. 
 
 The Provision Trade. In the Middle Ages, for the reasons 
 already stated, there was more mixed continental intercourse with 
 Ireland than with England, both imports and exports comprising 
 a wide range of articles; but no international commerce on the 
 modern scale. Ireland's modern trade in provisions began as 
 soon as the country was settled after the Cromwellian confisca- 
 tions and the stoppage of the trade in cattle and wool; and in 
 the 18"th century it became their biggest trade. War or com- 
 mercial conflict between England and continental. countries fre- 
 quently limited the ports in which Ireland could find a market 
 for her produce, and the market was sometimes such as failed 
 to cover the original cost and the transit charges. The fact is 
 on record that in 1675 Irish beef was selling in Holland and 
 Zealand at a penny a pound. Ireland became so well known as 
 a source of cheap foodstuffs for the purpose of raising money to 
 meet the new imposts that the French and Dutch, and even the 
 English, were able to victual their ships at Irish ports more 
 cheaply than at English. That the trade in foodstuffs did not, 
 under English rule, include corn, as in the time of Ireland's 
 independence, was a consequence of the confiscations and Penal 
 Code, which had transferred from the original owners all or the 
 best parts of their lands to men who, perhaps uncertain how long 
 their new titles might endure, used the lands in pasture, the 
 easiest use without labor. This tendency to grazing in substi- 
 tution for tillage was also encouraged by a resolution adopted in 
 1735 by the colonial House of Commons at the bidding of the 
 English Government, exempting all pasture lands from tithe. 
 Tithes were very onerous whenever and wherever English rule 
 extended in Ireland. The more land was relieved from tithe by 
 
 67 
 
being let out in pasture, the heavier the tithe became on the tilled 
 lands, because they had then to bear the gross amount for the 
 whole parish. The relief was for the wealthy Protestants and 
 absentees; the burden for the working farmers, especially the 
 Catholics, who occupied the least fertile of the lands. On 
 this, Lecky, pro-English historian, says: "Tithes, in their orig- 
 inal theory, are not absolute property, but property assigned 
 in trust for the discharge of certain public duties. In Ireland, 
 when they were not appropriated by laymen, they were paid 
 by an impoverished Catholic peasantry to a clergy who were 
 opposed to their religion, and usually not even resident among 
 them ; and they were paid in such a manner that the heaviest 
 burden lay on the very class who were least able to bear it. 
 It was a common thing for a parish to consist of some 4,000 or 
 5,000 acres of rich pasture land held by a prosperous grazier 
 who had been rapidly amassing a large fortune through the 
 increased price of cattle, and of 300 or 400 acres of inferior 
 land occupied by a crowd of miserable cottiers. In accordance 
 with the vote of the Colonial House of Commons, the former 
 was exempt from the burden, which was thrown on the latter." 
 Furthermore, England during a great part of the 18th cen- 
 tury granted bounties on the export of corn from England, 
 and in effect prohibited the importation of corn. These 
 combined causes made tillage unprofitable in Ireland, killed 
 agriculture, turned immense acres of the country into pasture 
 and forced emigration, with numerous evictions, famine and 
 plague, among those unable from want of money to emigrate. 
 Any Catholics who still had means enabling them to take farms 
 of considerable size were precluded from tilling by the same 
 causes and the additional reason that, after the Cromwellian 
 "Settlement" they could not feel secure in land, were prevented 
 by statute from taking leases except for short periods and sub- 
 ject to conditions which did not justify tilling, and which placed 
 them at the mercy of any informer. As Lecky says : "Real en- 
 terprise and industry amongst the Catholic tenants was destroyed 
 by the law which placed strict bounds to their progress by 
 providing that, if their profits exceeded one-third of the rent, 
 the first Protestant who proved the fact might take their farm." 
 This forced such Catholics into the provision trade, and ac- 
 counts for the large extent to which that trade was in their hands. 
 The Atlantic trade, with the "plantations" (as the American 
 colonies were then called) and the West Indies was the most 
 profitable in which the Irish were able to engage, because of the 
 facility of disposing of cargoes at good prices and getting sale- 
 able cargoes for the homeward journey. Prosperity from this, 
 as from every other source, was of short duration, for the suffi- 
 cient reason that England could not endure that Ireland should 
 become prosperous from any cause. Accordingly, an elaborate 
 
series of English statutes followed in sustained succession, com- 
 pleting each other in every conceivable detail, with the object of 
 clearing Irish ships off the Atlantic and out of existence. See, 
 for example, 22 and 23 Charles II, c. 26 ; 3 and 4 Anne, c. 5 ; 3 
 and 4 Anne, c. 10; 8 Geo. I, c. 18 ; 2 Geo. II, c. 28. These 
 Acts enumerated every product of the Plantations and West 
 Indies for which there was a home market, and prohibited Irish 
 ships from importing them, except to England. They might 
 then be shipped to Ireland. This would involve an additional 
 expenditure of a quarter of the cost of the long voyage, double 
 insurance, double commission, double port dues and double fees 
 — amounting to a loss on the transaction. Some of the Acts 
 also prohibited the exportation of Irish products to the Planta- 
 tions or West Indies unless first landed in England; but this 
 requirement seems to have been evaded in some way. This 
 English legislation in effect prevented Ireland trading with 
 the Plantations or West Indies except at a disadvantage intended 
 to prevent her, and clearly illustrates how the legislation of a 
 dominant country can control and destroy the trade and conse- 
 quently the industries of a subject country, and how impotent 
 a subordinate parliament in the latter is to prevent this. Also 
 observe the moral inconsistency of at one and the same time 
 ruling Ireland through a branch or agency of an English govern- 
 ment as an English dominion, and yet enacting and enforcing 
 such laws against England's own branch, agency, or dependency; 
 treating Ireland not as a partner, dependency, colony or neu- 
 tral country, or enemy country, but as a victim country. It is 
 the treatment of an enemy country with the addition of the 
 peculiar elements of deliberate persecution which international 
 law would not allow in the case of an enemy country, but 
 overlooks when practiced in fhe shelter of domesticity. This 
 is important as a justification of our irreconcilability with the 
 guilty country, which we know from living experience to be 
 as guilty to-day as in the times of the statutes cited, and which 
 still enforces the unfair conditions created by those statutes. We 
 repeat and emphasize as a matter of constitutional importance 
 affecting Ireland's restoration to her ancient place of sovereign 
 independence the persistent treatment of Ireland as a victim 
 country. 
 
 The Woolen Industry. As already mentioned, the Acts which 
 prohibited and destroyed the Irish trade in cattle, with other 
 causes, compelled the adoption of sheep-farming to an enor- 
 mous extent and the growth of« an Irish woolen manufacture. 
 The treatment of this industry deserves very special attention 
 as furnishing a characteristic example of England's treatment 
 of a victim country. The woolen industry began with every 
 promise and potency of success in a country famed for its 
 sheep pastures and its superfluity of woolen and linen products 
 
ages before an English foot rested on Irish soil. Soil, climate, 
 abundance and quality of wool, and the dexterity of the people 
 combined to give ground for reasonable hope that the revived 
 industry would surpass that of ancient days. These elements 
 of success were the very things to awaken English vigilance and 
 excite England's jealousy. England saw in such a project in 
 Ireland only another opportunity, of which she availed, to in- 
 flict a new injustice, this time the greatest and least defensible 
 that any one country is known to have inflicted upon another 
 in their peaceful commercial relations. 
 
 As early as 1545 an Act, 33 Henry VIII, c. 16, prohibited 
 the importation of Irish wool into England. But the first de- 
 liberate blow at the Irish woolen industry and trade in goods' 
 manufactured from wool was the English Act of 1660, 12 
 Charles II, c. 4. This Act -hit the English branch of the Irish 
 trade in manufactured wool, but did not interfere with the for- 
 eign trade. Another Act of the same year, 12 Charles II, c. 32, 
 and an Act of 1662, 14 Charles II, c. 18, made it a felony, that 
 is punishable with death, to export wool from Ireland anywhere 
 but to England, and confiscated the ship and cargo, and goods 
 and chattels of the master, if wool were brought into England 
 except in the raw state on payment of a heavy duty. That was 
 England's notion of fair dealing. 
 
 In 1697 a violent agitation was fomented in the centers of 
 the woolen industry in England, alleging decay of trade owing 
 to the increase of woolen manufacture in Ireland, and calling 
 for the suppression of the latter, though none of it was going 
 to England. As a result of this and the decision of the Eng- 
 lish Commissioners of Trade thereon, a bill was drafted and 
 sent in January, 1698, to the colonial parliament in Ireland 
 for enactment. That body for dnce hesitated to pass, at Eng- 
 land's dictation, a measure conceived and drafted for the pur- 
 pose of destroying Ireland's promising young industry. It 
 had the negative courage to do nothing. The agitation in 
 England was kept raging, and culminated in addresses from the 
 English Lords and Commons to the king. The Lords repre- 
 sented to him that the growth of the Irish Woolen Industry 
 and trade was so detrimental to the corresponding industry in 
 England that unless promptly remedied it would necessitate "very 
 strict laws to prohibit and suppress the same," and urged his 
 majesty to represent to the Irish that if they turned to a linen in- 
 dustry instead "they shall receive all the countenance, favor and 
 protection for the encouragement and promotion of the linen 
 manufacture to all the advantages and profit they can be capable 
 of." The Commons' address was similar, urging the king and all 
 in his employment in Ireland "to make it their care and use their 
 utmost diligence to hinder the exportation of wool from Ireland, 
 except to be imported hither, and for discouraging the woolen 
 
 70 
 
manufacture and encouraging the linen manufacture in Ireland, 
 to which we shall always be ready to give our utmost assist- 
 ance." As Mr. Froude says : "The king replied briefly that the 
 wish of parliament should be carried out; and Ireland was in- 
 vited to apply the knife to her own throat." English in Ireland, 
 1, 297. England's agents in Ireland gave similar assurances re- 
 garding practical encouragement to be given to a linen industry, 
 provided the woolen were discontinued. No one cared what 
 would become of the people if thus deprived of employment. 
 One of the English pamphleteers had the Hunnish frankness 
 to say that it would be "more advantageous to England by one- 
 half to buy these, goods and to throw them into the sea than 
 to suffer Ireland to sell cheaper than we can in foreign markets." 
 How like the English of to-day. The fact that the industry 
 was carried on in the South, where Irish Catholics were still 
 more numerous, intensified the English determination to stamp 
 it out. Later in the same year, 1698, the colonial body called 
 "Irish Parliament," at the second time of asking, after petty 
 opposition on some finikin points, passed, by a majority of 6-1, 
 the Act 10, William III, c. 5, Irish, "a measure dictated by 
 England in England's interest for the destruction of Ireland's 
 new and promising industry and trade. It imposed an addi- 
 tional duty of four shillings per twenty shillings in value on 
 broadcloth exported from Ireland; two shillings per twenty shil- 
 lings in value on all manufacturers of the New Drapery except 
 frieze, and so on. These duties were designed to be, and im- 
 mediately proved to be, prohibitive and destructive of Ireland's 
 staple industry at the time, and one of the most suitable indus- 
 tries she had ever undertaken. 
 
 Bearing in mind the circumstances of the time, one can 
 estimate the vigor of the woolen industry from the statement 
 of a contemporary writer that it was giving employment to 
 12,000 Protestant families in Dublin and to 30,000 Protestant 
 families in the rest of Ireland. They were, from the colonial 
 point of view, the only people of real importance and worth 
 considering. But a much larger number of Catholic families 
 had taken up the industry so far as allowed, it being a domestic 
 and congenial industry. The craven Irish Act which threw 
 those people out of employment was followed in 1699 by the 
 English Act, 10 and 11 William III, c. 10, as to the purpose 
 of which there could be no ambiguity. It prohibited perpetu- 
 ally the exportation from Ireland of all goods made of or mixed 
 with wool, except to England with the license of the Commis- 
 sioners of Revenue ; and the English prohibitory duties existing 
 since 1660 were retained in force. Thus every door was barred 
 and bolted, and. the people of Ireland, commercially speaking, 
 were marooned and imprisoned on their island as though they 
 were lepers. Lecky says: "The English were still unsatisfied. 
 
 71 
 
The Irish woolen manufacturers had already been excluded by 
 
 the Navigation Act from the whole colonial market; they had 
 been virtually excluded from England herself by duties amount- 
 ing to prohibition. A law of crushing severity enacted by the 
 English Parliament in 1699 completed the work and prohibited 
 the Irish from exporting their manufactured wool to any coun- 
 try whatever. So ended the fairest promise Ireland had ever 
 known of becoming a prosperous and happy country. The ruin 
 was complete and final." Subserviency had its reward in the 
 most complete system of bondage ever devised by a hostile legis- 
 lature; a great young industry destroyed, and a blow dealt at 
 the prosperity of Ireland from which it was not afforded even 
 a possibility of recovering until 1779. By that time the eighty 
 intervening years of restrictions had done their work so thor- 
 oughly that recovery was not possible. The blow was one 
 from which, owing to the continuance of foreign rule, Ireland 
 still suffers. "Thus deprived of their export trade, and not 
 having a home trade of sufficient extent to maintain their estab- 
 lishments, the Irish manufacturers emigrated, some to the Prot- 
 estant States of Germany, where they founded manufactories 
 for the celebrated Saxon Cloth — some, who were Catholics, to 
 the North of Spain; and many, both Protestants and Catholics, 
 to France, where they founded establishments at Rouen and other 
 places, and were warmly received by Louis XIV., who guaran- 
 teed to the Protestants the free use of their religion, although 
 he had previously revoked the edict of Nantes." William Camp- 
 bell, Commentaries on Ireland. 
 
 The Anglo-Irish lawyers whined that the last-mentioned 
 English statute was unconstitutional and illegal, Ireland having 
 at the time a legislature of her own. They had what pleased 
 them to call a legislature ; Ireland had none. The English Act 
 of 1699 was neither more nor less legal than the Cattle and 
 Navigation Acts and the numerous other English Acts whose 
 purpose was to operate to the detriment of Ireland. A parlia- 
 ment which, when tested, had, at the bidding of England, basely 
 betrayed the interests of the people it claimed to represent, 
 and shown itself not alone subordinate but contemptible, had 
 proved for all time the impotence and the danger of a sub- 
 ordinate parliament. The colonists who had made their petty 
 parliament not Ireland's instrument but England's tool against 
 Ireland in, for instance, making it felony for Irish Catholics 
 — still four-fifths of the population — to educate their children, 
 now found it made almost felony for themselves to exercise 
 the skill of their own hands in a country they called their own. 
 If there could be a lower depth for a parliament to reach, it 
 was reached a few years later, when the parliament sent its wail 
 to Queen Anne to relieve Ireland from the commercial de- 
 pression which itself had been instrumental in causing. In 
 
 72 
 
1719 the predominant parliament went further, and by the De- 
 claratory Act of that year made all English statutes applicable 
 to Ireland. 
 
 Many tragic results followed the wilful destruction of Ire- 
 land's woolen industry and trade, the most tragic and most 
 usual being the general and severe distress of the people in 
 town and country, reaching to widespread famine every decade 
 or so; a result which continued for fully sixty years. Of this 
 prolonged enforced hunger of a nation, the destruction of the 
 woolen industry was the chief cause. But it was not allowed 
 to operate alone. Other restraints upon Irish industries and 
 trade were added from time to time, as often as. any enterprise 
 in Ireland showed vigor capable of success, and Ireland was 
 articulate only in a continual wail of anguish. When at last, 
 in 1779, in obedience to a popular, not a parliamentary, demand 
 the restraint upon trade was removed, the people had lost 
 knowledge of and skill in the higher and more profitable branches 
 of woolen and other manufactures; the countries they had been 
 accustomed to supply now supplied themselves; the quality of 
 Irish wool, like the skill of the people, had deteriorated from 
 gross neglect; and the changed circumstances of country and 
 people rendered immediate industrial revival not possible. 
 
 The Linen Industry. Strafford, Deputy of Charles I., in 
 his letters urged the advisability of "introducing" a linen in- 
 stead of a woolen industry in Ireland, remarking, as many other 
 Englishmen did, on the suitability of the soil, water, climate, 
 and the skill of the women, who were all brought up to spin, 
 carefully omitting to state that it was English rule in the few 
 preceding generations that had destroyed both the linen and the 
 woolen industries in. Ireland. His execution and the Cromwellian 
 wars frustrated any scheme Strafford may have devised on 
 the subject. No practical steps in that direction were taken until 
 1698, when William III. redeemed his promise by bringing 
 over Louis Crommelin, a Huguenot refugee, who settled at Lis- 
 burn, within ten miles of Belfast, as the best place for estab- 
 lishing the proposed linen industry. Crommelin was appointed 
 "Overseer of the Royal Linen Manufactory of Ireland," with 
 suitable emoluments, patents, and some financial assistance. In 
 1705, the British parliament, on an urgent appeal from Ireland 
 reminding them of their, promise, gave their first and last en- 
 couragement to the Irish linen industry by the Act 3 and 4 Anne, 
 c. 8, allowing Ireland to export, to the plantations only, her 
 inferior brown and white linens only, not the best she could 
 produce, which would have been the most profitable, England 
 reserving to herself the exportation of high-class linens, of 
 course without limit of destination. Further, Irish ships export- 
 ing the inferior linens were not relieved from the prohibition 
 of bringing back any cargo to Ireland on the return voyage. 
 
 73 
 
There was not much time for the growth of a new industry 
 within these narrow restrictions, when the Act 3, Geo. I c. 21, 
 made the foregoing statutory permission to export even the 
 inferior linens conditional on British linens being allowed into 
 Ireland duty free, while Irish linens sent to England were still 
 subject to a duty amounting to prohibition. Reciprocity! This 
 was how England kept her promise to "give the utmost assist- 
 ance" to the new industry which she had forced Ireland to take 
 up on the strength of that promise. The impotent colonial 
 parliament saw no alternative but to submit to these hostile 
 terms for the destruction of the linen industry, as they had 
 submitted to the destruction of the woolen. That was the end 
 of the promise of generous encouragement. But it was not the 
 end of England's meddling with the Irish industry. 
 
 So timid and paralyzed was the colonial parliament from 
 despotism without and corruption within that for more than 
 forty years it did not venture to do even the little it could 
 have done within its narrow range, until the famine of 1742 
 forced its hands. In 1743, when, as Lecky says, "the country 
 had sunk into a condition of appalling wretchedness," the par- 
 liament began a series of useful measures and gave practical 
 encouragement by bounties, prizes, and otherwise, to the linen, 
 hempen and other industries ; but when an attempt was made to 
 extend the linen industry to Kilkenny and other suitable cen- 
 ters in the South, where Catholics formed a majority of the 
 population and had been left without employment by the de- 
 struction of the woolen industry, the British Government per- 
 emptorily prevented any such extension, and its simulacrum in 
 Dublin, whether willingly or not, enforced the prohibition. Thus 
 the linen industry was confined to the North. 
 
 In 1750 the British parliament, finding that Ireland was sup- 
 plying large quantities of sailcloth, canvas and cordage to the 
 British and other navies and mercantile marines, took alarm, 
 could not endure the continuance of such a profitable trade in 
 Ireland, and enacted 23 Geo. II., c. 33, imposing heavy duties 
 upon .all such articles imported to Great Britain and granting 
 bounties upon all kinds of hemp manufacture exported to Ire- 
 land or to other countries, thus dealing a deadly blow at the Irish 
 hempen industry which had grown up as an adjunct to the 
 linen. This statute, combined with economic and political pres- 
 sure, forced Ireland to discontinue her bpunties to her linen and 
 hempen manufacturers, and to admit English bounty-fed sail- 
 cloth and canvas duty free! This enabled the British manu- 
 facturers to flood the Irish market with their goods, until within 
 a short time the Irish hempen industry was almost extinct. 
 The British parliament granted bounties on linens exported from 
 England while withholding from the colonial parliament in 
 Ireland power to pursue a like policy. When in these circum- 
 
 74 
 
stances Irish manufacturers attempted to participate in the 
 English bounties, by shipping their goods via English ports, 
 they found that, so far as they were concerned, all the advan- 
 tages of the bounties were swallowed up in the extra freight, 
 insurance, factorage, loss of time and worry. Nevertheless, 
 England, not feeling sufficiently protected by these intrinsic 
 means, her parliament enacted in 1756 that "No Irish linen ex- 
 ported from England shall be entitled to a bounty if it were the 
 property of a resident of Ireland." An Englishman was free 
 to avail of the bounty, even on Irish linen, but not a "resident 
 in Ireland." That was England's interest in the colonists that 
 garrisoned Ireland for her. That was her illustration of the 
 alleged common rights- of fellow subjects. In addition to the 
 direct national injury to Ireland by this permanent hostility of 
 England to all Irish industries, it is important to remember that 
 some of the best mechanics inevitably go from a country where 
 their craft is frowned upon and ill paid to one in which it 
 receives adequate pay and every possible encouragement — to 
 the permanent loss of the oppressed country. The result was 
 that neither bounties nor any other form of encouragement that 
 the colonial parliament was now capable of giving could make 
 either lint-farming or linen industry pay. Though less suitable 
 for Ireland, and consequently less profitable, than an unfettered 
 woolen industry would have been, success could have been 
 achieved in linen also under elementary fair terms from Eng- 
 land. Whether it got fair terms the foregoing facts answer. 
 "All that can be said for the monopolists is, that they tolerated 
 the Irish linen trade for a time, as it did not clash with their 
 interests, but as soon as they thought of manufacturing linen 
 the spirit of monopoly was evoked and a law was passed pro- 
 hibiting the importation of chequered, striped, printed, painted, 
 stained or dyed linens, of the manufacture of Ireland and grant- 
 ing bounties on the exportation of such linens of the manufac- 
 ture of England." Campbell, Commentaries on Ireland. 
 
 William's pledge supported by that of the English Lords 
 and Commons and their agents in Ireland was, it is true, but a 
 compact forced by England upon Ireland. Acording to what 
 system of morality did that fact release England from keeping 
 the compact it had forced upon, and which being accepted on 
 behalf of, Ireland, by the body which England maintained as an 
 Irish parliament? 
 
 The Cotton Industry. The Act 7, Geo. I., c. 7, imposed 
 penalties on any person using cotton goods in Great Britain un- 
 less made in Great Britain. The object and effect of this was 
 to kill a cotton industry which Ireland was just then attempting 
 to establish. The same English people who got their parliament 
 to enact so, at a later period when the Irish people began to 
 sign Non-Importation Agreements denounced those agree- 
 
 75 
 
ments as immoral ! Let us now see exactly what those immoral 
 agreements were. Agreements adopted by a society of ladies 
 in Dublin in 1779, agreed to by all women throughout Ireland 
 who desired to be considered patriotic, and thought by con- 
 temporaries to be one of the most important reasons for the 
 extraordinary success of the men's movement which it was 
 intended to assist: "Resolved, that we will not wear any article 
 that is not the product or manufacture of this country, and 
 that we will not permit the addresses of any of the other sex 
 who are not equally zealous in the cause of this country." Dean 
 Swift had attempted, about fifty years earlier, to set up such a 
 movement, but found that he was in advance of his time. 
 
 The Glass Industry. It is common knowledge that some 
 industries flourish in countries into which all the materials for 
 them have to be imported. England herself is one of the 
 greatest examples of this. Ireland is rich in many of the 
 ingredients used in the manufacture of different kinds of glass, 
 especially crown glass, for which kelp is essential. The Act 
 10, Geo. II., c. 12, prohibited the importation to Ireland of 
 any glass unless of British manufacture. Glass of British 
 manufacture being scarce and costly, the Irish began to make 
 glass for themselves and for exportation. Several glass fac- 
 tories were set up, the principal one being at Birr, where, after 
 some time, a great variety of glass was produced. The industry 
 progressed so long as it was allowed to do so. This was only 
 until its product began to compete successfully with English 
 glass. Although there was no prospect of an increased glass 
 industry in England, and it never grew beyond insignificant 
 dimensions, yet the Act 19, Geo. II., c. 12, s. 14, prohibited 
 Ireland from exporting glass to any country whatever. This 
 illustrates how completely a subordinate parliament may be 
 ignored and the country it pretends to represent injured. It 
 ■also illustrates the difference between the treatment of an 
 enemy and of a victim country. Further, it and the whole com- 
 mercial policy of England towards Ireland illustrates what Eng- 
 land subsequently denounced in Ireland as exclusive dealing 
 or boycotting, the very essence of her own policy. The glass 
 manufacture could never have become a staple industry like the 
 woolen ; but the principle involved in its arbitrary destruction 
 by an outside power was the same, with this difference that 
 the gain to England by that act of despotism was so paltry 
 as to be contemptible. Here was an industry which Ireland 
 might have been allowed to practise without competing with 
 any appreciable English industry. Can any Englishman, can 
 any man suggest any reason for the wilful destruction of this 
 Irish industry other than malignancy? The rapidity with which 
 the revived glass industry progressed in Waterford when the 
 restrictions were removed a generation later enables us to esti- 
 
 76 
 
male the considerable dimensions to which a glass industry 
 in Ireland might have grown in the first instance if allowed. 
 
 Perhaps some of those supercharitable persons who say 
 that the English Government never meant to be unjust will 
 explain the singular and uniform accuracy with which it always 
 did the unjust thing to Ireland, whatever it may have meant. 
 The system of foreign rule which combines the joint methods 
 of direct extermination from the land and indirect extermina- 
 tion by the economic pressure of commercial restrictions, and 
 which has produced the ghastly results set forth under these 
 heads, still persists, changed in form as these results them- 
 selves necessitated, but in essence, in spirit, and in purpose the 
 same. Express statutory restrictions on Irish industries and 
 trade are no longer necessary, because they have done their 
 zvork, paralyzed Ireland, and in their effects keep her paralyzed 
 so long as the connection with England lasts. That is the only 
 reason why restrictive statutes are no longer resorted to. The 
 system set up in Ireland is doing England's work effectively as 
 it stands. The examples given could be duplicated, in every 
 department of English rule. As no one is so blind as one who 
 will not see, so no government is so bad as a government 
 resolved to be bad. If anyone doubts this as regards indus- 
 tries, let him try, or watch the trial of, an attempt to found 
 any new industry having the elements of success. He will 
 soon find himself, as the writer of this lias found himself, 
 in a maze of difficulties created by the English Gov- 
 ernment agency; and an appeal to an English Min- 
 ister will elicit, in substance if not in words, the answer that 
 my attempt elicited, namely, "Ireland must be kept to agri- 
 culture," the irony of the situation being that the same system 
 of government which thus warns Ireland off from a free choice 
 of industries has cleared the Irish people off, and keeps them 
 off, the parts of the country where the soil is most suitable 
 for agriculture. Thus we are checked and fettered in every 
 direction. Should the doubt relate to commerce, he has only 
 to remember how, so late as 1913, the English Government 
 allowed an English shipping company to" break its contract and 
 cease calling at Queenstown Harbor on its Atlantic voyages and 
 then forbade the Hamburg-Amerika company to allow its ships 
 to call there instead. The permanent policy of England is to 
 keep Ireland weak, to kill industries in order to make Ireland 
 a market for English products and things England commands. 
 If that policy be indefensible in the large, as herein set out, 
 it is still less defensible in the details of administration, each 
 of which, set out by itself, would appear trivial, but all of 
 which are breaches of a great principle and, operating together, 
 affect the daily lives of the whole Irish population and force 
 them to break all natural ties and fly out of their country. 
 
 77 
 
"Is it not then a bitter satire on the mode on which opin- 
 ions are formed on the more important problems of human 
 nature and life, to find public instructors of the greatest pre- 
 tensions imputing the backwardness of Irish industry and the 
 want of energy of the Irish people in improving their condi- 
 tions to a peculiar indolence and insouciance of the Celtic race? 
 Of all the vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration 
 of the effect of social and moral influences in the human mind, 
 the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct 
 and character to inherent natural differences." John Stuart 
 Mill, Principles of Political Economy, II, 392. 
 
 "Of all the oppressions with which your England had af- 
 flicted this country, there was not one which, by means how- 
 ever various, did not tend towards a common end; and whether 
 you proscribed her religion or warred upon her morals ; whether 
 you engulfed her in apathy, or provoked her to rebellion; 
 whether you assailed her with confiscations or withheld from 
 her her rights; whether with plenary authority and the bell, 
 book and candle of the State, you passed an interdict on her 
 for ages, and committed her to darkness and the blank of out- 
 lawry; or imparted to her the perfidious and terrible gift of 
 laws restricting her legally from civil and religious privileges 
 when these first asserted themselves; from property, when prop- 
 erty was enfranchised; from education, when knowledge moved 
 abroad; from commerce, when commerce became a power in 
 the world; the tendency of yotsr versatile policy continued un- 
 changed, and its result has been the reduction of this land to 
 poverty." Aubrey de Vere, English Misrule and Irish Mis- 
 deeds. 
 
 78 
 
VII. 
 
 Ireland is Financially Able to Discharge the Duties 
 of an Independent State 
 
 The Peace Congress has a right to be assured of Ireland's 
 financial ability to discharge the duties of an independent State; 
 and although this, being an inherent right in possession, might 
 have been set forth under that heading, we deem it more satis- 
 factory to keep it separate, concurring with Burke in our 
 estimate of its importance: "As all great qualities of the mind 
 which operate in public, ,and are not merely suffering and 
 passive, require force for their display, the revenue, which is 
 the # spring of power, becomes in its administration the sphere 
 of "every active virtue. Public virtue, being of a nature mag- 
 nificent and splendid, instituted for great things, and conversant 
 about great concerns, requires abundant scope and room, and 
 cannot spread and grow under confinement, and in circum- 
 stances straitened, narrow and sordid. Through the revenue 
 alone the body politic can act in its true genius and character, 
 and therefore it will display just so much of its collective virtue, 
 and as much of that virtue which may characterize those who 
 move it, and are, as it were, its life and guiding principle, as 
 it is possessed of a just revenue. For from hence not only 
 magnanimity and liberality and beneficence, fortitude and provi- 
 dence, and the tutelary protection of all good arts, derive their 
 food and the growth of their organs, but continence and self- 
 denial and labor and vigilance and frugality, and whatever else 
 there is in which the mind shows itself above the appetite, are 
 nowhere more in their proper element than in the provision and 
 distribution of public wealth." 
 
 Ireland is, in consequence of her wealth and natural re- 
 sources generally, in a better position to discharge the duties 
 of an independent State than are some existing small independ- 
 ent States, with whose public wealth comparisons may be drawn 
 from the information about to be submitted. England, which 
 ought to know, reports differently. As all England's reports of 
 Ireland are different from the facts, so is this; and since her 
 statesmen do know the facts on this subject, and report con- 
 trary to them, we leave the Congress to draw the conclusion. 
 Whether Ireland is rich or poor is an important concern for the 
 Irish people; should not be for England any more than for any 
 other country. But we may examine the subject on its merits, 
 and incidentally England's affected altruism. If one of the 
 
 79 
 
most fertile countries in Europe be really too poor to under- 
 take the responsibilities of an independent State, the facts set 
 
 forth in this Statement show the cause of the poverty. Many 
 a nation larger and of greater pretensions would have long since 
 succumbed and disappeared under the tyranny under which 
 Ireland has groaned. Ireland, on the contrary, has in the 
 process shown that she was possessed of more natural wealth 
 than several of the independent States of Europe, and was 
 spending more annually on her subjection than some of those 
 States spend on the maintenance of their independence. The 
 British Government know this from the amount of money 
 brought into their Treasury out of Ireland continually since 
 they entered our country, and they know it with regard to the 
 past on authority not refutable by them — the authority of their 
 own expert financial commissioners appointed by themselves. 
 As the misrepresentation of Ireland in this respect proceeds only 
 from England, the most conclusive method of showing what 
 Ireland's financial resources are is to set forth England's finan- 
 cial gains from Ireland, and the amount of financial injustice 
 practiced upon Ireland, that is, the amount of money that is 
 gone to England from Ireland in excess of what the administra- 
 tion should cost. Ireland could be efficiently governed, admin- 
 istered and defended at the present time on a gross annual ex- 
 penditure of £10,000,000. Any greater expenditure is due to 
 the cost of repression and extravagance inseparable from for- 
 eign rule. Ireland is at present being taxed for the benefit of 
 England at the rate of £40,000,000 a year. This is at once a 
 monstrous injustice and a conclusive proof of the proposition 
 of this section. 
 
 _ Every material injustice to a country is in a sense a finan- 
 cial injustice. Most of those set forth under those heads in 
 this Statement produced, and are still producing, vast financial 
 consequences. But for convenience we will in this place confine 
 ourselves to actual money transactions. Full justice of restitu- 
 tion to Ireland would require a beginning at some of the his- 
 torical epochs, such as the Battle of Kinsale or the Battle of 
 the Boyne. For "brevity and verifiable accuracy we confine 
 ourselves to the period from the year 1800 to the present 
 time. The general objects of the Act of Union of that year 
 were political, financial and fraudulent; to be achieved, not 
 by a multiplicity of statutes as previously, but by one compre- 
 hensive scheme of destroying and permanently preventing Ire- 
 land trading with any country but England; destroying and 
 permanently preventing Irish manufactures; making- Ireland 
 dependent for as many of her requirements as possible upon 
 England and other countries through England only; union 
 and amalgamation of customs and abolition of tariffs between 
 Ireland and England, in order that as soon as the different cir- 
 
 80 
 
cumstances of the two countries rendered it possible, the taxes 
 in both countries should be assimilated, and Ireland should thus 
 be compelled to pay, in addition to her own requirements, a 
 large sum towards the maintenance of the huge imperial estab- 
 lishment and its vast commerce in which she should have no 
 share. Her knowledge of imperial greatness was to be, and 
 actually is, limited to the knowledge of the enormity of the bur- 
 den placed upon her for its maintenance; in other words, the 
 cost of her own ruin. The fraudulent object of the Union was 
 to deprive Ireland of control of the accounts of her own pub- 
 lic money; so that she should be constantly drained without be- 
 ing able to ascertain until some years subsequently, and then 
 only from England's accountants, what her current taxation 
 and expenditure were; that she might, from the pressure of 
 other grievances, not pay close attention to this one; and that 
 she should never be in a position to command a clear balance 
 sheet of her revenue and expenditure down to any recent date. 
 The obliteration by those means of every trace of nationality 
 and of sentiment connected therewith was the political object 
 of the Union. 
 
 The essential economic differences between the two coun- 
 tries made assimilation of taxes impracticable except by de- 
 grees. It has been carried out at intervals since ; in every case 
 hitting Ireland severely. In pursuance of this policy, in 1819. 
 the duty on unmanufactured tobacco was raised from one 
 shilling to three shillings per pound, and that on manufactured 
 tobacco from one shilling to sixteen shillings. This killed at one 
 stroke an attempt then being made in Ireland to found a new 
 industry of growing and manufacturing tobacco. The stamp 
 and tea duties were also increased, but not so heavily. The 
 next substantial increase was in 1853, when the income tax was 
 first imposed upon Ireland — an imposition condemned as un- 
 just by every English body since set up to examine the sub- 
 ject of the taxation of Ireland. The disastrous effect upon Ire- 
 land, an agricultural country, of the repeal of the English corn 
 laws has been mentioned in a preceding section, and is a classic 
 illustration, first, of the immense financial result of a law having 
 a different primary purpose, and, secondly, of how a dominant 
 country can, and does, enrich herself at the expense of a sub- 
 ject country, apart from taxation, and justify itself on the plea 
 of equality of treatment. 
 
 In 1896 a Financial Relations Commission, consisting of 
 eleven British members and four Irish, whose investigations 
 did not extend further back than 1800, and therefore did not 
 reach to the most glaring cases of injustice set forth in this 
 Statement, after two years spent examining statistics and wit- 
 nesses, found and reported that Ireland had been since the 
 Union paying one-twelfth part of the whole expenditure of the 
 
 81 
 
"United Kingdom," whereas according to her comparative tax- 
 able capacity she should bear at most only one-twenty-first 
 part; so that she had contributed during the period an annual 
 taxation of at least £2,750,000 in excess of even the British 
 estimate of her due proportion. This is set forth in a blue- 
 book published by the British Government. Any British states- 
 man who, in the face of this official British evidence alleges that 
 Ireland would be unable to maintain and defend herself as an 
 independent State, knows he is alleging an untruth. It has 
 been calculated on the system adopted by the Commissioners 
 that this excessive taxation from 1800 to 1914 amounted to an 
 aggregate of about £400,000,000, to which must now be added 
 the enormous increase occasioned by the war. For example the 
 total taxation of Ireland in 1913, the last year before the war, 
 was, in round figures, £11,000,000; and this included the general 
 average of excess — £2,750,000 — which has never been ad- 
 justed. As a result of the war, the present taxation of Ireland 
 is at the rate of £40,000,000 a year. A great purpose of striv- 
 ing to prolong the connection is to compel Ireland to pay Eng- 
 land's war debt. 
 
 Let it be distinctly understood, the £400,000,000 excessive 
 taxes from 1800 to 1914 was expenditure in excess of what the 
 foreign government of Ireland had actually cost during that 
 period, therefore a net profit to England ; and that the gov- 
 ernment being foreign, and against the will of the people, was, 
 as such governments always are, more expensive and less pro- 
 ductive than a native government would have been. How indis- 
 putably true were Grattan's words: "Ireland, like every en- 
 slaved 1 country, will ultimately be compelled to pay for her own 
 subjugation." In presence of these facts, officially ascertained, 
 it is a gross display of either ignorance or malice to talk about 
 the "mystery" of Ireland's continued decay and poverty side 
 by side with England's ever-growing prosperity. The figures 
 account for one reason why Egland's prosperity ever grows. 
 The only real mystery in the case is, how Ireland has survived 
 such iniquitous rule. Her survival is clearly due to the extraor- 
 dinary wealth of her resources and industry of her people, 
 which England wants to continue appropriating. What the 
 figures prove for the present purpose is, that a country which 
 has paid out this vast sum of money without return, in addi- 
 tion to what the actual government of the country has cost, 
 could, at the present rate of taxation, rule, and administer and 
 defend herself on the same scale as Holland, Denmark, Sweden, 
 or Norway, and have a handsome balance to spend on her 
 urgent purposes of industrial and other development. At the 
 present time England is extracting from Ireland an annual rev- 
 enue of more than 27,000,000 pounds for imperial purposes over 
 and above what efficient government and defence of Ireland 
 
 82 
 
should cost. So much for the public drain of money from 
 Ireland. 
 
 Many attempts have been madcto calculate the gross amount 
 of money drawn from Ireland to England through all the 
 numerous channels, such as rents to absentee landlords, tithes 
 to absentee clergymen, salaries and pensions to absentee officials, 
 enormous law costs, paid in London in cases which should 
 properly have been dealt with in Ireland, and so on, without 
 any return whatever. All this directly diminishes the wealth 
 of one country for the benefit of the other, without anything in 
 the nature of exchange. The late Mr. O'Neill Daunt, an able 
 and scrupulous investigator who devoted many years of his 
 life to the study of this subject, says: "The aggregate drains 
 of income have been estimated by careful inquiries to amount 
 to 13,000,000 pounds per annum." This would amount to 
 1,300,000,000 pounds drawn out of Ireland to England in the 
 l&th century. Certain items included in this have disappeared, 
 and others are disappearing; but since fresh items as heavy are 
 taking their place, the gross sum continues approximately cor- 
 rect. It is an insult, as well as an untruth, to say that a country 
 which has borne all the foregoing burdens for the benefit of a 
 wealthy neighbor, would be unable to pay her own way if freed 
 from that neighbor. 
 
 Having regard to the destruction of her -industries, her 
 trade, and her people by that neighbor, to all the forms of mis- 
 government which Ireland has been subjected, to her conse- 
 quent backward condition as compared with self-ruled coun- 
 tries, and to the very large sum of money necessary to enable 
 her to recover lost ground and overtake in the race of progress 
 free countries with which in other respects she is comparable, 
 and differing from England in having neither power nor de- 
 sire that any other people should pay our way, we are, even 
 though able to pay our way, unable to pay reparation charges, 
 and clearly entitled in accordance with international law and 
 the practice of Great States, to restitution of the money found 
 by a British Royal Commission to be due to us, and to repara- 
 tion for the damage inflicted upon us by English rule. 
 
 If asked by the Peace Congress to accept less than the full 
 amount, we would for the sake of severing the ruinous con- 
 nection with England, for the sake of peace, and for the sake 
 of obtaining an international guarantee that our independence 
 shall be respected, accept from England in full and final dis- 
 charge of her debt to us the sum of 500,000,000 pounds. 
 
 83 
 
VIII. 
 
 Ireland is Fit and Prepared to Resume the Responsi- 
 bilities, Internal and External, of an 
 Independent State 
 
 As in other departments, so in this, the best way to show 
 our ability to resume the responsibilities of independence is to 
 submit an account of the efforts of our enemy — England — to 
 keep us unfit and unprepared. That efforts for such a purpose 
 have been made, that they have been elaborated with the ut- 
 most ingenuity and unscrupulousness, and that they have to be 
 renewed continually and persistently, attests more conclusively 
 than other evidence could possibly do, English hostility on the 
 one side, and on the other the extraordinary vitality and energy 
 of those Irish attributes and qualities of a self-sufficient nation 
 claimed in the earlier sections of this Statement ; since the mere 
 suppression of them requires the enormous expenditure of the 
 force of a mighty empire. The evidence has this further ad- 
 vantage that, being furnished unintentionally by the enemy, its 
 authenticity is unquestionable; and the enemy is specially 
 estopped from denying it. All this is conclusively demonstrated 
 by the facts of each department we have touched upon. The 
 effort, unsurpassed in history, to exterminate the whole Irish 
 nation by direct expulsion from the land has proved more con- 
 clusively than anything else could do Ireland's fertility in man- 
 power. The huge and persistent effort to destroy Irish com- 
 merce has proved more conclusively than anything else could do 
 the ability of an independent Ireland to become a commercial 
 country. The huge and persistent effort to prevent us having 
 any manufacturing industries, and to destroy such as we ven- 
 tured to found, has proved more conclusively than anything else 
 could do the ability of an independent Ireland to become an 
 industrial country. The elaborate mechanism by which Eng- 
 land has despoiled us of our money and her rich and continued 
 success therein, has proved more conclusively than anything 
 else could do that Ireland is a country of rare natural resources, 
 and that, with these secured to her by independence, she could 
 be a prosperous country. The effort to brutalize us by pre- 
 scribing our religion and civilization, and using the power of 
 a mighty empire to misrepresent and malign us to the outer 
 world, proves more conclusively than anything else could thai 
 an independent Ireland would be a considerable civilizing and 
 progressive factor in the world. So it would be with any other 
 
 84 
 
department we might choose to examine. Indeed, why should 
 it be otherwise in Ireland or in any intelligent nation? Who 
 knows the needs and aptitudes of a country better than its own 
 people ? Has England monopolized the good sense of the world, 
 as well as its money? She once thought her American "planta- 
 tions" incapable of ruling themselves. If she were not de- 
 ficient in some way, she would remember the lesson then 
 taught her. It is consummate insolence to assume that this na- 
 tion is incapable of discerning and providing for its own inter- 
 ests. It would be impossible for native government to rule so 
 badly as this Statement shows England to have ruled Ireland; 
 unless the Irish were a lawless people.- England's own statis- 
 tics with reference to Ireland prove that, so far from being 
 lawless, they are the most law-abiding people in Europe and 
 the freest from what is universally recognized as crime, but in- 
 curably addicted to manifestations of patriotism, of which 
 England is an admirer in countries not subject to herself, but 
 which she treats as crime in Ireland. Like rational people, we 
 aim at a government responsive to our principles, needs and in- 
 stincts, as only a native government can ever be. As Burke ob- 
 serves : "The people have no interest in disorder." Foreign 
 rulers frequently have. In this connection we have merely to 
 prolong the chain of accumulative evidence to the goal of show- 
 ing the permanence of the English rule which Macaulay at- 
 tributed to the 18th century only, "Its misery was necessary to 
 our happiness and its slavery to our freedom." Not then alone, 
 but throughout the last 350 years has England treated Ireland 
 ~as if its misery were necessary to her happiness. Most English 
 politicians absolve their own generation at the expense of those 
 who preceded it; a cheap salve for external consciences, having 
 no such faculty of their own. England's permanent policy is 
 to make and keep Ireland unfit for any useful purpose of her 
 own, or for any purpose but that of a victim to be plundered 
 and exploited for England's benefit. No country was ever cre- 
 ated for a purpose so vile. We maintain that Ireland was not. 
 
 Ireland stands to-day provided with a full staff capable and 
 ready to assume and discharge with credit all the duties incum- 
 bent on her as an independent State in all its departments, civil, 
 military, financial, and judicial, in the form of a democratic re- 
 public, reviving in some respects the ancient Gaelic polity; com- 
 petent to maintain national and personal liberty, national and 
 personal property and security, to bring Ireland back under her 
 own law, which she will not merely obey but respect and love, as 
 in the distant past. For obvious reasons, the details of our con- 
 stitution; the personnel of our provisional government, and our 
 plans generally cannot be disclosed until England's power of de- 
 struction in Ireland has been broken. 
 
 In these circumstances, perhaps the department most ap- 
 
 85 
 
propriate for illustrating in this section England's destructive 
 policy is that by means of which she destroyed our ancient polity 
 and has prevented the substitution of any other on a national 
 basis — that covered by the imperialistic motto, Divide and Rule. 
 Wise England has been in making it her motto and permanent 
 guide. An undivided Ireland no outside power could ever rule 
 or hold. First England-sent one Iago to whisper poison into the 
 ears of one Irish chief against his neighbor, and another Iago 
 to the neighboring chief for a like purpose. When the human 
 consequences followed, she played the umpire or supported a com- 
 petitor of her choice or acted otherwise as her selfish interests 
 prompted, and carefully slandered both sides to the outer world 
 So she acted from end to end of the country and from year to 
 year, changing the details according to local or current circum- 
 stances. Whenever she thought her colony strong enough, her 
 game was modified, but always the same in principle. When by 
 continuous practice of those arts her power had become dom- 
 inant in the land, she gladly annexed to her armoury the abused 
 name of religion, interpreted only by that antithesis of Chris- 
 tianity — unreasoning and undying hatred among neighbors; 
 made her colony her tool in the practice of this on the Irish na- 
 tion; retaining in her own hands power over that tool, until to 
 her horror she saw a danger of its reconciliation and amalgama- 
 tion with the Irish nation. Well knowing that this would be 
 disastrous to her, England resolved that it should not be. Recon- 
 ciliation, harmony, amalgamation, were the things she feared in 
 Ireland beyond all others, the things by which her grip of Ireland 
 would soon be broken ; the things the success of which would be- 
 the dawn of Irish independence, prosperity and happiness. Hence 
 the profession of Iago is a permanent and indispensable part of 
 the English government of Ireland. 
 
 From the invasion down to modern times there has always 
 been this essential difference between the attitude of the Irish 
 and that of the colonists; the former having been always de- 
 scribed as the "Irish enemies" ; had no option but to smile and 
 return the compliment, sans phrase; to the latter England was 
 always the Mother Country, no matter how ill she treated them. 
 The same difference still exists, with this modification, that many 
 people of English or other outside extraction now stand with 
 and as part of the Irish nation, and may and do feel quite 
 assured of an honored and efficient place in our new consti- 
 tution ; while on the othe-r hand some degenerate bearers of Irish 
 names have, for immediate personal gain, joined the pro-English 
 faction. At no time in that whole history did all the colonists 
 and pro-English together equal the Irish in numbers, not even 
 after the Cromwellian massacres. No person in Ireland to-day 
 supports English rule who is not paid for it directly, indirectly, 
 or prospectively. English rule in Ireland has no support but 
 
 86 
 
hired support. In no country in Europe, whether free or unfree, 
 is there greater unanimity among the people for independence 
 than in Ireland. But a minority having the control of the ma- 
 chinery of government, of the garrisons, and of the resources 
 of the country, and an outside power to fall back upon, once 
 given by that power ascendancy over a disarmed nation, can 
 maintain that ascendancy; at the price, however, of its contin- 
 ued subserviency to the outside power. It can never itself be- 
 come an independent nation except by abandonment of its ascend- 
 ancy and union and fusion with the nation. After the destruction 
 of the Irish polity, the ruin and suppression of the nation, and the 
 permanent planting of sufficient English, backed by armed force, 
 not subject to any civilized restraint, the increased foreign colony 
 began to dominate the nation, leaning for support upon and act- 
 ing as the instrument of the outside power ; suffering grievances 
 itself and fearing to resent them lest it should lose mastery of 
 the nation which lay at its feet and whose property it had appro- 
 priated. Thus a major and a minor oppression were in progress 
 in Ireland concurrently. The nation was treated brutally by the 
 foreign power acting both directly and through the colonial in- 
 strument. The colony was being oppressed in a minor, still 
 severe and humiliating degree by the same foreign power for 
 which it was oppressing the nation. Forced by a long course of 
 this treatment and by the appalling misery which it had been 
 instrumental in bringing upon Ireland, encouraged by the exam- 
 ple of the American colonies, and conscious of the opportunity 
 which England's difficulty afforded, the colonist volunteers of 
 the 18th century began to move towards a conception of national 
 independence. That is as high as their declarations enable one 
 to put it ; and that is how they were understood by the Catholics 
 at the time. Not being blinded by corruption or office, they 
 recognized that for any such purpose, emancipation of, and amal- 
 gamation with, the Catholics of Ireland was a conditio sine qua 
 non. Consequently, in February, 1782, 143 delegates from the 
 whole body of the Ulster volunteers assembled in the Protestant 
 Church of Dungannon, and adopted important resolutions, one of 
 which, not so familiar to the public as the rest, is relevant to 
 the present subject: "We hold the right of private judgment on 
 matters of religion to be equally sacred in others as in ourselves. 
 Resolved, therefore, that, as men and Irishmen, as Christians 
 and Protestants, we rejoice in the relaxation of the penal laws 
 against our Roman Catholic fellow subjects, and conceive the 
 measure to be fraught with the happiest consequences to the unity 
 and prosperity of the inhabitants of Ireland." Overtures in this 
 sense, so congenial to the Irish, met with a prompt and generous 
 response. England had driven her colonists on both sides of the 
 Atlantic to lay aside factitious differences and unite against her 
 as the common enemy. As the Viceroy, the Duke of Portland, 
 
 87 
 
wrote at the time, it was no longer the parliament of Ireland 
 which had to be managed ; it was the whole country. "The spirit 
 of mutual toleration was considered by the English government 
 as extremely formidable ; and it employed all its policy to destroy 
 it, and revive the old religious and national animosities." 
 Augustine Thierry, Norman Conquest, II, 356. Hitherto Eng- 
 land had based her power in Ireland on keeping the colonists 
 and the nation apart and at enmity, in order to keep both weak, 
 that she might plunder and oppress both. The unexpected union 
 of both, while it lasted, diminished England's power for mis- 
 chief, and gave the united Irish their only chance for liberty. 
 England knew this much better than they did, having just learned 
 the lesson from the North American colonies. Therefore she in- 
 creased her agents and machinery and increased their activity 
 to prevent a repetition of that lesson in Ireland, by destroying 
 the new unity and with it all it meant of good for Ireland, of 
 disappointment for England. To divide became imperative if 
 she would continue to rule. With the aid of her myriad agents 
 and expenditure of uncounted money, extracted from Ireland, 
 she soon succeeded in having the volunteers disbanded and meas- 
 ures taken successfully to reverse the policy of Dungannon and 
 revive that degrading bitterness to which she prostitutes the 
 name and complicity of religion; the perpetuation of which bit- 
 terness is England's last bulwark in Ireland. Nor can we wonder 
 much at her success then, witnesses as we are of her success in 
 our own 20th century in finding "a man, an Irishman, a Christian 
 and a Protestant" founder and chief of a body bearing the sacred 
 name of Ulster Volunteers, without any intervening history to 
 justify the change, devoting his considerable ability to reversing 
 the Christian policy of Dungannon, and, in England's interest 
 and to Ireland's detriment and shame, advising and promoting 
 perpetual animosity and estrangement between these two sec- 
 tions of the inhabitants of Ireland, who would have been assim- 
 ilated in generous friendship long ago if. only let alone. England 
 eannot afford to let them alone, because it would mean the loss of 
 Ireland to her. 
 
 We pity those successors of the colonists, victims of evil ad- 
 visers, but we do not implore them to join us. Why should we? 
 We do not tempt them with promises of any special benefit or 
 privilege if they do join us. Why should we? We are not going 
 to seek reforms, but to free our country, and we offer them the 
 privilege, sufficient for men worthy of freedom, of joining us in 
 that noble work on absolutely equal terms. That is a proposi- 
 tion worthy of men who -are themselves worthy of such a cause. 
 To offer them special advantages would be an offensive sugges- 
 tion that they were not patriots. If they are not, we do not even 
 desire them; if they are they will join us on terms of brotherly 
 equality. Ireland's claim is emphatically not one which any con- 
 
 88 
 
ceivable legislative reform under England's control could satisfy. 
 The historical facts submitted herein establish this abundantly. 
 They are submitted for the further reason that a bare assertion 
 without historical vouching could be scarcely credible; and still 
 turther, that knowledge of them will be salutary for other nations 
 as well as for Ireland. It is from foreign rule Ireland needs 
 and claims release, irrespective of the quality of the rule. For- 
 eign rule imposed upon an unwilling nation is itself a breach of 
 international law and justice, and an international wrong justify- 
 ing resistance to it, even if the rule were good. The particular 
 forms, extent and duration of oppression — terrible though we 
 have shown them to be — are rendered of secondary importance 
 by the scope of our claim for sovereign independence. They 
 merely go to enhance the national wrong and more than justify 
 resistance to it and determination to bring it to an end. They 
 merely increase the unanimity for freedom and strip England of 
 all but hired support. We deny that any country other than 
 Ireland herself has, or can ever have or acquire, a right to rule 
 Ireland. We complain of the quality of the rule only as an ag- 
 gravation of the thing indefensible in itself, and showing that it is 
 equally so in practice as in principle ; above all, as being foreign 
 interference with our affairs and contravention of our national 
 right. Furthermore the evil intentions and mischievous results 
 of English rule are evidence of such a spirit, so essentially dan- 
 gerous to mankind, that it is due to all nations to be informed, in 
 order that they may be on their guard against a State animated 
 by such a disposition. 
 
 Every operative law connotes a corresponding right. A na- 
 tion's obligations and duties, whether contracted or necessarily 
 arising from its conduct or the requirements of international law 
 or of humanity, are held to continue, irrespective of any change 
 of government voluntarily made by the nation, and cannot be 
 repudiated by it. A necessary corrollary of this is, that a nation's 
 rights also continue, irrespective of any change of government, 
 and, a fortiori, irrespective of a change of government forced 
 upon the nation from outside. Therefore Ireland's right to sov- 
 ereign independence continues unimpaired. 
 
 For all reasons, of which these set forth in this Statement 
 are examples, Ireland's ancient status as a sovereign State, the 
 sum of all her rights, is unimpaired and ripe for independence 
 and international recognition. 
 
 89 
 
IX. 
 
 Ireland is Entitled to the Right, Common to Nations 
 
 and Persons, of Self-Preservation Against 
 
 England's Policy of Extermination 
 
 From the middle of the 16th century when the bold policy of 
 exterminating the whole Irish nation by the sword or by famine 
 was commended to and graciously accepted by King Henry VIII 
 of England, down to the present day, two fundamental questions 
 for the Irish nation have been, first, whether it is entitled to self- 
 preservation ; and, secondly, whether the country — Ireland — 
 with all it comprises, belongs to the Irish nation or to the English 
 Government. Though no Peace Congress, and no honest person 
 could have any doubt as to the true answers to these elementary 
 questions, to settle them has all that time been, and still is the 
 cause of the perpetual war between the English government and 
 the Irish nation. Throughout all that time England has ad- 
 hered in practice to the policy of extermination, normally alter- 
 nating between the sword and the State-created famine; occa- 
 sionally plying both concurrently. From the restoration of the 
 Stuarts in 1660, State-produced famine has been the continuous 
 normal policy, reaching its highest development within living 
 memory in Queen Victoria's reign, and still in operation in the 
 milder form of emigration forced by economic pressure. We 
 shrink from stating more of the harrowing particulars of famine 
 and evictions than will be found in the section on man-power, 
 where the result of that policy is shown to be that of a race now 
 numbering 30,000,000, only a remnant of about 4,000,000 re- 
 mains in Ireland. 
 
 National as well as individual character is tested by suffering 
 and proved by surmounting difficulties. What nation has been 
 tested as Ireland has been? That there is an Irish nation in ex- 
 istence to-day, in spite of England, is a marvel of the age. We 
 feel that the character also exists. That is the foundation of our 
 hope. History tells of other victim countries. It also tells that 
 a victim country which survives oppression, and retains sufficient 
 vitality and vigor to demand independence, will make either an 
 excellent member of the family of nations, or a dangerous country 
 to exclude from that family and attempt to keep it in the position 
 of victim. Unprovoked tyranny stuns and terrifies ; and some- 
 times escapes immediate punishment. Retribution may be post- 
 poned. "Judgrrjent for an evil thing is many times de- 
 layed some day or two; some century or two; but it 
 
 90 
 
is sure as life, it is as sure as death." Carlyle.. We 
 have no desire to be the instrument of the just judgment 
 upon England, but a strong desire not to be ; for that judgment 
 must be terrible. Apart from whatever of voluntary good we 
 may be able to do for others, our definite objects are SINN FEIN 
 — OURSELVES. The continuance of foreign despotism be- 
 comes unsafe when the victim nation's heart is wrung with the 
 record of the destruction of all that is dearest to her. When she 
 sees with her own eyes and knows with her own reason that she 
 can escape the utter destruction to which her foreign oppressor 
 has doomed her only by a supreme effort the moment her op? 
 portunity arises, to make that effort becomes the imperative duty 
 of all who bear her name, making the gentle fierce, and even 
 the timid brave. All foreign rule is unjust. The right to resist 
 injustice is indestructible. All foreign rule is slavery. The duty 
 of resisting foreign rule is incumbent on all who ought not to be 
 enslaved. This is the test of character self-applied by each in- 
 dividual; English rule of Ireland being foreign, unjust, and 
 slavery, is destructive as well, has destroyed, is destroying, and 
 has doomed the Irish nation to utter destruction. That is the 
 distinguishing note. The case is urgent in the last degree. Why 
 need this be said, when the facts force the conviction upon who- 
 ever thinks at all? 
 
 According to international law, the right of self-preservation 
 is the first law of nations as of persons. It is prior and para- 
 mount to even that of territorial inviolability; and where they 
 conflict, international law justifies the maintenance of the former 
 at the expense of the latter right. As a consequential part of this 
 right of- self-preservation, a nation's sovereign independence and 
 her purpose to achieve or maintain it, as the case may be, should 
 be constantly and publicly announced and firmly maintained be- 
 fore the world, on account of possible designs against it by any 
 neighboring nation. No nation can ever have, or acquire, a right 
 to destroy another nation either directly by the sword or by 
 famine, or any other process, or to prescribe what means a na- 
 tion so menaced shall or shall not employ, or when or how it 
 shall employ them, for its self-preservation, or to require any 
 account whatever of the nation's conduct or proposed conduct 
 in this respect; and a nation so menacing another, and attempt- 
 ing any such restraint, or inquisition, is already guilty of the de- 
 struction of that nation, and of the supreme transgression of in- 
 ternational law. All means that do not affect the independence 
 of other' nations are lawful for a nation to employ for its self- 
 preservation. In the case of a nation in bondage and menaced 
 with destruction as Ireland permanently is, where the bondage 
 and the destruction proceed from the same source, the struggle 
 for self-preservation and for independence is the same. Inde- 
 pendence, and nothing less, would be self-preservation. The in- 
 
 91 
 
herent right of a nation to rebel against a destructive outside 
 power is the natural expression of the right of self-preservation, 
 and becomes a duty when the conditions afford a possibility of 
 success. The enforcement of a policy of destruction is ample 
 justification, in morality as well as according to international 
 law, for the adoption of any means necessary for self-defense and 
 self-preservation, necessarily including rebellion as the most ob- 
 vious means. The conditions of success may easily lurk incalcula- 
 ble in a combination of circumstances on both sides, such as the 
 opportuneness of attack, the weakness or other occupation or tem- 
 porary blunder of the foe, or the inscrutable decrees of Provi- 
 dence. Rebellion is always just when it has for its object the 
 rescue of a nation from a destroying power; the reparation of a 
 national wrong which by its nature continues and festers while 
 that power lasts; the restoration of friendly relations with other 
 States estranged by that power; the release of the faculties and 
 resources of the nation from that power for its own people; and 
 the establishment of security against future aggression by that 
 power. All these conditions exist together in the case of Ireland. 
 A nation whose country has been repeatedly ravaged by an outside 
 power, and is, in the interest of that power, kept perpetually in a 
 ravaged condition; and is, in the interests of that power, re- 
 strained from assuming any other condition ; denied the exercise 
 of her elements of progress in any direction whether on the na- 
 tional or the local scale; stripped of her resources mostly for 
 foreign purposes antagonistic to her; denied control of the 43 
 administrative Boards planted in her midst by England for 
 England's purposes, and of her money spent on their main- 
 tenance ; manifestly such a nation is being deliberately robbed and 
 destroyed, and owes to herself the urgent duty of self-preserva- 
 tion. Ireland is so situated. Unvarying experience convinces us 
 that continual misery and consequent decay and revolt are in- 
 separable from foreign rule; and that rule itself, as a condition 
 of its own maintenance, making national resuscitation impossible ; 
 and that the destruction of the nation or the destruction of the 
 foreign rule over it are the only alternative remedies. Between 
 forces so diametrically opposed, not temporarily, but permanent- 
 ly, where every pretence of adjustment and reconciliation has 
 been used by England, as it is now being used, as a new trap for 
 the increase of aggression and deception, reconciliation is quite 
 impossible, and sovereign independence the only remedy. Either 
 the power that is destroying Ireland must triumph and the Irish 
 nation cease to exist, or that power must be eliminated from 
 Ireland. The Irish nation is immortal and cannot cease to exist. 
 A nation animated with that spirit is at once indestructible and 
 irreconcilable with slavery. As the continuous policy of destruc- 
 tion has in the past made the duty of rebellion continuous, so 
 the Irish people are determined it shall be until the destructive 
 
 92 
 
power is wholly expelled. To allow such an unequal and deadly 
 contest to drift indefinitely, with its chronic toll of human misery 
 and periodical toll of human life, would be to allow continuous 
 turmoil and in effect to adopt the side of the strong party, con- 
 trary to the merits of the dispute. To put Ireland's right at the 
 very lowest, surely an international Congress of civilized States, 
 owes the common duty of justice and humanity to save an historic 
 nation from an otherwise interminable policy of extermination. 
 
X. 
 
 Ireland has rightly reasserted Her Right in Armed 
 Rebellion in 1916 
 
 People not sufficiently interested to give due consideration to 
 the matter may suppose that a military failure cannot corroborate 
 a right to the object for which the military effort had been made; 
 and all worshippers of wealth and success, and despisers of fail- 
 ure, irrespective of merit, eagerly concur with them. The ap- 
 proval of this latter class we do not desire, because it would be 
 prima facie evidence of some flaw. To the first-mentioned class 
 we would observe that the matter is not quite so simple ; that the 
 greatest failure in history has been the greatest moral success; 
 that there have been instances of a similar phenomenon in mun- 
 dane affairs; that faith in a cause intrinsically good, proved by 
 the courage to fight against overwhelming odds, even to the su- 
 preme sacrifice of life, commands universal admiration, may be 
 admirable in the degree of probability of failure, and therefore 
 strengthens the claim to the object of the effort. This sufficient 
 reason has also the support of international precedent. Greece 
 sustained a military defeat in her last rebellion against Turkey; 
 and yet was, in consequence of that effort, recognized by England 
 and other European States, and in virtue of that recognition ob- 
 tained her independence. On the other hand, those who dispute 
 the proposition of this section do so in the name of some law, 
 forgetful of the fact that must always be remembered, that it is 
 not by law or justice or reason, but only by force and fraud, 
 Ireland has been subdued and kept in subjection. Since force 
 and fraud can neither confer a right nor legalise a usurpation, 
 those who employ them have no appeal to law or to anything 
 but more force and more fraud; and that is precisely their situa- 
 tion in Ireland. As Burke said: "The use of force is but tem- 
 porary. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove 
 the necessity for subduing again, and a nation is not governed 
 which is perpetually to be conquered." 
 
 Any government which is not responsible to the people gov- 
 erned, and in some way under their control, is unconstitutional 
 and inevitably becomes a tyranny. At best, a condition of which 
 we have no experience in Ireland, it must lead those conducting 
 it into ignorance of the people's grievances, with the natural con- 
 sequence of failure to remedy them. As Franklin wrote of 
 American governors, "Their office makes them intolerant, 
 their indolence makes them odious, and being conscious that 
 they are hated, they become malicious. Their malice urges them 
 
 Qd. 
 
to continual abuse of the inhabitants in their letters to Ad- 
 ministration, representing them as disaffected and rebellious, and 
 (to encourage the use of -severity) as weak, divided, timid and 
 cowardly." That product of a young polity was angelic com- 
 pared with the regular product of an inveterate system of cor- 
 ruption. We have mentioned some instances of English recogni- 
 tion of Irish national distinctions. Perhaps the most significant 
 of all is the negative recognition involved in the entire absence 
 from the English mind, official and unofficial, of any recognition 
 of responsibility to Ireland. To any free man, such an attitude, 
 on the part of a State boasting freedom and intelligence, is 
 scarcely conceivable. To the English, straight from reading in 
 any one of their standard text books, that a government which 
 is not responsible to the people governed is not constitutional, 
 fully concurring in that doctrine, nay, enforcing it at the edge 
 of the sword, the idea of English responsibility to Ireland never 
 seems to enter their minds. How they manage to keep logic and 
 practice in direct antagonism, and expect that, for their con- 
 venience, free and intelligent people will do the same, we do not 
 undertake to explain. We merely state the fact, which may be 
 verified any day. Illustrations of this hypocrisy are too numer- 
 ous and too humiliating even to expose. One of the latest exam- 
 ples must suffice. Take the proclamation issued by the repre- 
 sentatives of England at Bagdad on the 19th March, 1917 : "O 
 People of Bagdad! Remember that for twenty-six generations 
 you have suffered under strange tyrants, who have ever en- 
 deavored to set one Arab House against another, in order that 
 they might profit by your dissensions. This policy is abhorrent 
 to Great Britain and her Allies, for there can be neither peace 
 nor prosperity where there is enmity and misgovernment. . . . 
 Since the days of Halaka your city and your lands have been 
 subject to 'the tyranny of« strangers, your palaces have fallen 
 into ruins, your gardens have sunk in desolation, and your fore- 
 fathers and yourselves have groaned in bondage. Your sons 
 have been carried off to wars not of your seeking;, your wealth 
 has been stripped from you by* unjust men, and squandered in 
 distant places." So much alike tyranny seems to be at Bagdad 
 and in Ireland that the tyrants of Bagdad would appear to have 
 imitated the tyrants of Ireland; and the British authors were 
 peculiarly qualified for writing this proclamation. Or take the 
 official utterance of Lord Robert Cecil, representing the British 
 Foreign Office, on 22nd May, 1918 : "We must look for any fu- 
 ture settlement, to a settlement, not of Courts or Cabinets, but 
 of nations and populations. . . . Government must be car- 
 ried on by the consent of the governed ; no greatness, no culture, 
 no national existence can be built upon the oppression and sub- 
 jugation of nations rightly struggling to be free." These quota- 
 tions show that the English government understands liberty as 
 
 95 
 
well as bondage, and therefore that their tyranny in Ireland is a 
 sin against the Holy Ghost. Contrast their professions abroad 
 with their practice in Ireland as shown in this Statement. Con- 
 trast them with the actual situation in Ireland when those inspir- 
 ing words were uttered. 
 
 At present the English King and English ministers, whose 
 power in Ireland is in no way derived from or through the Irish 
 people, whether in England, in Ireland, or anywhere else, never 
 acknowledged any responsibility to the Irish people, and would 
 repudiate any suggestion that they are or ought to be responsible. 
 The Irish people have always adjusted their minds and conduct 
 to this fact, on the basis of government not being theirs in any 
 but the military sense as the people of a conquered country. This 
 English government is recognized by itself, by those it governs, 
 and by all who study the matter, as not being to any extent the 
 choice of the people or under their control ; therefore irresponsi- 
 ble, illegitimate, and unconstitutional. Notwithstanding its rep- 
 resentation of itself to the outer world, it fully recognizes itself 
 and has to be obeyed in Ireland, as an unmitigated despotism. 
 Ireland is permanently in a state of siege. While that state is 
 maintained by England, it would be absurd to deny that a state 
 of war exists between that Government and Ireland. The only 
 union that ever has existed between Ireland and England, and 
 the only union now existing between them, is a union of force. 
 During the whole seven centuries and a half since the Anglo- 
 Norman invasion, there has never been a moment of unforced 
 union between these two countries. While the ancient Irish polity 
 lasted it was a union of assailant and assailed. Since England's 
 power became dominant in Ireland, it has been, and now is, a 
 union of bondage, of master and slave, of tyrant and victim. As 
 Burke says : "A government against which a claim for liberty 
 is tantamount to high treason, is a gqvernment to which subjec- 
 tion is slavery. . . . Nobody will be argued into slavery." 
 Supreme power and its exercise in Ireland have been since the 
 days of Elizabeth entirely in the hands of the English military. It 
 is now exercised by the permanent presence in Ireland of an im- 
 mense Army of Occupation, backed by a further force of 12,000 
 called police, but equipped, disciplined and employed as an army ; 
 the supreme power, civil and military, vested in the Commander- 
 in-Chief of the English Army of Occupation, that person being 
 wholly irresponsible to any Irish person or body. Our post 
 office, our letters, our communications, our railways, our water- 
 ways, our lands, our mines, our rivers, our harbors, our labors, 
 our industries, our products, our property of all kinds, our raw 
 materials, our manufactured articles, our fairs, our markets, 
 our food, our clothing, our schools and colleges, our amusements, 
 our going and coming, our domestic and social relations, our 
 words and actions in public and private, all are controlled and 
 
 96 ' 
 
hampered, more aggressively during the war, but effectually 
 at all times by the "competent military authority" — the irre- 
 sponsible Commander-in-Chief of the English Army of Occu- 
 pation, with all the power of that army and of the military 
 police, spies, and agents provocateurs under his control. Let 
 who can reconcile this situation with freedom or with Eng- 
 land's professions to the outer world; and let who can find a 
 more accurate description of the professions than colossal 
 hypocrisy. There being no pretense possible that this universal 
 and perpetual militarism is derived from God through the 
 people, we do not here speculate as to its source, but observe 
 that, being foreign military despotism, not lacking in any of 
 the characteristics of usurpation and tyranny, devoid of popular 
 sanction on one side and of acknowledgment of responsibility on 
 the other, it is an execrable and infamous tyranny wholly devoid 
 of moral sanction and of binding force beyond what brute force 
 imposes. True to its nature it punishes as a crime, with only 
 a military trial, or a civil trial subject to military control, 
 or no trial of any kind, according to the unfettered discretion 
 of the military authority, such manifestations of patriotism as 
 the same English government encourages in Belgium, Serbia, 
 Bohemia, Esthonia and Bagdad. What is known in other coun- 
 tries as ordinary civil law is normally suspended in Ireland, 
 and in addition to the general military rule, England keeps con- 
 stantly in force in Ireland — the freest of all European coun- 
 tries from crime of moral turpitude — exceptional coercive laws, 
 formerly enacted for short periods and requiring frequent re- 
 newal to deal with popular movements, now simplified by 
 being made permanent. 
 
 Of this an example is the Jubilee Coercion Act, technically 
 known as the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887. 
 This elaborate military rule amounts to evidence, furnished by 
 England herself, that a state of war exists permanently between 
 her and Ireland — and therefore there can neither be a pretense 
 that the government is constitutional nor that the Irish nation 
 is content with the government. To deny that the connection 
 is one of force would be to deny the whole history of the rela- 
 tions between the two countries, and would amount to suggest- 
 ing that a further addition to Ireland's long list of insurrec- 
 tions against England is required to convince the Congress of 
 Ireland's just and irreconcilable attitude. 
 
 The sinister levity with which England entered into the 
 Great War has been exposed by events. She disregarded the 
 solemn warning of her poet : 
 
 ". . . take heed how you impawn my person, 
 How you awake the sleeping sword of war ; 
 I charge you in the Name of God take heed." 
 
 Shakespeare. Henry V. 
 
 97 
 
The first action of her government was that of all tyrants — 
 to stifle public opinion by capturing the whole newspaper press 
 if possible, and forcibly silencing such as refused to be cap- 
 tured. Then the captured press was used to create a bloodthirst 
 with such cries as "Business as Usual," "Capture German Trade," 
 "Save Civilization," "Avenge German Atrocities, "Free Small 
 Oppressed Nations," and "Put an End to Militarism." Read- 
 ers of this Statement are in a position to judge of England's 
 qualifications for proclaiming these things through the press and 
 on dead walls. The two first were for the English people, 
 for whom material gain was the object of the war; the other 
 cries being baits for getting recruits from subject nations, who 
 were expected to be too stupid to see that they ought to be 
 amongst those whom the war was to set free, and would fight 
 England's battles and get buried in heaps or return maimed to 
 their slavery while the English stayed at home reaping the profits. 
 It was a complete plan for making wealthy England wealthier 
 at the cost of the lives of her duped subjects. Not all the en- 
 slaved peoples were so stupid as England wished them to be. 
 Far too many thoughtless Irish youths were carried away to the 
 war by the manufactured enthusiasm which the press and re- 
 cruiting officers told them was real, but which the Secret Treaties 
 have since exposed. Those treaties would not have helped re- 
 cruiting anywhere. Hence their secrecy. It was confusing to 
 hear recruiting officers in the uniform of- Ireland's enemy, and 
 well known to be enemies themselves, seducing young men by 
 all sorts of low. tactics, as singing popular songs like "God 
 Save Ireland," their real purpose being not so much to win the 
 war as to get as many Irishmen as possible, whom they them- 
 selves would be glad to shoot, shot by Germans instead. To 
 the thoughtful the whole scheme, coming from the military des- 
 potism which was throttling the country, was the most impudent 
 effrontery in history. It stung them into thinking and acting 
 for the most oppressed nation now extant, the only oppressed 
 nation to which they owed a duty, and for which no one would 
 think or act if they did not. No form of tyranny could be more 
 monstrous and odious than that which would by moral, economic 
 or any other form of pressure whatever force men in bondage 
 to fight for the freedom of other peoples and the perpetuation 
 of their own slavery. To fight for the oppressor who despised 
 them would be evidence to the world that they were unworthy 
 of freedom. If Englishmen were to say that the Irish are now 
 free, the obvious retort is that our condition has been described 
 in this Statement, and that whatever Englishmen might please 
 to call it we have no right to inflict it upon others ; and that if 
 it is our condition that is to be imposed upon small nations as 
 a result of the war, then the war has been a greater misfortune 
 than even we supposed. 
 
England tries to confuse the issue by- talking of "Ireland's 
 duty in the war." Free and powerful States have great duties, 
 which they do not always discharge. Small and independent 
 States have a duty to maintain their integrity and independence 
 by neutrality if possible. A nation in bondage has few duties 
 except to herself, and she is the sole judge of them and of when 
 and how they should be discharged. Ireland has no responsi- 
 bility for, nor hope of gain from, nor duty in respect of the 
 war; though, unlike independent States, she is compelled to pay 
 heavily for it. She has no more duty towards the war than 
 Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, most of 
 which countries are nearer to, and in business relations more 
 affected by, the war than Ireland, which is not allowed to have 
 any business relations. Being independent, they do not waste 
 their manhood or their money in other people's wars. They 
 are not expected to do so, and no one regards their neutrality 
 as cowardly or selfish. The fact that they are in the actual 
 enjoyment of that supreme political good is the difference be- 
 tween them and Ireland as regards the war. Ireland wants 
 that, and wanting that wants everything essential for the ex- 
 ternal equipment of a State. To supply-that want, to recover her 
 independence, is her first and most urgent duty. Until that has 
 been successfully discharged she can owe no duty to any other 
 country, least of all her oppressor. England wants the world 
 to assume that the fact of Ireland being subject to her imposes a 
 duty upon Ireland to defend her. If that were international law, 
 why did it not impose a duty upon Greece to defend Turkey? 
 Greece rebelled against Turkey, and though she failed, England 
 was one of the States that insisted that Greece should be made 
 independent; and Greece was made independent. International 
 law has not changed since then. As well might a band of rob- 
 bers claim to impose a duty on a victim in their den to defend 
 them against the police. The defence the victim would need 
 is against the robbers; the defence Ireland needs is against 
 her only enemy. Foreign rule, whether good or bad in detail, 
 maintained by military force in the manner we have seen, im- 
 poses no obligation beyond the prudence of obedience in respect 
 of that force. Neither duration nor number of repetitions can 
 amend or validate a title originally vicious. The obligation to 
 which the situation gives birth is to destroy that force as soon 
 as possible. The desire of people to release their country from 
 that tyranny, is still, as it always has been, the very definition 
 of patriotisjn, the very virtue which England appeals to and 
 encourages in Belgians, Serbians, Bohemians and Arabs; in any 
 nation submerged by States opposed to her; but treats as crime 
 in any nation submerged by herself. To apply the name of 
 international law to such moral twisting and perversion of justice 
 is an outrage upon Ireland, an insult to the Peace Congress 
 and a permanent danger to the peace of the world. 
 
All the Allies cannot be supposed to have intended their 
 good principles and purposes, as England does, for one section 
 of mankind only, and that section to be determined not by them- 
 selves, but by England. If the professions be of universal ap- 
 plication they command respect. Otherwise they would be in- 
 defensible and contemptible. Ireland would be glad to achieve 
 her independence, as Norway did, without loss of human life. 
 Neither the failure of peaceful methods nor the guilt of violent 
 methods shall rest with Ireland. But can the lamb of its own 
 motion safely become reconciled with the wolf? The problem is a 
 grave one for the lamb. Too often we have attempted to reason 
 with England, nation with nation, and she cheated and insulted 
 us every time. We are pleased to have a strong constitutional 
 case to submit to the nations ; better pleased that the Irish nation 
 here and now is determined not to be ruled by England. That 
 permanent elemental fact cannot be left out in any useful con- 
 sideration of Ireland's case. 
 
 Burke says : "Every nation has formed to itself some favour- 
 ite point which, by way of eminence, becomes the criterion of 
 their happiness." With some, wealth and monopoly of com- 
 merce no matter how ill-gotten is the criterion. We are suffi- 
 ciently perverse to hold that such a nation does not understand 
 civilization, that wealth is no more civilization than it is happi- 
 ness, and that what secures happiness has far more affinity to 
 civilization than what secures wealth. The ideals of our ances- 
 tors were, as we have seen, wholly different from those of the 
 English, always comprising, as those of their descendants do, 
 national independence. In other respects our ideals are more 
 modest than those of most nations. They do not inhere in the 
 acquisition of other people's property. We revere the memory 
 and respect the virtues of our ancestors, and must be allowed 
 to love every rath and ruin, stream and hill hallowed by their 
 amusement, their tears or their blood. Naturally strangers may 
 not understand this. There is no more necessity for their doing 
 so than for us to understand everything in the strangers' lives, 
 provided we mutually leave each other unimpeded in what does 
 no harm to anyone. A subject people's love of unsubstantial 
 things does not relieve a government of the permanent duty 
 common to all governments of saving the people. Still less does 
 it justify a policy of deliberate destruction of the people and 
 treatment of their country as a victim country. A dominant 
 country so acting forfeits all right to be called civilized, and 
 therefore forfeits all right to dominate. Our nation's survival 
 through that ordeal, and our continued existence in spite of that 
 government is a triumph of spirit over brute force exercised 
 brutishly. It proves more than our vitality; it proves the sus- 
 taining help of Providence. Bondage under that tyranny makes 
 us heirs to a duty towards our country which worshippers 
 
 100 
 
of wealth and material success neither experience nor under- 
 stand; the performance of which we regard as a privilege; the 
 urgency of which duty endears our country to us beyond ex- 
 pression. It is for the sake of Ireland, not for our stomachs or 
 pockets, we are interested in public affairs. In her sufferings 
 we all suffer, materially and spiritually. In her freedom we all 
 shall be free. In the case of an enslaved people, love of country 
 and love of freedom are one. Whenever since her subjection 
 Ireland has not been in open insurrection, her suppressed sorrow 
 and hidden sufferings, like those of a woman, have been severest. 
 So felt the patriots of 1916 — pure, brave patriots beyond the 
 understanding of a plutocratic State, and achieving a spiritual 
 success beyond the range of its powers. Faithful to country and 
 to duty, their names will live with imperishable honor in the 
 veneration of all freedom-loving men, inspiring, fortifying, en- 
 couraging all in bondage in that unconquerable fidelity to prin- 
 ciple and duty which prevails ultimately, and which tyrants dread. 
 Worshippers of wealth and material success, who have neither 
 soul nor principle apart from selfish interest, sneer at the mili- 
 tary failure of 1916, and taunt the Irish nation with not having 
 supported its patriots, who were able to hold the Capital of 
 Ireland for only one week. Not a bad achievement at all for 
 less than a thousand half-trained men against forty thousand 
 regular soldiers of a mighty empire, supported by all State ma- 
 chinery at the public expense. There is little foundation for im- 
 perial boasting there. There are few instances in history in which 
 the majority of a nation took part or had an opportunity of tak- 
 ing part in an insurrection for its freedom, secrecy being al- 
 ways a condition of action. Some of the most successful and 
 beneficent insurrections have been begun by quite a small body 
 of men. And the tyrant's satisfaction, shown in the manner 
 common to tyrants, with what he calls the Irish failure in 1916 is 
 spoiled for him, «ince he must and does recognize the unanimity 
 of the nation now. Is that failure? The patriots asked, Is Ire- 
 land never more to call her soul her own ? They gave the answer 
 themselves; and Ireland almost .unanimously to-day gives the 
 same answer. Owing to one of those unfortunate incidents to 
 which revolutionary armies are specially exposed from defective 
 communications, only a fraction of the Irish Republican Army 
 was brought into action. Small though that fraction was, it 
 comprised two distinct bodies— the Irish Volunteers and the 
 Citizen Army. But they fought under a joint command with 
 the common object of throwing off the foreign yoke and establish- 
 ing a republican form of government in Ireland. It cannot be 
 denied that that was a patriotic and public object falling within 
 The Hague Convention, 1907, clause c, agreed to in the time of 
 peace — that men who have fought for a public and patriotic 
 purpose should not, on surrendering and laying down their arms. 
 
 101 
 
be executed as criminals. Not that our patriots would have 
 shrunk from any consequences of their action, but that it is our 
 duty, on their behalf, and The Hague Convention shows that 
 it is the wish and interest of civilized nations to resent the savage 
 treatment and to charge England with it. There is nothing in 
 that convention to exempt England from observing it, and noth- 
 ing to exempt Ireland from the scope of its mercy. The action 
 of our patriots in 1916 in rising and holding the capital of Ire- 
 land for even one week against 40,000 imperial troops would in 
 itself entitle us to approach the Congress, be recognized by it, 
 and secure independence from it. The barbarous actionof the 
 English government in Ireland on that occasion enhances this 
 right, and will, we trust, lead the Congress to regard it as an 
 important addition to the other grounds of our claim, and to 
 accede to that claim. 
 
 102 
 
XI. 
 
 Ireland's Purposes on Resuming Independence are 
 those of Peace and Progress 
 
 Notwithstanding the prolonged torture Ireland has endured, 
 as herein disclosed, which she has borne with wonderful re- 
 straint and patience, we do not entertain any feelings of re- 
 venge, because it is foreign to our nature, because it is immoral, 
 and because a vast and urgent work which it is our duty to 
 do awaits us, and we count the hours and minutes in our eager- 
 ness waiting for that sovereign independence which is essential 
 to enable us to begin this work. While waiting, we are pre- 
 paring ourselves as far as circumstances permit. The entire 
 popular voluntary activities of Ireland to-day, intellectual and 
 material, have for common object national self-preservation and 
 revival. We challenge investigation of this by or on behalf of the 
 Peace Congress, because we know that an investigation will find 
 Ireland amply endowed with virtue, ability and purpose to main- 
 tain our national individuality, moral, intellectual, economic and 
 political; a more widespread and spirited effort to revive the 
 Gaelic language, literature, music, drama, civilization and con- 
 genial industries than has ever been witnessed in a submerged 
 nation for like purposes; all the more creditable because these 
 activities have to encounter and overcome the constant organ- 
 ized hostility, open and secret, of the English government and 
 its agents in Ireland. All the time, talent and enthusiasm di- 
 rected to these specific aims are directed, through these aims, 
 to the common goal — sovereign independence. Should any doubt 
 of this be suggested, we invite a referendum of the entire adult 
 population, male and female, of Ireland — by which our repre- 
 sentatives have been appointed to this Congress — whereby the 
 validity of our representation and any part of our case may be 
 tested. It will be found that the pro-English faction, always a 
 minority, is now reduced to the beneficiaries and expectant bene- 
 ficiaries of the present foreign government, the mass of the popu- 
 lation, of all races and creeds, being Irish Independents, eager 
 to put their abilities to the test in a free democratic republic of 
 Gaelic structure. On the other hand, we point to England's un- 
 willingness to submit her pretensions in Ireland to any demo- 
 cratic test as confirmation of our claim and England's admission 
 that she holds Ireland by force against the will of the Irish 
 people. 
 
 The difference between freedom and bondage is comprehen- 
 
 103 
 
sive of the ideal as well as the material, necessitating consider- 
 able differences of thought and action, so that the preferences 
 and dislikes of one of these conditions cannot be inferred from 
 the other. We look forward to our State bearing much resem- 
 blance to the State outlined in the second and third sections of 
 this Statement; little or no resemblance to the condition to 
 which England has reduced us, and continually working to its 
 own perfection. We look to seeking, finding and developing 
 Irish interests common or harmonizing with those of other 
 States, to the mutual advantage of all and the security of peace 
 and progress. 
 
 VVe also have preliminary work analogous to that of Tone, 
 tints stated by himself: "To subvert the tyranny of our exe- 
 crable government, to break the connection with England, the 
 unfailing source of all our political evils, and to assert the 
 independence of my native country — these were my objects." 
 That preliminary work achieved, we would probably begin by 
 relieving civilians from martial law, confirming such laws as 
 are useful pending modification by our national assembly, and 
 requiring judges and magistrates to take a new oath of allegiance. 
 Children of a land wilfully ruined and degraded, we long to 
 discharge our duty to an outraged parent and restore her to 
 her native dignity and grace. We seek only exclusive sovereign 
 control of Ireland and of all our interests, affairs and relations, 
 internal and external, without involving wrong to any other 
 people. We as a nation have the same right which an inoffensive 
 individual has to liberty, subject only to the common condition 
 that liberty is not to be exercised to the detriment of others 
 We seek only the simple, logical, elementary justice of self- 
 determination. We have no designs against any other people, 
 and no intention of trying to dominate or conspire against any 
 people in the world. We expect all lovers of peaceful progress 
 to be our friends, and we theirs. Should we still have enemies, 
 they will be also enemies of peaceful progress. We feel that we 
 are at the dawn of a new epoch of grand achievement in a land 
 all our own, hallowed by the lives of our forefathers for two 
 thousand years, sanctified by their ashes. Our hearts vibrate 
 with the spirit and purpose of renewed youth, buoyant, electric, 
 adaptable, intolerant of external restraint; indelibly impressed 
 with that unmitigated evil; resolved and conscious of ability to 
 cast it out and keep it out. Like the eager horse before the race, 
 we long and strain to test our capabilities in the solution of the 
 problems that await us. The things we shall do are countless 
 and great in both the material and spiritual sense; to be deter- 
 mined and undertaken in due order by the nation itself; and 
 no individual is competent to do more than suggest them in 
 advance. We all have our dreams of a limited number of them. 
 We spring again as a State into international life, full of new 
 
 104 
 
ideas, new hopes and unrestrainable rejuvenescence. Urgent as 
 our own requirements are after long bondage, our purposes for 
 tne future are not limited to them. Our historical claim accru- 
 ing from the past is enhanced by the existence in Ireland to-day 
 — as the Irish mission to China demonstrates — in spite of our 
 intervening adverse history and present deplorable condition, 
 of numerous men and women animated by precisely the same 
 self-sacrificing evangelizing zeal for countries that need such 
 services as impelled our forefathers to render those services to 
 Europe from the sixth to the twelfth century. This attitude 
 of mind is a living pledge that the rescue of Ireland from bondage 
 would release and devote a further valuable contribution to uni- 
 versal civilization and justice, now declared to be in danger. It 
 also reveals the commensurate loss which a continuance of Ire- 
 land's bondage would impose upon the best interests of man- 
 kind. Thus the ancient, the present and the available future of 
 Ireland's beneficent potentiality towards other peoples consti- 
 tutes quite a unique claim for favorable consideration by the 
 Peace Congress. For ourselves, we mean to undertake, and 
 with God's help achieve, the difficult and varied work of national 
 reconstruction. We hope to restore, in the fullness of its facul- 
 ties, the soul and personality of our nation and to rekindle 
 ancient flames. A new Gaelic literature will spring up, so 
 different from that with which Ireland is now flooded that in 
 itself it will astonish and edify all, and in its intellectual and 
 moral effects amount to a new gift to civilization. We shall 
 restore philosophy and law and literature and music and art 
 to their ancient place of honor. We shall aim at attaining in 
 music as distinguished a place in our own time as our ances- 
 tors did in theirs. We shall make Ireland once more the home 
 of learning and the hospitable refuge of all who esteem learn- 
 ing. We shall abolish utterly the foreign system of anti-national 
 education, and build up a new system on an Irish foundation. 
 We shall eliminate all class distinctions save those of Christian 
 culture, which itself will be the free reward of ability applied. 
 Our people will love their country for reasons additional to the 
 ordinary; the past experience of sleepless foreign hostility; the 
 new experience of cherishing Gaelic care. We shall co-operate 
 in the genuine work of saving civilization by precept and ex- 
 ample fundamentally different from those of the statesmen who 
 have brought the scourge of war upon the world. We shall 
 restore our country's name to honor among the nations. Our 
 State shall be a harmonizing influence in the world. We shall 
 provide incentives for the art and mechanical skill and dex- 
 terity of youth and maiden, and take care that merit receives 
 its due reward. We shall make our nation self-sufficient and 
 self-supporting, so that want shall be unknown. We shall aim 
 at evolving an economic system in which there shall be neither 
 
 105 
 
master nor slave, neither millionaire nor pauper; and we shall 
 eliminate the foreign pauper system with all its trappings. We 
 shall make the homes of the poorest in the country and in towns 
 places of refinement, pride and delight, nurseries of grace and 
 virtue. We shall release the land from the blighting grip of the 
 monopolist, divide it up into various sized holdings to suit 
 all means and tastes, and subject most of it to the plough; 
 and, as under the Brehon Laws, every Irishman desiring it shall 
 be entitled to a sufficiency of land for the maintenance of his 
 family, on the sole condition of putting it to the best use. 
 We shall clothe the cultivatable lulls with verdure, and the 
 uncultivatable with beautiful sheltering forest. We shall take 
 charge of our railways and all forms of transit, and adjust 
 them to our own requirements. The variety and value of our 
 bog products will excite the envy of countries not so endowed. 
 The air shall ring with the variety of sounds of contented in- 
 dustry controlled by the people, sweet as the song of birds. 
 We shall harness our rivers and apply their now idle powers to 
 light, heat and industry. We shall cultivate fish in lake and 
 river. Sea-fishing shall become one of our great and profitable 
 industries under efficient protection. The outer world will find 
 our port towns great marts of fish, corn and choice farm and 
 garden products, as well as the manufactured articles, art and 
 literature of a cultured people. We shall build up a mercantile 
 marine, and make such provision for the defence of it and of 
 our country as the international situation at the time may dic- 
 tate. On what we believe to be a universal principle, we shall 
 trade with whatever countries we find a mutual advantage in 
 trading with. If England should come within that category, 
 but not otherwise, we shall hold ourselves free to trade or not 
 to trade with her as our best interests determine. We shall 
 cultivate muscular and disciplinary development by efficient 
 drill of our young manhood, who will proudly volunteer for the 
 privilege "of fitting themselves to defend their country, pros- 
 perous and happy, because free. 
 
 To the people of any free country, the foregoing will appear 
 commonplace duties and functions. It would be difficult to 
 point out one of them that is not legitimate, or one that would 
 be dangerous to the peace of the world. With us they will 
 amount to all the difference between the condition of inde- 
 pendence and that of a victim country. We look to the Peace 
 Congress to show what it thinks of the system of government 
 which treats these purposes as criminal. 
 
 106 
 
XII. 
 
 Ireland's Sovereign Independence is Essential to the 
 Freedom of^the Seas 
 
 Whatever Ireland possesses containing a possibility of com- 
 peting with England, if portable, is transferred to England; 
 otherwise it is put out of action. English rule has put our 
 most fertile lands out of cultivation by exterminating the cul- 
 tivators, and has reduced the lands to one-fourth their natural 
 productivity by turning them into grazing tracts for English use. 
 England has condemned our mines to remain unworked for no 
 reason but because the working of them would compete with 
 English industries. For the same reason our bogs, a vast source 
 of industry and wealth in a free Ireland, lie unutilized in an en- 
 slaved Ireland. That this is the result of deliberate purpose, 
 the present writer has tested and found. The Irish railways, 
 designed and constructed under English direction for the pur- 
 poses of England's army of occupation, have no relation to the 
 business requirements or development of Ireland. Our plenti- 
 ful water-power is condemned to idleness because England de- 
 sires all mills and all profits from milling to be hers. Our 
 rivers, lakes and canals are in effect forbidden as ways of 
 traffic, because such cheap inland transport would make Ireland 
 largely self-supporting, and thereby diminish the Irish market 
 for English goods. We have twenty-two harbors ranking 
 amongst the finest natural harbors in Europe for ocean-going 
 traffic, and numerous safe and convenient harbors for local 
 traffic. England, with no title but that of superior force, has 
 deprived almost all of them of their natural shipping and forced 
 them to remain, as they now are, empty and unused. The very 
 geographical position in which the Creator has placed Ireland, 
 any advantage or disadvantage from which inherently belongs 
 to Ireland, and which eminently fits her for a great carrying 
 trade, is actually claimed by England as a newly discovered 
 reason for preventing any such trade and for keeping Ireland 
 in bondage. In the 18th century, before this audacious claim 
 was thought of, Edmund Burke gravely asked, "Is Ireland 
 united to the Crown of Great Britain for no other purpose than 
 that we should counteract the bounty of Providence in her 
 behalf?" When England arrogates to herself exclusively, and 
 expects an international Peace Congress to sanction by acqui- 
 escence, a claim infinitely more audacious than has ever before 
 been made by any country over another, involving the com- 
 
 107 
 
mercial isolation of Ireland from the rest of the world, and 
 foreshadowing a certain danger to international commerce, all 
 nations are entitled to be told under what law, national or inter- 
 national, this monstrous claim is made; if it be necessary to keep 
 Ireland thus isolated and in bondage; what law gives England 
 an exclusive right of doing that. Under what law England 
 claims this unlimited and manifestly unjust license, while all 
 other nations subject themselves to a code of international 
 justice; and for what offense is the historical Irish nation con- 
 demned to this isolation and bondage. In fine, where is this 
 arrogant appropriation and domination to stop? Are the Irish 
 people to be deprived of the light of day and of the air they 
 breathe if scientific development should enable a stronger and 
 wealthier State to appropriate those elements? When most 
 nations are demanding freedom of the seas for commerce, and 
 inland nations are claiming f-ree access to the sea, Ireland is so 
 fortunate in being surrounded by sea that her whole claim is 
 one of elementary simplicity — sovereign independence — the right 
 to be let alone. We deny that any other State but Ireland alone 
 has or-can ever have an exclusive right to Ireland's harbors. We 
 say that such a claim by a State guilty of the abuses of power 
 exposed in this Statement is an outrage upon public justice and 
 international law. It amounts to asking the Peace Congress — 
 and at a time when the world yearns for equal justice for all — 
 to reverse the laws of nature and of nations, to make Ireland's 
 very simple case appear to be complicated ; to decree that Ire- 
 land shall not be permitted to make her own legitimate use of 
 her harbors and geographical position facing the Atlantic and 
 the great trade routes ; that Ireland shall not be allowed to enjoy 
 her natural advantages of any kind, internal, external or geo- 
 graphical ; and all this for no better reason than because Eng- 
 land possesses superior force. If ever the issue of Might against 
 Right were definitely raised, it is raised by England here. It is 
 only against Ireland her force is being exercised now. How long 
 will her arrogance, if successful now, bear that limitation? If 
 this power over Ireland were left in England's hands until she 
 had her scheme of naval bases on the Irish coasts completed, 
 she would certainly be in a position to dominate trade on the 
 Atlantic, and indeed on all seas. Befpre acquiescing in such a 
 purpose, the Congress may desire to know what countries are 
 to be restricted, the extent and duration of the restriction, and 
 in whose interest. It may seem that we attach undue impor- 
 tance to the future freedom of the seas. But it is vital to us; 
 and our viewpoint js based on our experience of English rule 
 as disclosed herein. Not cnly in the past, but at present, in the 
 continued effect of legislation, policy and administration — as ex- 
 emplified in the exclusion by England of the Hamburg-Amerika 
 line of steamships from an Irish harbor in 1913 — Ireland is per- 
 
 108 
 
manently isolated from the rest of the world ; and our experience 
 convinces us that commercial freedom is attainable only through 
 sovereign independence. 
 
 In considering our claim against England's pretension, it is 
 well to remember that ours is not the claim of a new country, 
 but of one which, when independent, maintained close and 
 friendly relations with continental countries when traveling was 
 difficult, and that England's purpose is to deny her this liberty 
 when traveling is easy. It is a pretension of such a character 
 as to suggest that the power which already dominates the great 
 waterways and strategic points of the world has ulterior objects 
 which she cannot prudently disclose. It is a pretension of such 
 a. nature that if allowed to strangle Ireland it would not even 
 then be satisfied, but would grow with its success. England 
 offers no guarantee that, if her pretensions were allowed now 
 against Ireland, they would not be developed for larger pur- 
 poses when she found herself strong and other countries in 
 difficulties. Relevant to her colossal display of selfish arrogance 
 in trying to obtain tacit international sanction for a palpable 
 outrage upon one nation and a menace to many, we ask the 
 Congress to consider seriously the significant fact that in all the 
 treaties into which England has' entered she has studiously ob- 
 served SILENCE upon disputed points of maritime international 
 law, thereby reserving to herself freedom to maintain her own 
 interpretation of international law on these important points. 
 If England's pretension against Ireland in this matter were, 
 tacitly or otherwise, allowed, her navy, which destroyed Irish 
 shipping and swept Irish commerce off the seas, as we have 
 shown, and which still prevents direct commerce between Ire- 
 land and other countries, would undoubtedly, under cover of her 
 policy of SILENCE, exclude the navies and commercial shipping 
 of the world from Irish harbors, would extend and perpetuate the 
 domination of the most dishonest and selfish of all nations; 
 would gradually reduce international commerce to a condition of 
 dependence upon England; would make freedom of the seas 
 a dream instead of a reality ; would render it forever impossible 
 to rescue Ireland from England's stranglehold ; and would frus- 
 trate the purpose of this International Congress by sowing a 
 permanent crop of disputes and consequent wars. It may not 
 for long be the interest of any State, if it be the interest of 
 any even now, to contribute to the creation of an octopus for its 
 own destruction by abandoning Ireland now to that octopus. 
 
 Grotius in his treatise, Mare Liberum, has many wise re- 
 marks apposite to the present situation, from which it may be 
 permissible to quote: "So far as peace is concerned, it is well- 
 known that there are two kinds of peace, one made on terms of 
 equality, the other on unequal terms." 
 
 Again : "But though God reserves to Himself the final 
 
 109 
 
punishment slow and unseen but none the less inevitable, yet He 
 appoints to intervene in human affairs two judges whom the 
 luckiest of sinners does not escape, namely, conscience, or the 
 innate estimate of oneself; and public opinion, or the estimate 
 of others. These two tribunals are open to those who are de- 
 barred from all others; to these the powerless appeal; in them 
 are defeated those who are wont to win by might, those who 
 put no bounds to their presumption, those who consider cheap 
 anything bought at the price of human blood, those who defend 
 injustice by injustice, men whose wickedness is so manifest that 
 they must needs be condemned by the unanimous judgment of 
 the good, and cannot be cleared before the bar of their own 
 souls." 
 
 Finally he says, addressing Holland, a smaller country than 
 Ireland, "Therefore if it be necessary, arise, O nation uncon- 
 quered on the sea, and fight boldly not only for your own lib- 
 erty, but for that of the human race. 'Nor let it fright thee 
 that their fleet is winged, each ship, with a hundred oars. The 
 sea whereon it sails will have none of it. And though the prows 
 bear figures threatening to cast rocks such as Centaurs throw, 
 thou shalt find them but hollow planks and painted terrors. 
 'Tis his cause that makes or mars a soldier's strength. If 
 the cause be not just, shame strikes the weapon from his 
 hands'." 
 
 lie 
 
XIII. 
 
 England is Disqualified and Unfit to Rule Ireland 
 
 The Irish nation has never had a parliament on the English 
 model or according to English law. There is no reason in the 
 nature of things why it should. The Gaelic Feis was, long before 
 England had a parliament, much more comprehensive in scope, 
 the adoption and promulgation of laws being only one of its 
 many functions. Although the Feis had ceased to meet, the 
 Gaelic polity had, in virtue of the excellent legal system, re- 
 tained its force for local purposes down to the middle of the- 
 10th century. Little conferences of the leading colonies in the 
 English Pale, convened on each occasion by emissaries from 
 England sent over specially to inaugurate some new scheme of 
 aggression, dignified themselves with the name of "parliament" 
 long before that word had acquired its modern national mean- 
 ing, and called their resolutions "statutes," as certain old socie- 
 ties still do. They made big pretensions; but to the Irish nation 
 they were only so many reminders that an enemy was within the 
 gates. That little parliament of the Pale, which was Catholic, 
 ended, and the colonial parliament, which was Protestant, and an 
 effective instrument, began under King Henry VIII of Eng- 
 land. Those different sorts of parliament were, however, alike in 
 this, that the members considered themselves Englishmen in Ire- 
 land for the purpose of maintaining and extending English 
 power here, and consequently acknowledged England as a coun- 
 try entitled to dominate Ireland so far as their power reached; 
 and on various occasions in both periods sent members or dele- 
 gates to the parliaments of England in the various cities in which 
 parliaments were then held ; murmuring against this requirement, 
 not on national principle — because they had none except in re- 
 spect of England — but because of the expense : — Monk Mason, 
 Parliaments of Ireland, passim. There were several parliaments 
 of the colonial pattern held during the reign of Henry VIII ; 
 and he tried to make them Irish parliaments, not by election, 
 but by having Irish chiefs invited to them. Not many of the 
 chiefs attended; few of those who did attend understood what 
 they had been summoned for, and when tendered an oath to 
 which they objected they withdrew. The only parliaments in 
 the English sense in which the Irish willingly participated were 
 the Confederation of Kilkenny in the time of Charles I, and the 
 parliament called by James II in 1689. Of the latter Thomas 
 Davis says : "The parliament which passed those Acts was the 
 
 111 
 
first and last which ever sat in Ireland since the English inva- 
 sion, possessed of national authority and complete in all its parts. 
 The king, by law and in fact — the king who, by his Scottish 
 descent, his creed and his misfortunes, was dear (mistakenly or 
 not) to the majority of the then people of Ireland — presided in 
 person over that parliament. The peerage consisted of the best 
 blood, Milesian and Norman, of great wealth and of various 
 creeds. The Commons represented the Irish Septs, the Danish 
 towns, and the Anglo-Irish counties and boroughs. No parlia- 
 ment of equal rank, from King to Commons, sat here since; 
 none sat here before or since, so national in composition and 
 conduct." All the enactments of that parliament were nullified 
 by England as had been those of the Confederation. 
 
 From the invasion down to the present time England has 
 never been faithful to any one of the numerous treaties she en- 
 tered into with Irish kings, princes and people. One of the 
 most disgraceful crimes in history, having regard to the circum- 
 stances, was the immediate breach of the Treaty of Limerick 
 in 1691. Her policy of making treaties with the Irish delib- 
 erately to break them when the immediate purpose was attained 
 explains her uniform treatment of them, before and after, as 
 "enemies." Whatever happened she so classed them. Let us, 
 therefore, in this section, confine ourselves to her treatment of 
 her own offspring, her colonists in Ireland, who also, at Eng- 
 land's bidding and for England's purposes, called the Irish and 
 treated them as "enemies." After what England called her "Irish 
 Parliament" had enacted its declaration of legislative inde- 
 pendence in 1782, the British parliament also enacted the same 
 measure as an additional assurance that the independence would 
 be respected. Still the Irish Volunteers, the driving force in win- 
 ning that measure and other useful measures about that time, 
 knowing England and being uncorrupted, were not satisfied, and 
 refused to disband, unless England gave a further guarantee. 
 Hence, on the 22nd January, 1783, the British parliament went 
 further and passed the Renunciation Act, 23 Geo. Ill, c. 20, 
 solemnly declaring that the legislative independence of Ireland 
 should remain for ever unquestioned and unquestionable. In 
 November of that same year, the Irish Volunteers having been 
 disbanded in the meantime, that same British parliament passed 
 a measure enabling it to resume the power it had so grossly 
 abused, and got the colonial parliament in Ireland to relinquish, 
 stealthily, the very power which the British parliament had de- 
 clared ten months before should remain for ever unquestioned 
 and unquestionable. That was the sort of faith England kept 
 with her own offspring. Let us examine that institution more 
 closely. 
 
 The institution called "Irish Government" is not, and has 
 never been, more than a branch or agency of the British Gov- 
 
 112 
 
ernment. That branch or agency has never been, and is not 
 now, elected by or responsible to the Irish people, nor even to 
 the English colonists in Ireland, though for England's purposes 
 of dissension it favors them. Nor was it responsible to the 
 colonial institution called "Irish Parliament" when that existed; 
 nor was that parliament itself elected by the Irish people or 
 under their control. "The Irish Parliament was simply an in- 
 stitution for registering the edicts of the English Privy Council." 
 — Murray, Commercial Relations between England and Ireland. 
 There is abundant evidence that it did not trust the "govern- 
 ment," which, however, it rarely had power or courage to resist. 
 From the fact that it had been created and was sustained by an' 
 external power as the parliament of a planted sect, a small 
 minority in number, but with a commission to overrun the coun- 
 try, appropriate all property and dominate the nation, two con- 
 sequences flowed: First, that it was essentially hostile to the 
 Irish nation; and secondly, that it could be withdrawn or extin- 
 guished by its creator. By no other method could it be freed 
 from those consequences than by a breach with its creator and 
 amalgamation with the nation, to suppress which was its original 
 function. And, as a matter of historical fact, it never achieved 
 anything beneficial to the whole Irish population, or anything 
 that might be recalled to its credit, and never attracted the sup- 
 port of the Irish nation, until; under pressure from the Volun- 
 teers, who recognized the necessity and desired reconciliation 
 with the nation, it at last showed a tendency toward such 
 breach and amalgamation. The parliament having, as a condi- 
 tion of its existence, to rely upon external force against the 
 nation, was long precluded from becoming reconciled with its 
 victim. This could not be done until it was in a position to 
 shake off the external power. What has been said in previous 
 parts of this Statement sufficiently indicates how the institution 
 worked. Extracts from a pamphlet written by the late Lord 
 Dufferin in 1867 will further illustrate the situation: "From 
 Queen Elizabeth's reign until the Union, the various commercial 
 confraternities of Great Britain never for a moment relaxed 
 their relentless grip of the trades of Ireland. One by one 
 each of our nascent industries was either strangled in its birth, 
 or handed over, gagged and bound, to the jealous custody of the 
 rival interest in England, until at last every fountain of wealth 
 was hermetically sealed, and even the traditions of commercial 
 enterprise have perished through desuetude. . , . What has 
 been the consequence of such a system pursued with relentless 
 pertinacity for two hundred and fifty years ? This — that debarred 
 from every other trade and industry, the entire nation flung 
 itself back upon the land, with as fatal an impulse as when a 
 river whose current is suddenly impeded rolls back and drowns 
 the valley it once fertilized." A "Letter to the People of Ire- 
 
 118 
 
land," printed in 1779, for c vious reasons anonymously, but 
 now in the Library of the British Museum, thus states the mat- 
 ter: "It is true that a pension list is a cause (of Ireland's pov- 
 erty); a prodigal succession of administrators is a cause; but 
 the fundamental cause of distress is that, being burdened with 
 a pension list and drained by an army, we are disabled by re- 
 strictions. The internal system of government is one grievance; 
 the external policy of England is a greater grievance." And all 
 this while a "parliament" existed in the country. When in 1776 
 that institution attempted to resist further injury from the 
 "government," the difficulty was overcome in the manner stated 
 by Mr. Lecky, History of England, IV, 441 : "A step was 
 taken by the government which in England would probably have 
 been followed by an impeachment. Eighteen Irish peers were 
 created in a single day, and seven barons and five viscounts were 
 at the same time raised a step in the peerage. The terms of 
 the bargain were well known to be an engagement to support 
 the government by their votes in the House of Lords, by their 
 substitutes and their influence in the. House of Commons." A 
 parliament dominated by an alien power is a mockery. Mr. 
 Froude says : "The Irish were not to be blamed if they looked to 
 Spain, to France, to any friend on earth or in Heaven to deliver 
 them from a power that discharged no single duty that rulers owe 
 ro subjects." 
 
 It will have been noted that little space is devoted in this 
 Statement, and that little with reluctance, to the Penal Code 
 of Laws against Catholics, so far as that can be called a 
 religious persecution ; too little space in comparison with the im- 
 portance of the subject and the enormous abuse of power it 
 was in dealing with a Catholic nation. But any review of mis- 
 government in Ireland would be misleading without some men- 
 tion of the subject. Apart from its intrinsic importance, scope 
 and long continuance, it was a key abuse which inspired or was 
 made a pretext for all the others. It directly furnished inspira- 
 tion and incentive for destroying root and branch the whole 
 Irish civilization, religion, law, learning, and all that appertained 
 to those things ; and offered the property of Catholics as tempt- 
 ing rewards to Protestants who would inform or comply with 
 other vile terms. When purposes the most gross and least de- 
 fensible were planned and carried out, an inseparable accompani- 
 ment was a mixture of nicknames, insult and calumny applied to 
 the scourged nation and the religion it professed. God and 
 religion were invoked on behalf of the particular plunder; 
 and "the same price of £5 was set on the head of a priest and 
 on that of a wolf, and the production of either head was a 
 sufficient claim for the reward." — Haverty. 
 
 "Amongst the Catholics at least religious intolerance had never 
 been a prevailing vice, and those who have studied closely the 
 
 114 
 
history and character of the Ir^^people can hardly fail to be 
 struck with the deep respect for sincere religion in every form 
 which they have commonly evinced. Their original conversion 
 to Christianity was probably accompanied by less violence and 
 bloodshed than that of any equally considerable nation in Eu- 
 rope; and in spite of the fearful calamities which followed the 
 Reformation, it is a memorable fact that, not a single Protestant 
 suffered for his religion in Ireland during all that period of the 
 Marian persecution in England. The treatment of Bedell, a Pro- 
 testant prelate, during the outbreak of 1641, and the Act estab- 
 lishing liberty of conscience passed by the Irish parliament of 
 1689, in the full flush of the brief Catholic ascendancy under 
 James II, exhibit very remarkably this aspect of the Irish char- 
 acter; and it was displayed in another form scarcely less vividly 
 during the Quaker Missions, which began toward the close of the 
 Commonwealth, and continued with little intermission for two 
 generations." — Lecky, Eighteenth Century, II., 389-91. 
 
 With reference to the Penal Code: "It was a complete sys- 
 tem, full of coherence and consistency ; well digested and com- 
 posed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and deliberate 
 contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverish- 
 ment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them 
 of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted in- 
 genuity of man." — Edmund Burke. 
 
 "The eighteenth century was an era of persecution, in which 
 law did the work of the sword more effectually and more safely. 
 Then was established a code framed with almost diabolical in- 
 genuity to extinguish natural affection — to foster perfidity and 
 hypocrisy — to petrify conscience — to perpetuate brutal ignorance 
 — to facilitate the work of tyranny — to render the vices of slavery 
 inherent and natural in the Irish character, and to make Protest- 
 antism almost irredeemably odious as the monstrous incarnation 
 of all moral perversions .... Having no rights or franchises — 
 no legal protection of life or property — disqualified to handle a 
 gun, even as a common soldier or gamekeeper — forbidden to ac- 
 quire the elements of knowledge at home or abroad — forbidden 
 even to render to God what conscience dictated as His due — what 
 could the Irish be but abject serfs? What nation in their circum- 
 stances could have been otherwise? Is it not amazing that any 
 social virtue could have survived such an ordeal? — that any seeds 
 of good, any roots of national greatness could have outlived such 
 a long tempestuous winter?" — Godkin, History of Ireland, II., 
 116. 
 
 Let us look at another aspect of the colonial institution. In 
 the case of a self-ruled country, an indefensible pension list, 
 though a grievance, to be redressed by the country itself, could 
 scarcely be of importance to deserve mention in a Statement for 
 
 115 
 
an international purpose. But in this case a view of an Anglo- 
 Irish pension list is essential to complete the picture of the un- 
 reality of self-rule and the degrading reality of the status of a 
 victim country. 
 
 "The greater part of the Irish revenue was directly expended 
 in the interests of England and of individual Englishmen." — Mur- 
 ray, Commercial Relations. In the 17th and 18th centuries the 
 value of money differed largely from now, averaging up to ten 
 times its present value. Be it remembered while reading this 
 paragraph that pensions on the Irish revenue were illegal ac- 
 cording to both English law and Anglo-Irish law. In addition 
 to this, some of the Irish statutes for raising money expressly 
 precluded the impositions of pensions on such money. But is it 
 not a condition of iSubmergence that laws for the protection 
 of the submerged must yield to power? As soon as the colonial 
 parliament had voted the various sums, it had no more power 
 over them; and the English agency calling itself "Irish govern- 
 ment," applied the money to the most corrupt purposes, such as 
 pensions to prostitutes of royalty, salaries and pensions attached 
 to trivial or sinecure offices, etc. "The government argued that 
 the king had an uncontrolled right to charge the money brought 
 into the treasury with pensions ; for the barring in the statutes 
 for hearth-money, quit rents and licenses could affect the money 
 only before it was brought into the treasury. Once the money 
 was in the treasury, it became part of the aggregate fund to be 
 used indiscriminately for the support of the government. In 
 England there was no instance of the Crown granting any pen- 
 sions for a number of years or lives on the produce of funds 
 raised and granted by means of a statute law for specific purposes. 
 But in Ireland the theory of the government was accepted and 
 acted upon all during the 18th century, in spite of the spasmodic 
 protests of the Irish Commons." — Murray, Commercial Relations, 
 155-6. Writing on the 22nd March, 1714, Archbishop 
 King, a placeman of William III, complains that "It is 
 preposterous that £ 5,000 pension should be allowed for 
 a nobleman, nay, a lady, for services that, though very 
 obliging to the person that gave the pension, yet were 
 not proper to be alleged as motive in the grant." He 
 also complains of a salary of £ 10 a year being attached to the 
 paltry office of keeper of the records of Birmingham Tower, Dub- 
 lin Castle ; yet when King's friend, Addison, the essayist, became 
 secretary to" the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, he was given, in 
 addition to that post, the keepership of the said records with 
 the salary attached and pension of £ 500 a year concurrently 
 with the salary ! This was a usual arrangement under the alleged 
 "Irish government." On the fith November, 1722, King writes: 
 "Of a truth, we never had nor heard of so lavish a management 
 as this has been since his majesty came to the crown; and which 
 
 116 
 
is yet more mischievous, 'tis whispered that the ministry is 
 against the exhorbitant pensions; but they are forced to comply 
 with the king or turn out." "When the king wished to give a pen- 
 sion to some particularly scandalous person, he granted it on the 
 Irish establishment, well knowing that the Irish Parliament could 
 do little, while the English Commons might not have allowed the 
 funds they voted to be used for such purposes." — Murray, Com- 
 mercial Relations, 168. On the 8th January, 1723, King writes 
 that there has just been added to the establishment "a pension 
 of £1,200 to the Countess of Walshingham, and one of £1,200 
 to the Countess of Lippic, which makes an addition of ,£1,400" ; 
 that is, including other pensions to which he did not so strongly 
 object. Pensions were sometimes given to unnamed persons, and 
 some to persons under fictitious names. The following are speci- 
 men pensions to persons having no connection with, or claim 
 upon, Ireland : The Duchess of Kendal, mistress of George I, 
 £3,000 a year; the Countess of Yarmouth, £4,000 a year; Baron 
 Steinberg, amount not stated; Rudolf de Spork, amount not 
 stated; Herman Holbourg, £1,000 a year; the Princess of 
 Hesse, £5,000 a year; the Queen Dowager of Prussia, £800 a 
 year; Lady Betty Waldgrave, £800 a year; M. de Verois, the 
 Sardinian ambassador who had negotiated peace with France, 
 £1,000 a year; Lady Kilmansegg, £750, afterward increased to 
 £1,250 a year; Christina Shroder, £2,000 a year; the Countess 
 of Belmont, £1,500 a year; Augusta Shultz, £1,200 a year; 
 Frederick, Duke of Brunswick, £4,000, afterward increased to 
 £6,700 a year; Lord Bathurst, £2,000 a year ; the Duke of Glou- 
 cester, £3,000 a year; the Duke of Cumberland, £3,000 a year; 
 the Earl of Cholmondeley, £3,700 a year; the Princess Amelia, 
 £1,000 a year; Princess Augusta, £5,000 a year; Carolin Ma- 
 tilda, Queen of Denmark (banished for adultery), £3,000 a year. 
 The fact that all such pensions were illegal by statute law, and yet 
 had to be paid in full in Irish currency (£1-1-8 Irish to £1 
 English), and that, too, without any deduction such as tax, shows 
 what little protection law and a subordinate parliament offered 
 to Ireland against English depredations. The revenue was not 
 always relieved by a pension lapsing from death or other cause. 
 The "government" in suitable cases, of which they were the judge, 
 transferred the pension to some other favorite, and it became 
 permanent. Within the official circle, a pension attached to an 
 office and paid concurrently with the salary was sometimes re- 
 tained on the pensioner's promotion to a better post, though he 
 either could not or would not discharge the duties of the pen- 
 sioned office. As exposed by Swift in his Drapiers Letters, many 
 of the higher offices in Church, State, and Judiciary were given 
 with their salaries to Englishmen, who in some cases never came 
 to Ireland, and never made, or pretended to make, any return 
 whatever for the salaries. The duties were either neglected or 
 
 117 
 
discharged by substitutes for whom additional salaries had to be 
 provided. The entire system was indefensible. 
 
 The rise and boldness of the Volunteers in 1779, and their 
 resolution at Dungannon, 1782, was the first call from the colony 
 to the Irish nation, in substance though not in words, to rally 
 against the common enemy. It was answered promptly and gen- 
 erously. The Volunteers created a great opportunity for the par- 
 liament to reform itself and achieve national independence as with 
 their help and that of the Catholics it could have done. But 
 the Parliament utterly failed to rise to the greatness of the oc- 
 casion. Even Grattan and the brilliant group to which he be- 
 longed never rose above the essentially colonial, Protestant, and 
 dependent idea. The Parliament, conscious of its false position 
 and inherent corruption, was always too weak to take any strong 
 action of its own volition. It acted only under pressure ; volunteer 
 pressure from 1779, wlien the Volunteers sprang into power, 
 until 1783 ; English pressure normally. The appalling distress 
 throughout the country ; the wave of national spirit generated by 
 the Volunteers, by the contagious example of the American col- 
 onies, and by the consciousness that England's difficulty, was Ire- 
 land's opportunity, enabled the Parliament to achieve some com- 
 mercial freedom in 1779, and apparent legislative liberty in 1782. 
 During the last twenty years of its existence it promoted the in- 
 dustries of sea-fishing, brewing, sugar-refining, and some minor 
 industries and forms of development. It made Dublin a national 
 capital, with a consequent concentration there of business, fash- 
 ion, and wealth. But the value of its benefits has been greatly 
 overestimated. Taken all together, they were not at all of na- 
 tional magnitude. They withered when the Parliament was ex- 
 tinguished. But there is no reason whatever to doubt, it would 
 be utter childishness to doubt, that if the Act of Union had not 
 been carried England would have destroyed each and every one 
 of the Irish enterprises as soon as she saw them command a profit 
 which she could by any means make her own, with as little 
 scruple as she had done with previous enterprises and with as 
 little scruple as she withdrew the partial liberty to which these 
 enterprises were due; and the colonial parliament having dis- 
 carded the support of the Volunteers, would have concurred in 
 England's designs. The choice of method is immaterial in pres- 
 ence of the fact that it was England did destroy the industries. 
 
 By maintaining, as it did throughout, its strictly alien, sec- 
 tarian, and colonial character, and keeping the Irish nation out- 
 side unrepresented, the parliament deprived itself of any valid 
 claim to be called an Irish Parliament. A Parliament pretending 
 to represent Ireland, and speaking in her name, while itself con- 
 sisting largely of English placemen, excluding the Irish nation, 
 and conducting itself as a fragment of a foreign nation, was con- 
 sciously making a false pretence. It could not be national as re- 
 
 118 
 
garded Ireland. By the fact of excluding the nation, it made it- 
 self anti-national ; and in fact and in practice it was avowedly 
 and systematically anti-Irish, always a ready tool for England's 
 anti-Irish purposes. This was necessarily so, because representing 
 only an ascendancy minority its activities were determined and di- 
 rected by the outside power which it served. Such an ascendancy 
 always needs external power against the Nation ; and that mean- 
 ing, in plain words, the support of the enemy against the nation, 
 it was necessarily anti-Irish. Throughout, it was the enemy's 
 power it wielded, and not power derived from the nation it ruled ; 
 therefore throughout it was essentially anti-national and anti- 
 Irish. Such was the nature it had inherited, and such its own 
 pettiness and corruption, that the pressure and the very existence 
 of the Volunteers soon became irksome and embarrassing to it. 
 So far from its having achieved the independence of Ireland, as 
 Grattan seems to have imagined, it hardly achieved a single es- 
 sential of independence. It had got no control over the executive 
 government. That irresponsible body still remained the agent of 
 the English Privy Council and retained control over Ireland and 
 Ireland's resources, including the Parliament itself. What a par- 
 ody of independence. that was. The Parliament became fright- 
 ened at the narrow escape it had of doing something noble. It 
 was dazzled by the power the Volunteers had won for it — because 
 it was unworthy of them. It stealthily surrendered them to Eng- 
 land again as soon as the Volunteers were disbanded; and the 
 words Written by Lord Lieutenant Carlisle in 1781 were again 
 true: "Every regulation or restriction which Great Britain may 
 think fit to subject herself to, and which she may consider as 
 equally incumbent on Ireland, will be cheerfully adopted in this 
 country, and effectually executed by Irish law"; without the 
 consent of either the Irish people or the parliament that pre- 
 tended to represent them. 
 
 The only valid argument for the maintenance of such a lep- 
 rous institution in the country was an argument which none of 
 the colonial statesmen had the breadth of view or courage to use, 
 namely, the possibility of curing its leprosy by self reform, and 
 then imbibing enough manhood to rise to its opportunities. When 
 the Volunteers attempted to insist upon its reforming itself, know- 
 ing that it was a constant danger otherwise, the Parliament itself 
 was the obstacle. It shirked the duty because it was too rotten 
 for the task. Afterwards it made such an attempt to reform as re- 
 sulted in increasing the power of the executive over it. Indi- 
 viduals, many of them absentees, who were patrons of pocket 
 boroughs, chose — for cash paid to them — "representatives" whom 
 they then got a few of their local dependents or hirelings to go 
 through the farce of "electing," unknown to the community. Seats 
 were bought and sold in the open market. There was a complete 
 absence of civic virtue as well as of civic freedom. We have 
 
 119 
 
Grattan's own authority for saying that in 1790,. under what was 
 considered an enlarged constitution, the Irish nation had no rep- 
 resentation or voice whatever in the making or administration of 
 the laws which affected them and under which they had to live ; 
 and that the number of placemen and pensioners whom the cor- 
 rupt "government" had got into the docile "Parliament" equalled 
 one-half of its efficient members. It rapidly became worse in the 
 following years. It shirked all its great duties. It shirked its 
 supreme duty of declaring Ireland's Sovereign Independence 
 when the call of the Volunteers had brought to its support for 
 that purpose the nation which it refused to emancipate or recog- 
 nize. This was its greatest failure, because it disappointed the 
 nation's hopes on the only occasion on which the nation took an 
 interest in its proceedings. It shirked the duty of settling justly 
 the greatest and most urgent domestic problem, the land system 
 which it had forced upon the people, and which kept them in 
 chronic famine and sucked the marrow out of their bones. It 
 voted money for a navy to protect its own commerce, and shirked 
 the duty of applying the money to that purpose. It passed a 
 bill giving certain relief to Irish merchants, and because Eng- 
 land objected to their being relieved it left the bill in abeyance. 
 It maintained an army, paid English officers of it, and shirked the 
 duty of exercising any control whatever over it. It was the sole 
 immediate repository of power in Ireland throughout the 18th 
 century. What did it achieve during that period? The degrada- 
 tion of a nation; its own external disgrace. Will the most cap- 
 able of its admirers answer two questions so simple that they 
 should be easily answered ? First, can he specify a single benefit 
 conferred upon the excluded Irish nation by the Protestant col- 
 onial Parliament during the whole of its existence? Second, can 
 he specify a single act worthy of a legislature with its pretensions 
 until the pressure of the Volunteers was applied to it in 1779 r 
 What is to be thought of an institution calling itself an Irish 
 Parliament of which those two questions can be asked without 
 any possibility of an affirmative answer? It needs little reasoning 
 to decide whether that was an instrument of freedom or of slav- 
 ery, Ireland's instrument or England's tool. A subordinate par- 
 liament which throughout its existence scourged the nation in 
 whose name it had dared to speak, and shirked all its primary 
 and fundamental duties, was nothing but a disgrace and danger 
 to Ireland, and a bad imitation of an over-rated model. So bad 
 has Ireland found all parliaments that have meddled with it, so 
 diametrically different from the boasts regarding parliaments, so 
 iniquitous in themselves and in their output, that many have come 
 to hate the very name "parliament." We look forward to mak- 
 ing the Feis of free Ireland different in name as well as in char- 
 acter. 
 
 Let others tell how the Act of Union was carried. Mr. Lecky 
 
 120 
 
says: "It is a simple and unexaggerated statement of the fact, 
 that, in the entire history of representative government there is 
 no instance of corruption having been applied on so large a scale, 
 and with such audacious effrontery." Mr. J. A. Fox says : "W. 
 Longfield was appointed commissioner to distribute the bribes. 
 Castlereagh considered that £1,500,000 would be the necessary 
 sum for the purpose of bribery. There were eighty boroughs 
 with 103 borough seats in the Parliament, belonging to patrons. 
 The following are among the sums that were paid, many in 
 hard cash, in return for vote or votes for the Act of Union : "Lord 
 Downshire, £52,500 ; Lord Ely, £45,000 ; Earl of Carrick, £14,350 ; 
 Lord Clanmorris, £14,000; Sir Hercules Langrishe, £13,862; 
 Duke of Leinster, £13,800 ; Lord Lismore, £12,000 ; Earl of Lud- 
 low, £7,500; Earl of Shannon, £7,500; Lord Tara, £7,500; Hon. 
 E. Massey, £6,850, Earl of Massareene and his three brothers, 
 £3,750 each— £15,000." 
 
 Lord Lieutenant Cornwallis, writing to the Bishop of Lichfield 
 on 27th April, 1799, says: "You will easily conceive how un- 
 pleasant my situation must be and how little I can flatter myself 
 with the hope of obtaining any credit for myself, or of rendering 
 any essential service to my country. Sincerely do I repent that 
 I did not return to Bengal." Writing on the 8th June, 1799, to 
 General Ross, he says: "My occupation is now of the most un- 
 pleasant nature, negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt 
 people under Heaven. I despise and hate myself every hour for 
 engaging in such dirty work." 
 
 It must be remembered that titles and offices at the public ex- 
 pense were distributed as lavishly as money. What made the Act 
 so expensive was that all the free opinion of the country, North 
 and South was opposed to it. The "government" sent out urgent 
 whips in all directions to obtain signatures to a petition for the 
 Union. Those opposed to the Union were thwarted in every way 
 in which a government can thwart popular action. Notwithstand- 
 ing this, the signatures of electors in County Down numbered 
 17,000 against the Union and only 415 for it. Thus the colonists 
 having completed the work which England wanted them to do 
 for her, would not be permitted to have a parliament for their 
 own purposes, especially in view of the danger of their becoming 
 amalgamated with the Irish nation. "Scarcely any element or 
 aggravation of political immorality was wanting, and the term 
 "honour," if it be applied to such men as Castlereagh and Pitt, 
 ceases to have any real meaning in politics. Whatever may be 
 thought of the abstract merits of the arrangement, the Union as 
 it was carried was a crime of the deepest turpitude." — Lecky, 
 Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, p. 198. 
 
 In all that vile business, so loathsome to touch, the Catholics, 
 that is — the Irish nation at the time — had no part or responsibil- 
 ity, for the reason that no Catholic was eligible to or a member 
 
 121 
 
of the Colonial Parliament. The government, however, in their 
 anxiety to have the measure enacted, sought help from all quar- 
 ters. The Viceroy himself and other government agents assured 
 the heads of the Catholic Church that if they gave whatever sup- 
 port they could from outside to the measure, or showed they were 
 in favor of it, and it was enacted, the British Parliament would 
 immediately enact the legislation for the relaxation of the Penal 
 Laws called Catholic Emancipation ; and Cornwallis told the Par- 
 liament itself that it would never grant Catholic Emancipation, 
 because it could not afford to do so! What a humiliating final 
 kick to the Parliament that had served England so basely, to be 
 told that its evil use was at an end and that it could not afford to 
 do good. 
 
 Emancipation never came as a result of the promises. Twenty- 
 nine years later, the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister of 
 England, informed the King that a situation had arisen in Ire- 
 land in which a choice had to be made between Catholic Emanci- 
 pation and revolution. The relief then came, not because of the 
 promises, nor because it was just, but as usual in obedience to 
 the appearance of force. 
 
 The Union deprived Ireland of even the simulacrum of a Par- 
 liament and substituted direct legislation from London. The dif- 
 ference to the Irish nation was, that a Parliament in Ireland, 
 claiming to represent and act for Ireland only, however unreprer 
 sentative or bad, should at some time come under the control of 
 the Irish nation, with the natural consequences. England knowing 
 that, would on no account have permitted such a Parliament to 
 exist. It was vitiated throughout by the undeniable principle that 
 what England had given England was entitled to take away when- 
 she had the power. She had no business for a Parliament in Ire- 
 land but to keep the population divided, the more easily to domi- 
 nate the whole. The first symptom of a better purpose was like 
 a signal to England to take the work of dividing and dominating 
 into her own hands. So long as a vestige of England's power 
 lasts in Ireland, direct or indirect, its functions will be to Divide, 
 Dominate, Plunder, Misrule, and Malign Ireland. 
 
 Throughout almost the whole of the 19th century, the energies 
 of the Irish people were so much absorbed in the sheer animal 
 problem of self-preservation and the destruction of the system of 
 landlordism imposed upon them by Cromwell and the other confis- 
 cators, that it was only spasmodically, in 1848 and 1867, any ef- 
 forts were made toward national independence. Owing to the 
 nature of their pressing grievances, and the necessity disarmed 
 men were under of utilizing any available means, they allowed 
 themselves to be misled into the temporary aberration of sending 
 to the British Parliament, from 1830 onward, representatives 
 who, so far as they were nationalists, treated the oath of allegi- 
 ance as what it is — a political instrument. Their purpose there 
 
 122 
 
was chiefly to secure the enactment of land laws essential for the 
 maintenance of life, which were in each instance substantially 
 achieved by popular action and the sacrifice of many victims to 
 prison and the gallows. The technical breach of principle, as in 
 the present use of an English-created franchise for independent 
 purposes, was a legitimate tactical experiment. Having proved 
 wholly mistaken and futile as a policy, it has ended, and our na- 
 tion denies any right in the British Parliament to legislate for 
 Ireland. 
 
 Naturally, in two adjacent islands, before they have fully spe- 
 cialized, some industries and trades suitable for one are suitable 
 for both. With friendship, justice, and good sense it would be 
 easy to ascertain the respective degrees of suitability, and to settle 
 which should practice one set of industries and which another set. 
 The English Government in dealing with Ireland has never been 
 satisfied with less than a monopoly of all, and, so far as they 
 could prevent it, would not tolerate the success of any industry 
 or trade in Ireland, even in the absence of a corresponding in- 
 dustry in England. When Ireland had any raw material of value 
 which happened to suit England, she was not allowed to work it 
 herself, or to export it, raw or manufactured, to where she chose, 
 but was compelled to sell it to England at England's price; and 
 this is still the case. On the other hand, she was actually prevent- 
 ed from importing from a foreign country a raw material for 
 which England had no use but thought she might have a use in 
 the future. No conceivable contrivance was omitted to fetter 
 Irish industries and commerce. The instances herein given must 
 be regarded only as instances in a continuous and comprehensive 
 system covering the whole sphere of industrial life. In some 
 cases the effects were produced by acts of the Colonial Parliament 
 at England's bidding; in other cases, even while that Parlia- 
 ment existed, directly by the English or British Parliament or 
 by Orders in Council thereunder; just as at present so far as 
 any attempt is made to found or revive in Ireland an industry 
 or trade. England's motive in all this is- immaterial to Ireland; 
 but for the information of the Peace Congress we may attempt 
 to elucidate it. 
 
 No doubt the primary motive of the elaborate system of re- 
 strictions and cheating was, and is, the sordid and commercial one 
 of helping England's manufactures and trade by any means, moral 
 and immoral, in complete disregard of honesty, decency and the 
 amount of injustice and suffering thereby inflicted upon others. 
 So far, this was England's attitude toward all countries. In the 
 minds of Englishmen, their own and their country's selfish inter- 
 ests outweigh all other considerations, and supersede law, mor- 
 ality and justice, even while they preach these virtues to other 
 people. From English trade jealousy Scotland, the English plan- 
 tations, and any country that crossed England's path suffered 
 more or less ; but they were not pursued beyond the incidence of 
 
 123 
 
trade. All were enemies to the extent of being traded upon and 
 out-manoeuvred as much as possible; but the active hostility 
 ceased on the definite achievement or failure of the immediate 
 purpose. The treatment of Ireland was, and is, in quite a differ- 
 ent category. It exhibited a degrading and brutalizing antipathy ; 
 brutalizing to England as is his trade to the slave-owner. Not 
 content with sordid gain, nor even with security she tortured 
 wantonly. She exhausted human ingenuity and device against 
 Ireland, and left no device unused, even when no gain could be 
 foreseen as a possible result. She gives way permanently to the 
 savage impulse of seeing through a criminal course once entered 
 upon. The sleepless vigilance, the untiring ingenuity, the unre- 
 mitting persistency with which Ireland was, and is, pursued suf- 
 fers no diminution from time or circumstance, and can proceed 
 only from sheer malevolence with no reason, however base to 
 justify it. In short, the treatment of Ireland is the classic ex- 
 ample of the treatment of a victim country. What Dr. Lynch 
 wrote two centuries and a half ago still holds true : "That time 
 could not slacken or cool down the fiery ardor of this hatred, that 
 English obstinacy should be eternal, is truly astonishing. Never, 
 since the creation of the world, were hostile feelings so system- 
 atically kept alive for such a length of time in any country." 
 Cambrensis Eversus, I., 219. An apt epitome of England's policy 
 in Ireland, written three centuries ago, also holds true still : "Down 
 they go in every corner, and down they shall go, God willing." 
 Blinded by wicked purpose, the English have never been able to 
 appreciate the blasphemy of representing God as sanctioning their 
 ungodly conduct. In relation to Ireland, England added to her 
 abnormal greed an active principle of malignancy and wanton 
 hatred which men, according to their tastes, ascribe to racial, re- 
 ligious, climatic, or other causes, or to all these together ; but 
 which remain historical facts, whatever be the motive. All these 
 may be elements in a complex motive, especially for England's 
 hatred of the Irish proper, whom she has labored to murder and 
 calumniate and will therefore never forgive. But she shows thai 
 that guilt of hers cannot be the only element, by her treatment of 
 her Protestant colonists in Ireland, fresh from her bosom, full of 
 whatever sentiment animates Englishmen in lieu of patriotism; 
 full, presumably of pride and love, and hope, for the greatness 
 of England, and of England, at the expense of other peoples; 
 even these her children, once having become established in Ire- 
 land, were no longer trusted or given fair play. She had confis- 
 cated practically all the property of the Irish people, and given it, 
 with all the power that accompanies property, into the hands of 
 her favorites ; and every high office in State, Church, and Judici- 
 ary, was occupied, not even by one of her colonists born in Ire- 
 land, but by newer and fresher men from England, Protestants, 
 attached by every tie to the current English order of things and 
 
 124 
 
the English connection; and yet England would not tolerate the 
 prosperity of these her garrison and friends in Ireland ; would not 
 allow them so much as to protect their own commerce, and solved 
 the problem by decreeing that they should have no commerce. 
 Indeed, most of the commercial restrictions mentioned in this 
 statement, after the great confiscations, were aimed by England 
 mainly at her own garrison and supporters in Ireland. In return 
 for having made themselves the tools of England's domination, 
 they were made the first and chief est sufferers from England's in- 
 satiable greed, and were treated by their employers as receivers 
 of stolen goods. When in the time of Charles II., the sea was 
 infested with pirates, and the Colonial Parliament voted a per- 
 petual grant for the support of a navy to protect their commerce. 
 England would not permit the money to be so employed ; misap- 
 propriated it; and took pains to make it known that any sug- 
 gestion of. an Irish navy would be regarded as treasonable. A 
 fine illustration of confidence in her offspring, and an exhibition 
 of consciousness that she was treating that offspring justly. She 
 compelled her Irish Parliament to contribute £36,000 a year 
 (equal to nearly ten times as much now), when Ireland could ill 
 afford it, toward English shipping, and £62,000 in addition 
 toward the maintenance of Tangier. Ireland must defend Tan- 
 gier but dare not defend itself. The Irish nation, as distinct 
 from the colony, unconscious of having given any cause for 
 England's implacable hatred, and seeing no cause for it but the 
 well-known one, that a criminal rarely forgives his victim, gen- 
 erally attribute it to a malignant nature or a disease. The real 
 motive of the hatred, however, is this: The English commercial 
 mind is incapable of conceiving power as other than a product 
 and accompaniment of wealth, as it has been in England's case. 
 She knows well, better than the Irish themselves know, the nat- 
 ural wealth, actual and latent, of Ireland. It was not the pov- 
 erty, but the wealth of Ireland, that attracted English adventur- 
 ers and excited their cupidity and jealousy. The more favored a 
 country is by nature the more attractive to the covetous — and the 
 greater the crime of destroying it. As a murderer dislikes being 
 confronted by a person who has escaped his knife, England in her 
 guilt, dislikes the nation toward which she stands in the position 
 of murderer and especially dislikes being confronted by that na- 
 tion before an international tribunal. Having partially failed to 
 exterminate the Irish nation, the English statesmen and press 
 constantly disseminate the slander in foreign countries that Ire- 
 land could not support herself as a separate State, knowing from 
 their own experience that it is a slander. They have, as we have 
 seen, long since found Ireland to be a natural mine of wealth, 
 and have abstracted and appropriated to themselves more from 
 it for years than is expended in maintaining some proud States 
 in Europe. That explains why England is so wealthy, and Ireland 
 
 126 
 
so apparently poor, because impoverished by England's extortion. 
 England knows that an independent Ireland would rapidly be- 
 come wealthy and powerful in modern Europe. Therefore the 
 true and only cure for England's malignancy is the destruction of 
 her power in Ireland. It is knowledge of this and not counter- 
 hate, which has been forced upon us by unvarying experience as 
 to our motive and our only safety. The partial and temporary re- 
 vival of Irish industries from 1779 till 1800 was limited to the 
 scope and duration of the installment of liberty of that period. 
 With sovereign independence alone is a nation limited only by 
 her ability and virtue, and enabled to put forth her best efforts 
 and reap the reward. 
 
 An international Peace Congress, one of whose purposes is 
 to establish a durable peace among nations, cannot fail to take ac- 
 count of the chief dispositions and forces hostile to peace, and 
 to take effective precautions against future misconduct of any 
 State addicted to indulge in such misconduct. There is special 
 necessity for this in the case of a State which has indulged in 
 any grave species of misconduct toward a subject nation by 
 continuous policy, as distinguished from severity arising out of 
 specific cause ; has practised such a policy to the degree of treating 
 the subject nation as a victim; and holds its conduct to be an 
 exclusively domestic concern. International law does not recog- 
 nize, and civilized states cannot afford to allow, that any State 
 has or can have or acquire a right to torture and destroy a sub- 
 ject nation. Not even in war, still less as a settled form of gov- 
 ernment, can such treatment be allowed. France, England, Russia 
 and America have already in several instances, with universal 
 approval, treated such abuse of.power as tyranny, a breach of in- 
 ternational law, a public danger, and a forfeiture by the offending 
 State of any right to rule such subject nation; released the na- 
 tions from such subjection, and established and maintained their 
 independence. In none of those instances, in no case of which 
 there is record, has abuse of power been so bad or so long con- 
 tinued, as in the treatment of Ireland by England, comprising as 
 it does: 
 
 i. The policy of defamation of Irish character, still being pur- 
 sued; 
 
 2. The policy of destruction of civilization in Ireland, still being 
 pursued; 
 
 3. The policy of exterminating the Irish nation, still being pur- 
 sued; 
 
 4. The policy of destruction and prevention of Irish industries 
 and trade, still being pursued; 
 
 5. The policy of prevention of legitimate intercourse with other 
 nations, stiJJ being pursued; 
 
 126 
 
6. The policy of financial exhaustion of Ireland for England's 
 purposes, still being pursued; 
 
 7. The policy of infidelity to public engagements with Ireland, 
 still being pursued; 
 
 8. The policy of general victimization of Ireland, still being pur- 
 sued; 
 
 9. The policy of infringing the international Convention of The 
 Hague, 1907, still being pursued; and 
 
 10. The policy of dominating international commerce, still being 
 pursued. 
 
 Therefore we have to add to Ireland's numerous irresistible 
 titles to sovereign independence the right of release from a ty- 
 ranny which international law and all civilized states condemn, 
 which no right of sovereignty, and no duty of allegiance could 
 survive. England having made herself the personification of 
 iniquity, must be relieved of position and power so selfishly 
 abused. 
 
 127 
 
XIV. 
 
 Ireland Claims Recognition and Intervention by the 
 
 Peace Congress, Restitution and Reparation by 
 
 England, and an International Guarantee 
 
 for Her Future Security 
 
 Every nation that is not wholly absorbed in animal grossness 
 has a spiritual personality ; and its own past, when worthy, is the 
 surest foundation of its claim for restoration and recognition as a 
 State, and for its future when restored. Basing upon all the fore- 
 going general and special titles and grounds of claim of a nation 
 old in centuries but replete with the generous hope and high pur- 
 pose of youth; scornfully rejecting the suggestion that she is 
 destined always to be the slave and drudge of an inferior people ; 
 animated by the indomitable spirit and courage of self-sacrifice to 
 proceed, in any event, to the goal of independence; Ireland ap- 
 peals specially to e"very state that respects the virtues and quali- 
 ties essential to civilization, that inherits gratitude to Ireland for 
 any past service, or that cares for the permanent interests of 
 justice and peace. She appeals to the Peace Congress as a whole 
 on all these grounds to receive and hear her representatives ; and 
 deal worthily with the case they present for restoration to the 
 society of Sovereign States of one which in her long career never 
 inflicted wrong upon any nation. It behooves the Congress as 
 well as Ireland to remember England's desire to stifle our voice, 
 stronger to-day than in 1599, when Queen Elizabeth's Deputy, 
 Lord Essex, said : " 'Twere as well for our credit that we alone 
 had the exposition of our quarrel with this people, and not they 
 also." 
 
 No question of the identity of the Irish nation can honestly 
 be raised. But knowing our opponent, we desire to forestall a 
 possible allegation that the Irish nation of to-day is not identical 
 with that of the independent Ireland of the past ; and we invite 
 the Congress : 
 
 i. To require the State challenging Ireland in this respect to produce, 
 as a condition of being heard on that subject, a verification of its 
 own identity with the England of the centuries of Ireland's in- 
 dependence. 
 
 2. To consider whether any other European State of the present day 
 is identical with its own past in so many essential respects as Ire- 
 land is with hers ; and 
 
 3. To consider the following statement on historical identity by the 
 English constitutional lawyer, Phillimore: 
 
 128 
 
"The vital principle of international law is a necessary and prin- 
 cipal consequence flowing from the doctrine of moral personality 
 and actual intercommunion of States. The legion, the Roman 
 jurist said, is the same, though the members of it are changed; 
 the ship is the same, though the planks of it are renewed; the in- 
 dividual is the same, though the particles of his body may not be 
 the same in his youth as in his old age; and so 'Populum eundem 
 hoc tempore puiari qui abtine centum annis fuisset!'" 
 
 The Entente Allies and all who have expressed concurrence in 
 their war aims have, in accordance with a principle of internation- 
 al law universally recognized, specially emphasized the quality of 
 right among nations, whether big or little, in all matters, but 
 especially for the purpose of determining the rule under which 
 they would live. In a Federal State, such as North America and 
 Switzerland, the constituent states have equal representation in 
 the Federal Senate, irrespective of their size or population. The 
 principle of international law to which this conforms is thus ex- 
 pressed by Oppenheim : "Since the law of nations is based on the 
 common consent of the States or Sovereign communities, the 
 member-states of the family of nations are equal to each other 
 as subjects of international law," irrespective of any difference 
 among them as regards area, population, power, etc. "This is 
 a consequence of their sovereignty and of the fact that the lawof 
 nations is a law between, not above states." Sir F. E. Smith, At- 
 torney General of England, in his book on the subject, thus ex- 
 presses it: "States are units of international law, and that law 
 recognizes mutual equality among them." Therefore President 
 Wilson's declaration of equality of right among nations, big and 
 little, adopted by the Allies, is but a re-affirmation of a principle 
 long established, and its application to submerged nations equally 
 with those that are independent. In accordance with this prin- 
 ciple Ireland claims in the Peace Congress equal representation 
 with that of other nations to be affected by the decisions of the 
 Congress. Her claim for recognition of her status as a Sovereign 
 State is, and has been shown in this statement to be, so well 
 founded that she believes herself entitled to enforce it whenever 
 and however she can. She desires to avail of this Congress as 
 one of the possible methods. Her claims may be regarded from 
 either of two standpoints; that of Ireland claiming a measure of 
 simple justice due to her historically, due to her merits, her in- 
 herent right, essential to her continued existence, which she is 
 qualified and able to assume with safety and credit, and which 
 she is for all these reasons determined to have; and from the 
 standpoint of the Congress, either allowing the claim and thus 
 settling an inveterate dispute, or taking the responsibility of re- 
 fusing recognition. The former course would put the Congress 
 in possession of the facts and merits of the case. The latter 
 course would amount to an adverse decision in disregard of the 
 facts and merits ; which facts and merits the civilized world could 
 
 129 
 
^ren be restrained from discussing and deciding upon, in de- 
 legation of the functions and repute of the Congress. Any pro- 
 posal to recognize the status quo ante helium would produce the 
 same result, with the addition that, irrespective of facts and 
 merits, the Congress would in effect take the side of power and 
 oppression against unquestionable right, justice, humanity, and 
 thus begin its proceedings by recognizing and maintaining that 
 very dominance of Force over Right which it is earnestly hoped 
 the Congress will eliminate from the world. In the actual case, 
 this would amount to a declaration that there is no remedy for 
 an international wrong involving the existence of a nation. In 
 addition to the retrograde step which such a confession of failure 
 to meet a supreme need would undoubtedly be, it is worth con- 
 sidering the untenable position into which it would lead the Con- 
 gress in a conceivable case. The two nations of Sweden and 
 Norway constituted one State until eleven years ago, when they 
 separated without loss of human life. Norway's right to sep- 
 aration, independence, and international recognition was not 
 then and is not now questioned by other States. Norway is now 
 regarded as rightly in possession of her independence. Taking 
 the facts as they were at the time of the separation, and laying 
 aside the question of relative power, could forcible opposition by 
 Sweden have diminished or destroyed, in international law, Nor- 
 way's right to independence ? Clearly it could not ; the right was 
 inherent. Norway's right, now internationally recognized, would 
 have been equally good even had she been unable to achieve in- 
 dependence. Neither her weakness nor Sweden's strength would 
 have affected the right as a right. Therefore we ask the Con- 
 gress to recognize that Ireland's right is equally good as Nor- 
 way's. Again, though Austria and Hungary now constitute a 
 single State, internally recognized as one, the countries com- 
 posing that State are free to separate. If they, or either of 
 them, or anv one of any other united countries, desired separa- 
 tion, the mere fact of another member of the group opposing and 
 by force defeating the project of separation, could neither dimin- 
 ish the right nor justify other nations, singly or collectively, in 
 attempting to prevent the separation by refusing to recognize as 
 a separate State the country desiring it. This being so even 
 in the case of countries united constitutionally by mutual agree- 
 ment and nearly equal in power, where spectator nations may 
 intervene or remain passive, it is much more emphatically so, and 
 imposes a positive duty of intervention, where, as in the case of 
 Ireland, the right to independence exists, where there has never 
 been any agreed union or constitutional connection, where the 
 only union is that of force; more accurately, where there is no 
 union, but only subjection to the purposes of the strong at the 
 expense of the weak. In this case, a refusal to recognize the 
 right of the subject nation to sovereign status would be a refusal 
 
 130 
 
to remedy a supreme international wrong, a strengthening of the 
 chains of slavery, and would be more repugnant to international 
 law, to justice, and to international interest than would a refusal 
 to recognize Norway in one of the cases submitted, or Hungary 
 in the other. 
 
 The American statesman, John Quihcy Adams, writing to 
 President Monroe, said: "There is a stage in such (revolution- 
 ary) contests when the party struggling for independence has, 
 as I conceive, a right to demand its acknowledgment by neutral 
 parties, and when the acknowledgment may be granted without 
 departure from the obligations of neutrality." It will be ob- 
 served that he does not restrict the principle to nations with a 
 historical claim, but makes it applicable to all alike. As illus- 
 trations, it is to this principle that America owed recognition of 
 herself by France in 1778; and to the continued pressure of her 
 arms, helped by France's recognition, she owed the recognition 
 of her independence by England four years later. When in 
 1640 the King of Spain (to which Portugal was then subject) 
 ordered a large number of troops to be conscripted in Portugal 
 for Spanish service, for the purpose of fighting Spain's battles 
 and diminishing Portugal's power of revolt, the Portuguese per- 
 ceiving the two-fold object, broke out in revolt, which was suc- 
 cessful in overthrowing the Spanish yoke, made John, Duke of 
 Braganza, King of Portugal; and John's ambassadors were re- 
 ceived .at the Courts of France, England and Sweden, and sub- 
 sequently by Spain herself. So the independence of Switzer- 
 land was formally recognized in 1648 and 1654, and of Holland 
 by Spain in 1649. It is to the same principle the Balkan States 
 owe recognition of them by Eurooean States, followed by one 
 form or another of intervention, and their consequent independ- 
 ence and separation from Turkey. The independence of the 
 countries overrun by Napoleon was recognized by France in 
 1815 ; of the South American Republics by England in 1825, be- 
 fore their independence had been recognized by their mother 
 country ; of Greece, after her unsuccessful insurrection, by France 
 Great Britain and Russia in 1827; of Belgium by France, England, 
 Russia, Prussia and Austria in 1855 ; of united Italy in 1860 ; 
 of Norway in 1907, and of several old and also several new 
 States during the progress of the Great War. It is to the prac- 
 tice of recognition, followed by intervention where necessary, 
 the existence anywhere to-day of national independence and of 
 human liberty is due; and doubtless the prevention of many 
 wars. Hence we urge it at present in the case of Ireland. 
 
 Intervention, when rendered necessary by obstinate tyranny, 
 is a logical development of recognition; and is, under interna- 
 tional law, a duty incumbent upon States, in order to stay the 
 shedding of blood ; to prevent greater evils than even a wrong 
 intervention could possibly be ; to prevent or stop gross injustice 
 
 131 
 
..don and inhumanity to a people ; a fortiori, to prevent the 
 destruction of a nation ; and to prevent misrule calculated to pro- 
 duce constant injustice and disturbance. In modern times, France, 
 England, Russia, and America have, expressly in the interest of 
 justice and humanity, constituted themselves the special cham- 
 pions of certain submerged and oppressed nations not within their 
 own dominions, and in that character have recognized new and 
 revived States and intervened to establish their independence. 
 Submergence and oppression are the fundamental grounds of 
 their action. It is because all the evils of submergence and op- 
 pression are united in a virulent form in the present condition of 
 Ireland, that immediate joint recognition and intervention on her 
 behalf are claimed. If it be true, as some allege, that the people 
 of a country, as distinguished from its rulers never deliberately 
 oppress or work for the destruction of another people, and that 
 of such crimes rulers and governments alone are guilty ; it would 
 follow that suppression, oppression and the policy of exterminat- 
 ing the Irish nation never had English popular sanction. On the 
 evidence of history we hold the English people guilty of all they 
 have enabled their rulers to do in Ireland. But either way, the 
 surest foundation for peace is the separate independence of 
 each nation — self-determination. It is only by such international 
 policy mankind can become enriched with the best contribution 
 that each nation is capable of making to the common stock of 
 civilization and progress, and that a just international law can 
 spring. Precedents invoked from the past for the subjugating 
 of nations are not international law, but inter-tyrant perversions 
 of law and justice, and have never had the considered approval 
 of any free people or of any international Peace Congress elected 
 by free peoples. They are essentially antagonistic to peace and 
 harmony among nations. It is in the nature of things, insisted 
 upon by the United States of America, and acknowledged by 
 that country's present Allies, an essential condition of an endur- 
 ing peace that no nation be kept against its will under the con- 
 trol of another nation. A State imposing such control on an un- 
 willing nation, and thus violating an essential condition of an en- 
 during peace, thereby, in addition to any other disqualifying fact, 
 shows itself to be unworthy of representation in an interna- 
 tional Congress whose primary purpose is to establish an en- 
 during peace. As on all other points, so on this point the con- 
 dition Ireland demands as essential to an enduring peace is pre- 
 cisely the condition laid down by the Entente Powers, if not by 
 the belligerents on both sides. We accept, without alteration, the 
 various dicta of the Allied statesmen when they hastened to adopt 
 as their own President Wilson's declaration on this point. They 
 thus arrived at what amounts to an unanimous declaration of 
 independence for oppressed nations desiring to be free; 
 wrenched them from the category of domestic problems in which 
 
 132 
 
tyrants strive to keep them, and made them urgent matters of 
 international law, Poland being expressly named by Mr. Wilson 
 as an example of such a nation. If intensity and duration of op- 
 pression determine the degree of urgency in applying this sover- 
 eign remedy, the claim of Poland for independence, sufficient 
 though it is, is neither so strong nor so urgent as the claim of 
 Ireland. Mr. Wilson may have named Poland as a moderate ex- 
 ample, and omitted Ireland as being an extreme example of the 
 oppression that justifies international intervention to re-establish 
 the independence of the nation oppressed. A very brief com- 
 parison of Ireland's case with that of Poland will prevent the 
 drawing of any unwarranted inference from the mention of 
 Poland and the omission of Ireland. If Poland is entitled to in- 
 dependence though while nationally submerged no sustained 
 policy of deliberate brutalization was pursued against her people, 
 and they were not deprived of their property, their religion, 
 their civilization, their language, their literature, their education, 
 their national and local institutions, their national characteristics, 
 the web and woof of their society, their history, their knowledge 
 of what their nation had been, and was prevented from being; 
 then Ireland, against whose people all these outrages have been 
 systematically committed, must be a stronger and more urgent 
 claimant for independence. If Poland is entitled to independence, 
 though while nationally submerged, the State submerging her has 
 not calumniated the character of her people in other countries, 
 and has not prevented them from making their condition and 
 aspirations known among the nations, then it follows from Eng- 
 land having done these things to Ireland, and still continuing to do 
 them, that Ireland's claim to independence is stronger and more 
 urgent than that of Poland. If Poland is entitled to independence 
 though while nationally submerged she has prospered economical- 
 ly, Ireland, which, while submerged, has, by design and con- 
 trivance of her oppressor, decayed economically, has obviously 
 suffered greater oppression, and is therefore more strongly en- 
 titled and in more urgent need of independence. If the well- 
 known prosperity of Poland under foreign rule does not weak- 
 en her claim to national independence, the decay of Ireland in 
 consequence of foreign rule must strengthen her claim. If Poland 
 is entitled to independence though while nationally submerged 
 her trade and industries flourished, Ireland, in which, while sub- 
 merged, trade and industries have been deliberately strangled and 
 destroyed, as we have seen, in the interests of England, has a 
 stronger right and a more urgent claim to independence. If 
 Poland is entitled to independence though while nationally sub- 
 merged her population has doubled, it follows that the English 
 policy of exterminating the Irish nation, of which the reduction 
 to one-half within the last seventy years of direct English rule 
 is the latest evidence, makes independence, while important fer 
 
 133 
 
Poland, vital for Ireland. If Poland is entitled to independence 
 though her national submergence has been materially beneficial 
 to her, on what grounds could national independence be with- 
 held from Ireland to whom subjection is destructive to the point 
 of extinction? If Poland is entitled to independence because 
 nationally submerged and oppressed for little more than a cen- 
 tury, it follows that Ireland's claim must be stronger and more 
 urgent, she having been more tyrannically oppressed for four 
 times that period. Ireland's claim is in strict accordance with 
 President Wilson's idea, adopted by the Allies, that foreign rule 
 is the comprehensive evil comprising every other ; that whether it 
 is in some cases more or less good in detail is a secondary consid- 
 eration ; and it is in that sense, and to emphasize the urgency, we 
 bring any details under review. 
 
 ON ALL JOF THE GROUNDS SUBMITTED, IRELAND 
 NOW CLAIMS SOVEREIGN INDEPENDENCE 
 
 Comprising the rights and powers 
 
 Of designing, framing, and establishing an Irish national 
 constitution ; 
 
 Of territorial inviolability, including islands and terri- 
 torial waters as internationally recognized ; 
 
 Of self-preservation by prevention of, defense against, and 
 resistance to, economic or military hostility, war or peace, 
 as self-preservation may demand; 
 
 Of free development of national resources by internal ac- 
 tion, and by commerce, treaties, and relations with other 
 States ; 
 
 Of absolute control and jurisdiction over all persons^ 
 things and rights within Ireland and its islands and terri- 
 torial waters; 
 
 Of protection of her lawful citizens wherever situated; and 
 
 Of recognition of her government and her flag, and the ex- 
 ternal marks of honor and respect. 
 
 Ireland's subsidiary claims, for restitution of money unjustly 
 and tyrannically abstracted and for reparation of wilful damage 
 wantonly inflicted, like the claims of other countries after a pro- 
 longed and devastating struggle, now await settlement, in accord- 
 ance with international law and justice as applied to the ascer- 
 tained facts. Such a settlement being regarded as just between 
 nations that have been engaged in mutual war, under the laws 
 of civilized warfare, is more essentially just between nations, 
 one of which, fully armed, makes upon the other, which it has 
 
 134 
 
disarmed, continual uncivilized war in what the dominant na- 
 tion calls a time of peace, and treats the other as a victim nation 
 by plunder, extirpation, wilful destruction of her institutions, in- 
 dustries and trade; wilful neglect of her material development 
 after having stripped her of means of self-help, and with conse- 
 quent decay and diminution of population. On the financial 
 part of our subsidiary claim no doubt or difficulty can arise, be- 
 cause, as shown in the section dealing with that subject, the 
 amount has been ascertained by British financial experts, name- 
 ly, the excessive taxation of Ireland since 1800 — £400,000,000. 
 The other material damage, direct and consequential, is only 
 partially reparable, because the past cannot be recalled. As it is 
 obviously much larger than the taxes, justice entitles Ireland to 
 a much larger sum in respect of it ; and no nation or assembly of 
 nations can require Ireland to be satisfied with less than justice. 
 But if it should contribute to the world's peace, Ireland would, in 
 consideration of an international guarantee for her future se- 
 curity, accept very much less. The only way in which the dam- 
 age can be even partially repaired is by Ireland herself under- 
 taking the task of reconstruction and working to recover and 
 properly protect her due position in the modern world of which 
 England has deprived her. To do this within reasonable time 
 will require an immediate expenditure of a very large sum of 
 money. This being the consequence of England's treatment of 
 Ireland, England has no defense whatever against the claim, and 
 must consider herself extremely well treated if Ireland accept 
 from her what is absolutely essential for the purpose. In these 
 circumstances what we claim, and ask international support in ob- 
 taining, is such a reduced sum as will enable us to begin at once 
 "the great and urgent task of reconstruction on which we are 
 about to enter as a free people. The least that would enable us 
 "to do this is the £400,000,000 in respect of excessive taxation, plus 
 a small fraction of what is our due in respect of other damage, 
 say £100,000,000, making £500,000,000 in all. With an interna- 
 tional guarantee that Ireland's independence will in future be re- 
 spected, Ireland would accept this sum. 
 
 Some light is thrown on the difficulties which workers for 
 freedom encounter, and on the cause of imperfections in this 
 Statement by the fact that all the members of a small Committee 
 appointed by the Sinn Fein Council to draft the Statement of 
 Ireland's case for submission to that Council are now politi- 
 cal prisoners in so many of England's separate prisons, without 
 possibility of communicating with each other, or access to any 
 library, or consultation for the purpose of a joint draft, the 
 preparation of any statement of the kind being tantamount to 
 high treason; and all the principal members of the council being 
 similarly in isolated custody. This renders the preparation of 
 one joint and finished statement, and its revision by the Council, 
 
 135 
 
impossible. It almost renders the preparation of any statement 
 impossible. The present Statement is probably one of a num- 
 ber, all prepared in isolation under great difficulties. It is hoped 
 that, in view of these circumstances, and having regard to the 
 relevant substance rather than to the art of presentation, the 
 Peace Congress will be so considerate as to give due weight 
 to what is substantial and relevant, wherever it appears, and to 
 accept oral explanation or elucidation from Ireland's repre- 
 sentatives in the Congress. 
 
 Sophistries with which it may be attempted to combat Ire- 
 land's case, and which have to be guarded against will probably 
 include some sly version of the superiority of militarist imperial- 
 ism to nationalism. Imperialism is by its nature militarist; so 
 much so, that a League of Nations, consisting of, or dominated 
 by, what are called' the "Great Powers" would be in effect a 
 league against nations and against liberty. It would be a cruel 
 mockery against nations not physically powerful, unless the full 
 equality of nations, irrespective of size, were first definitely 
 recognized by all. As President Wilson says : "The whole Fam- 
 ily of Nations will have to guarantee to each nation that no na- 
 tion shall violate its independence or its territorial integrity. 
 That is the basis — the only conceivable basis — for the future 
 peace of the world." The struggle of which Ireland's case is the 
 most acute example is one between imperialism and nationality, 
 between militarism and democracy. Our whole case, and most, 
 if not all, of the difficult business of the Peace Congress are due 
 to imperialism. The feeling a conglomerate empire engenders is 
 neither patriotism, nor taste, nor art, nor anything ideal or spir- 
 itual, but dominance, power, aggression, destruction, brutaliza- . 
 tion ; an antithesis of patriotism ; a feeling that scarcely dares to 
 find frank expression among enlightened people, but is pregnant 
 with danger to mankind. This will probably appear in the con-* 
 trast between this Statement and England's objections to it. One 
 objection may be that the prolonged agony for which we arraign 
 England is an exclusively domestic matter, just as the slave-own- 
 ers of the Southern States of America pleaded. If the victim- 
 ization of a country by a government which refuses to acknowl- 
 edge any responsibility to that country were not an international 
 concern, international law would-be stripped of its primary and 
 fundamental function and reduced to international anarchy. An- 
 other objection may be that the torture is now long past. Eng- 
 land herself refutes this by the argument of facts, by maintain- 
 ing permanently in Ireland a large Army of Occupation, martial 
 law and other coercive laws in operation, the best lands unpro- 
 ductive in England's interests, the finest harbors empty in 
 England's interest, the country decaying in England's interest, 
 the population diminishing in England's interest, some 300 of 
 the most loved and trusted Irish men and women living now 
 
 136 
 
locked up as political prisoners, without trial, in England's in- 
 terest. While that state of tyranny, if not of war, continues, as 
 now, living and active, to say that the torture is long past, or 
 past at all, is to trifle with the Congress by setting empty words 
 against facts. Though England has not tried those prisoners on 
 any charge, she does not hesitate to tell the world that they are 
 "felons". The Irish people reply by honoring them as "felons", 
 just as the Saxons of England adopted "outlaw" as a title of 
 honor under William the Conqueror. That being the normal 
 condition of Ireland under English rule, we submit that it is not 
 in accordance with international law and the interests of peace. 
 The agony of subjection being, then, in continuance, and Eng- 
 land's fight being clearly a fight against nature, we cannot believe 
 that the Congress will tacitly concur in the prolongation of the 
 unnatural and blighting connection of the two countries. Small 
 nations have, on the foregoing and on many other grounds, a 
 stronger claim than empires upon a body administering interna- 
 tional law. They naturally respect the law because it is law, and 
 because they are unable to defend themselves without it. On the 
 other hand, they have more endurance than conglomerate em- 
 pires, because they draw their vitality from a natural, not an 
 artificial source. Their career also is oftentimes more distin- 
 guished. Civilization, religion, philosophy, arts, sciences, refine- 
 ments, things of mind and heart and taste have had their origin 
 and home in small States rather than in great empires. . Imperial 
 tyranny may succeed in crushing a small nation out of existence, 
 and that result may be agreeable to the imperialist. . It is, none 
 the less, an international crime, and a distinct loss to the sweet- 
 ness and amenity of life, and may be so felt for ages after. 
 It is a savage joy, that of crushing a people superior to the 
 crusher in all respects save that of power. Apart from religion, 
 one's own nation furnishes the purest and most elevating object 
 of love and service, a perennial joy, a radiant, graceful and 
 beneficent presence, a genial friend who never gro#s stale, upon 
 whom love and service are never wasted — least of all wasted 
 when the imperialist provides a gibbet as their reward. For 
 the outcome of imperialism we have only to look at the war- 
 torn world, and realize how much love and gratitude we owe 
 to our own small nation that has proved herself possessed of 
 the highest form of greatness by preserving her spiritual in- 
 dividuality, by filling her children with ambitions essentially heal- 
 ing, which when successful are so many blessings, and when 
 unsuccessful leave no trace of harm or asperity. The war has 
 shown that there is a powerful spirit ^f evil abroad. Ireland, 
 in spite of her modern history, teaches us that there is also a 
 spirit of good, if not abroad, at least in existence and available 
 to the worthy. If, as we know, some of the minutest things in 
 nature contribute towards universal beauty, and even towards 
 
 137 
 
utility as well; if, as we know, benefits have flown to mankind 
 from the Unsubstantial sentiment of patriotism; if, as we know, 
 England with all its imperial power has failed to extinguish that 
 sentiment in Ireland, it may be pardonable presumption on our 
 part to hope that through the gracious and just recognition of 
 the sovereign status of Ireland by this International Peace Con- 
 gress, we Irish may be helpful towards attaining and securing 
 that era of peace which the world so much needs and releasing 
 the Spirit of Good for the happiness of all. 
 
 Written and now finished in this cell in Mountjoy Prison. 
 Dublin, 15th July, 1918. 
 
 Laurence Ginnell, 
 Barrister of the Middle Temple and Irish 
 Bar, M. P. for North Westmeath, Joint 
 Treasurer for Sinn Fein, Member of 
 the Committee for the Drafting of 'Ire- 
 land's Case. 
 
 188 
 
Ireland's Declaration of Independence 
 
 Proclaimed by Dail Eireann, January 21, 1919 
 
 (Translation) 
 
 "Whereas the Irish people is by right a free people ; 
 
 "And whereas for seven hundred years the Irish people 
 has never ceased to repudiate and has repeatedly protested in 
 arms against foreign usurpation ; 
 
 "And whereas English rule in this country is, and always 
 has been, based upon force and fraud and maintained by mili- 
 tary occupation against the declared will of the people ; 
 
 "And whereas the Irish Republic was proclaimed in Dub- 
 lin on Easter Monday, 1916, by the Irish Republican Army, 
 acting on behalf of the Irish people ; 
 
 "And whereas the Irish people is resolved to secure and 
 maintain its complete independence in order to promote the 
 common weal, to re-establish justice, to provide for future de- 
 fense, to insure peace at home and good will with all nations 
 and to constitute a national policy based upon the people's will, 
 with equal right and equal opportunity for every citizen, 
 
 "And whereas at the threshold of a new era in history the 
 Irish electorate has in the general election of December, 1918, 
 seized the first occasion to declare by an overwhelming ma- 
 jority its firm allegiance to the Irish Republic; 
 
 "Now, therefore, we, the elected representatives of the an- 
 cient Irish people, in national parliament assembled, do, in the 
 name of the Irish nation, ratify the establishment of the Irish 
 Republic and pledge ourselves and our people to make this 
 declaration effective by every means at our command. 
 
 "To ordain that the elected representatives of the Irish 
 people alone have power to make laws binding on the people 
 of Ireland, and that the Irish Parliament is the only parliament 
 to which that people will give its allegiance. 
 
 "We solemnly declare foreign government in Ireland to be 
 an invasion of our national right, which we will never tolerate, 
 and we demand the evacuation of our country by the English 
 garrison ; 
 
 "We claim for our national independence the recognition 
 and support of every free nation of the world, and we pro- 
 claim that independence to be a condition precedent to inter- 
 national peace hereafter ; 
 
 "In the name of the Irish people we humbly commit our 
 destiny to Almighty God, who gave our fathers the courage 
 and determination to persevere through centuries of a ruthless 
 tyranny, and. strong in the justice of the cause which they have 
 handed down to us, we ask His divine blessing on this, the last 
 stage of the struggle which we have pledged ourselves to carry 
 throug-h to freedom." 
 
 139