Read Ebook: The Evolution of Sinn Fein by Henry Robert Mitchell

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 138 lines and 74278 words, and 3 pages

Page

INTRODUCTORY 1

IRISH NATIONALISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 16

SINN FEIN 39

THE EARLY YEARS OF SINN FEIN 71

SINN FEIN AND THE REPUBLICANS 88

THE VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT 106

ULSTER AND NATIONALIST IRELAND 128

SINN FEIN, 1914-1916 158

AFTER THE RISING 213

CONCLUSION 279

THE EVOLUTION OF SINN FEIN

INTRODUCTORY.

It is almost a commonplace of the political moralists that every failure on the part of England to satisfy the moderate and constitutional demands of the Irish people for reform has been followed invariably by a deplorable outbreak of "extremist" activities in Ireland. Unfortunately for the moral, that constitutional demands should therefore be promptly and fully conceded, the statement is almost exactly the reverse of the truth, if Irish history as a whole be taken as the field for induction. The Irish Nation cannot be said to have at any period abandoned its claim to independence. Of the meaning of that claim there was no question from the Conquest to the fall of Limerick. The whole of that period is occupied by a long struggle between the English and the Irish peoples for the effective possession of the island. On neither side was there any misapprehension of the meaning and object of the contest. The English Government, whether it employed naked force, intrigue or legal fiction, aimed at the moral, material and political subjugation of the Irish: the Irish, whether they fought in the field or intrigued in the cabinets of Europe, whether allied with France or with Spain or English royalists, had but one object, the assertion of their national independence. It was a struggle not merely between two nations but between two civilizations. Men of English blood who were absorbed by the Irish nation and who accepted the Irish civilization fought as stoutly for the independence of their adopted country as did the descendants of the Milesians. England could never count on the fidelity to her ideals and policy in Ireland of the second generation of her own settlers. History cannot produce another instance of a struggle so prolonged and so pertinacious. Whole counties, stripped by fire and sword of their aboriginal owners were repeopled within two or three generations and renewed the struggle. But superior numbers and organization, a more fortunate star and the designs of Providence, prevailed in the end; and with the fall of Limerick England might have regarded her task as at last accomplished. The Irish Nation was prostrate, and chains were forged for it which, heavier and more galling than any forged for any nation before, seemed to offer a perpetual guarantee of slavery, misery and degradation. Ireland was henceforth to be administered as a kind of convict settlement. The law, in the words of a famous judgment, did not presume the existence of such a person as a Catholic Irishman; that is to say, two-thirds of the inhabitants of the country had no legal existence. Legal existence was the privilege of Protestant Englishmen living in Ireland and of such Protestant Irishmen as claimed it. But legal existence in Ireland during the eighteenth century was no prize to be grasped at. The mere fact of residence in Ireland entailed practical disabilities for which no mere local ascendancy was an adequate compensation. The manufactures and trade of Ireland were systematically and ruthlessly suppressed. Englishmen who settled there found that while they were at liberty to oppress "the mere Irish" they were subject themselves to a similar oppression by the English who remained at home. No one might enter that prison house and remain wholly a man. The "garrison" grumbled, protested and threatened, but in vain. Constitutionalists appealed to the policy of the Conquest in support of the independence of the country. It was argued that the Parliament of Ireland, established by the conquerors as a symbol of annexation, was and ought to be independent of the Parliament of England. The claim was held to be baseless and treasonable; so far from being abandoned or weakened, it was enforced and asserted by the arms of the Volunteers, and in less than a century after the fall of Limerick the Renunciation Act of 1783 enacted that the people of Ireland should be "bound only by laws enacted by his Majesty and the parliament of that kingdom in all cases whatever."

But while this was independence, it was independence in the sense of Molyneux, Swift and Grattan, not in the sense in which it had been understood by Hugh O'Neill. The American colonies went farther and fared better, and the descendants of the race of Hugh O'Neill had to be reckoned with still. Their position under the settlement of 1783 was what it had been since the Treaty of Limerick was broken by the Penal Laws, and all that they gained at first was an indirect share in the prosperity which began for the country with the assertion of its legislative independence. The population increased; trade, commerce and manufactures flourished and multiplied; the flag of Ireland began once more to creep forth upon the seas; but the ancient race was still proscribed in the land of its birth. But while it was in human nature to invent, it was not in human nature to continue to administer, a code so diabolical as that of the Penal Laws. The Volunteers who claimed legislative independence of England asserted the rights of conscience for their fellow-countrymen. Under the free Parliament a gradual alleviation took place in the lot of Catholics in Ireland; in 1793 they were admitted to the franchise and there is a presumption that had the Irish Parliament really been independent the Penal Laws would have in time been abolished entirely. But the vigilance of English policy and English Ministers never ceased; their meddling in the affairs of Ireland was perpetual and mischievous: the rights of the Irish Parliament were constantly in danger from the interference of English Ministers who advised their common Monarch and moulded his Irish policy through the Viceroy and the Executive. It was but a step from the admission of Catholics to the franchise to their admission to the House of Commons, but that step was never taken by the Irish Parliament. The measures of Parliamentary reform pressed upon them by the popular party both inside and outside Parliament were constantly rejected, partly through the mere conservatism of privilege partly through the influence of the English Cabinet. The United Irishmen, whose aim was to establish a free and equal representation of all Irishmen irrespective of creed, despaired of obtaining their object by open agitation and, subjected to repressive enactments, transformed themselves into a secret association for the overthrow of the existing government and for complete separation from England as the only method of securing and maintaining the rights of Ireland. They were the first Irish Republican Party. They appealed for assistance to the French Directory, but so jealous were they of their independence that they seem to have jeopardized the prospect of help by their insistence that the force sent must not be large enough to threaten the subjugation of the country. The Government, becoming aware of the conspiracy, took steps at once to foster it and to crush it. Their agents went through the country, forming United Irish lodges and then denouncing the members to the authorities. Under pretence of helping the Irish Government in its difficulties. English regiments were poured into the country and, when a sufficient force was assembled, open rebellion was provoked and crushed with a systematic barbarity which is even now hardly credible.

To understand the Rebellion and the policy of the Union which followed it, one must go farther back than the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The fall of Limerick ended the struggle for the military domination of Ireland. Once it was in the effective possession of England the period of its commercial subjugation began. Every kind of manufacture which competed with that of England was suppressed: every branch of commerce which threatened rivalry with that of England was forbidden. To ensure at once that military resistance might not be renewed and that commercial subjugation might be endured the policy was adopted first of "filling the great places with natives of England" and secondly of perpetuating the animosity between Protestants and Catholics. It was hoped in this way to form "two nations" out of one and render the task of government and exploitation easier in consequence. The remarkable power of absorbing foreign settlers shown by the Irish Nation since before the Conquest was thus to be nullified and religion pressed into service against humanity. So clearly was this policy conceived that Archbishop Boulter could write "The worst of this is that it tends to unite Protestant with Papist and, whenever that happens, good-bye to the English interests in Ireland forever." But the agents of the policy overreached themselves. Irish Protestants turned against a policy which counted the merit of being a Protestant as less than the demerit of being Irish. Dean Swift won the favour alike of Irish Protestant and Irish Catholic by his mordant pamphlets against the English policy in Ireland and may justly be reckoned as on the whole the most powerful champion of Irish independence in the sense of the eighteenth century. The Irish agents of the policy of Protestant Ascendancy overreached themselves too. Official Irish Protestantism bore almost as hardly upon Presbyterians as upon Papists, and the United Irishmen at the end of the century found no support in Ireland warmer than that accorded them by the best of the Ulster Presbyterians. There is little doubt that the reversal of the commercial ascendancy by the legislation of 1782 was regarded by the English Ministry as a merely temporary setback, to be repaired at the earliest convenient opportunity. In any case the valuable asset of Protestant Ascendancy, with its possibilities of perpetual friction and disunion among Irishmen, was still in their hands. When the rise of the United Irishmen threatened even this, the necessity of recovering the lost ground and the opportunity of doing so were immediately recognised. The obstinacy with which the Irish Parliament opposed Parliamentary reform drove the United Irish movement into hostility at once to the English connection and to the existing constitution of Ireland. They could thus be represented as at once a menace to England and a menace to Ireland, and it was held to be the duty of both Governments to combine to crush them. They were crushed by English troops, but the Irish Parliament was crushed with them. Pitt decided that direct control by the English Ministry must take the place of indirect control through an Irish Executive, and the Legislative Union was enacted. There seemed to be no other permanent or ultimate alternative to the complete independence and separation of England and Ireland.

Much impressive rhetoric has been expended upon the measures taken to secure that the members of the Irish Parliament should produce a majority in favour of the Act of Union. They were bribed and intimidated; they were offered posts and pensions: some of them were bought with hard cash. But even a Castlereagh must have been aware that if he should suborn a servant to betray his master the gravamen of the charge against him would not be that he had corrupted the morals of the servant by offering him a bribe. Ordinary morality may not apply to politics, but if it does, Pitt and Castlereagh were guilty of a far greater crime than that of bribing a few scores of venal Irishmen; and the members of the Irish Parliament who took their money were guilty not of corruption but of treason. For the Act of Union was intended to accomplish the destruction of the national existence. The members of Parliament who voted against it, knew this: the Irish people who petitioned against it, knew this: Pitt and Castlereagh knew it: the men they paid to vote for it, knew it too.

The politics of Ireland during the nineteenth century would have been tangled enough at the best, but the Act of Union introduced a confusion which has often seemed to make the situation inexplicable to a normal mind. But, to leave details aside, the main lines of the problem are clear enough. The Act of Union was designed to end the separate national existence of Ireland by incorporating its legislative and administrative machinery with that of England. To secure control to the "Predominant Partner" the representation of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament was fixed at a total which at the time of the Act was less than half that to which it was entitled on the basis of the population. While the intention of the authors of the measure was to subordinate Irish national interests to those of England, the measure was presented to Parliament as one designed to further the mutual interests of the two kingdoms. But to Protestant waverers it was commended in private as a necessary means of securing the Protestant interest, while to the Catholics hopes were held out that the removal of the Catholic disabilities maintained by the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland might be hoped for from the more liberal Parliament in England. There is no doubt that many Catholics, especially among the nobility and higher clergy, were induced at least to discourage resistance to the measure, partly for this reason, partly out of fear of the republican sympathies and aims of the reforming United Irishmen. The extreme Protestants, such as the Orangemen who helped to suppress the rebellion, viewed the measure with a certain suspicion, if not with definite hostility. They looked forward, now that the rebellion was crushed, to a prolonged tenure of unchallenged ascendancy. But the bulk of the more liberal Protestants were against it, and the wiser Catholics. They foretold the ruin of trade, the burden of increased taxation, the loss of all real independence and freedom that were bound to, and did, result. But they were neither consulted nor listened to and the measure was passed after free speech had been bought over in Parliament and suppressed by military force outside.

IRISH NATIONALISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

The political history of Post-Union Ireland opens with an armed rebellion. Robert Emmet for an abortive attempt to seize Dublin Castle was condemned and executed in 1803. His rising was the last effort of the United Irishmen. Since the Union, and for more than a century after his death, the country was governed under a species of martial law, and Coercion Acts were matters of almost annual enactment. The Government could not count on the steady loyalty of any class of the community. The Orange societies required to be placated, the Presbyterians to be muzzled, the Catholics to be suppressed. Castlereagh's administration was a frank recognition of the fact that Irishmen as a body were hostile to the Union, and that any means might be employed to keep them quiet. For more than twenty years the Catholics waited in vain for the fulfilment of the hopes of emancipation held out at the time of the Union. Meanwhile "the bonds of Empire" continued to be drawn tighter and tighter. In 1817 the Irish Exchequer, the belated relic of Ireland's independent existence, was amalgamated with that of England, and the long history of the financial oppression of the country began. At last in 1823 Catholic Ireland began the public agitation of its claims for civil equality with Irish Protestants. The agitation, justifiable and necessary in itself, natural and dignified had it taken place in an independent Ireland and had it been of the nature of an appeal to the justice of their fellow-countrymen, assumed the inevitable form of an appeal to a foreign legislature for a justice denied them at home. The Catholic Association founded in 1760 was revived by Daniel O'Connell and in six years' time, so strong was the feeling aroused, the English Government yielded, for fear of a civil war. O'Connell had talked as if he were ready for anything and the Duke of Wellington seems to have thought that he meant what he said. It was the first victory for "moral force" and O'Connell became enamoured of the new weapon. Next year the Tithe War broke out and ended in 1838 in an incomplete victory, the Tithes, instead of being abolished, being paid henceforth in money as an addition to the rent. But before the Tithe War ended, O'Connell had founded the Constitutional Party by giving his support to Lord Melbourne's Government. For O'Connell's policy there was this to be said: that, the Union being an accomplished fact, the only way to secure legislative benefits for Ireland was through the only means recognized by the constitution: that, both English parties being equally indifferent to the special interests of Ireland, it was sound practical policy to secure by an alliance with one or other, as occasion might dictate, some special claim upon its consideration and some hope of appointments to Government positions of Irishmen in sympathy with the majority in Ireland: that the only alternative was open defiance of the Constitution and the sacrifice of what otherwise might be gained by its recognition. Against his policy it could be urged that to employ constitutional forms was to recognize a constitution repugnant to his declared convictions; that appeals to the Parliament of the United Kingdom tended in practice to intensify Irish divisions and to break up the nation into two groups of litigants pleading before a bar which viewed them with an indifferent disdain; that in any case success in the appeal would be the result of accident and circumstance or be dictated by the interests of English policy. Between these two views of Irish national policy Ireland has been divided and has wavered ever since.

The situation of Ireland in the years immediately following the Famine was tragic. On the one side was starvation, impotence, despair. The starvation might have been, and in any normally governed country would have been, averted: but Ireland was in the unnatural position of being governed by outsiders who had absolutely no interest in the country beyond that of ensuring that it should not govern itself: seeing the remedy for its misery, but unable to employ it, in the face of an army which not all the fiery eloquence of Mitchel and Meagher could persuade the starving people was capable of being defeated by a mob of pikemen, Ireland sank back into an apathetic and moody despair from which it took many years to recover, during which the life of the nation almost drained away. On the other side was the Government, indifferent to the misery of its victim, determined that nothing, not even the extinction of the race, should alter the fixed resolve of England to be absolute and sole master in Ireland. The failure of the Rebellion of '48 was not to the rulers of England a matter altogether of congratulation. A highly-placed personage, able to gauge with accuracy the sentiment of the English ruling classes, wrote: "There are ample means of crushing the rebellion in Ireland and I think it is now very likely to go off without any contest, which people rather regret. The Irish should receive a good lesson or they will begin again." The awful mortality from famine and pestilence was regarded with a kind of chastened and reverential gratitude, as an unexpected interference of Providence for the extirpation of the hated race. In the then temper of England no revolution had the least chance of sympathy or success. It would have been crushed, whatever the cost.

But though prostrate, despairing and depleted Ireland still claimed her rights, though for a few years it seemed as if they had been tacitly waived. The Repeal agitation died, and its place was taken by the Irish Tenant League which aimed not at interference with constitutional arrangements but at the solution of the land question, not in the radical method advocated by Lalor but by legislation securing certain rights to the tenant, the claim of the landlord to be owner of the land being left untouched. Lalor had foretold that on the land question Ulster instead of being "on the flank" of the rest of Ireland would march with it side by side: and Gavan Duffy in his League of the North and South went some length in the way of securing the co-operation of the Northern Tenant Righters. At the same time the Irish representatives in Parliament formed the beginning of an Independent Parliamentary Party, holding aloof from any binding alliance with either English Party but combining at need with the party most favourable at the moment to Irish claims. But the new policy proved a failure within three years, partly by the treachery of members of the party, but chiefly through the inherent hopelessness of the position of any Irish party then in Parliament. Besides, the Tenant League had to contend with the masterful personality of Cardinal Cullen, an ecclesiastic of the Ultramontane School, who spent his life in the endeavour, temporarily successful, to throw the whole weight of his Church against the just claims of the nation.

The Fenian Movement, as it was called, was both in Ireland and America avowedly republican and separatist from the very first. Stephens wished to establish one form of government only--an Irish Republic, and he believed in only one method--that of armed revolution. He refused steadily to have anything to do with tenant rights or parliamentary parties or tactics.

The avowed object of the Republican Brotherhood had failed, but it brought about two measures of Irish reform, long agitated and overdue, but neglected until the events of '65 and '67 brought home to a disdainful Parliament the realities of the abuses and of the feelings which their continuance had aroused. The Irish Church Act and Mr. Gladstone's first Land Bill were due to the Fenians. They were not formally concessions to Fenianism, as the Fenians were concerned first of all to establish a Republic and then to decide upon reforms for themselves; the Government merely supposed that by mending two intolerable abuses they could cut the ground from under the revolutionary movement. This policy could be only partially successful: but it succeeded so far that for a period of thirty years there was no Irish party that openly and consistently proclaimed its adhesion to the doctrine of complete separation.

The Home Rule policy put forward by Isaac Butt in 1870 fell far short even of O'Connell's Repeal. Its object was to set up, not an independent, but a strictly subordinate, Parliament in Dublin: the effect of this proposal would have been to consolidate the Union by removing opportunities of friction and of discontent. But even the appearance of a reversal of the policy of the Union was distasteful to Parliament; and the Irish members exhausted themselves in providing an annual exhibition of eloquence and passion for the delectation of a languid or tolerant audience. The pathetic and humiliating performance was ended by the appearance of Charles Stewart Parnell who infused into the forms of Parliamentary action the sacred fury of battle. He determined that Ireland, refused the right of managing her own destinies, should at least hamper the English in the government of their own house: he struck at the dignity of Parliament and wounded the susceptibilities of Englishmen by his assault upon the institution of which they are most justly proud. His policy of parliamentary obstruction went hand in hand with an advanced land agitation at home. The remnant of the Fenian Party rallied to his cause and suspended for the time, in his interests and in furtherance of his policy, their revolutionary activities. For Parnell appealed to them by his honest declaration of his intentions: he made it plain both to Ireland and to the Irish in America that his policy was no mere attempt at a readjustment of details in Anglo-Irish relations but the first step on the road to national independence. He was strong enough both to announce his ultimate intentions and to define with precision the limit which must be placed upon the immediate measures to be taken. During the years in which he was at the head of the National Movement practically all sections of Nationalists acknowledged his leadership and his policy. If he was not able to control all the extreme elements that grouped themselves under his banner it was no more than might have been expected. Neither he nor the Irish Republican Brotherhood was responsible for the murders perpetrated by the Invincibles, who had no connection or sympathy with the Fenian policy; but their excesses were used, and used with effect, to damage not only Parnell's position but the claims of Ireland. It was he himself who gave to his enemies in the end the only fatal weapon which they could use against him: but the prompt use of it by his own party was a portentous event in Irish politics. For the first time the Irish people not alone conformed to the exigencies of an alliance with an English party, but allowed that party to veto their choice of a leader. Parnell himself had once said "As the air of London would eat away the stone walls of the House of Commons, so would the atmosphere of the House eat away the honour and honesty of the Irish members." Certainly the tortuous ways of party politics had destroyed their loyalty, and though a small band proved faithful to him in spite of the Liberal veto, the majority came to a decision, practically dictated by the Irish hierarchy and acquiesced in by a majority of his countrymen, to terminate his position as leader. But, though this betrayal seemed to have destroyed the cause for which he had fought, it may be questioned whether it was really more than a symptom of the inherent weakness of his position. The utmost he could gain in the direction of Home Rule, the utmost anyone could have gained under the limitations which he himself imposed upon his policy, fell markedly short of the minimum which a majority of his followers thought attainable at once and of what he himself announced to be the ultimate object of his policy. He is remembered, not as the leader who helped to force a Liberal Government to produce two Home Rule Bills, but as the leader who said "No man can set bounds to the march of a nation."

The death of Parnell marks the end of an epoch. A strong, romantic and mysterious personality, he won and kept the affections of the Irish people in a way which had been possible to few leaders before him and which none has attained since. The history of Irish politics for years after his death was a story largely of small intrigue, base personalities, divided counsels and despairing expedients; and the policy which eventually emerged, for which Mr. John Redmond was responsible, was widely removed from that of Parnell. The policy to which Mr. Redmond's adhesion was given was that of a Home Rule which might be described as "Home Rule within the Union," a Home Rule which in return for a local legislature and internal control, resigned to the Imperial Parliament all claim to the right to a foreign policy and to all that would raise Ireland above the level of an inferior dependency. It is true that Parnell would have obtained little more than this, if he had lived; but he would have obtained it in a different way and would have accepted the concession with a gesture of independence. Post-Parnellite Home Rule has been based largely upon the ground that a better understanding between the two countries is desirable in the interests of both; that government in Ireland is less efficient, more costly, less appreciated than it would be if it were administered by the people of Ireland themselves, with a due regard to the interests and general policy of the Empire; its justification is found in the success of the self-governing colonies who, thanks to being responsible for their own affairs, are contented, prosperous and loyal partners in an Imperial Commonwealth. All this is true, but it is a truth that would have carried no meaning to the mind of Parnell. To him the British Empire was an abstraction in which Ireland had no spiritual concern; it formed part of the order of the material world in which Ireland found a place; it had, like the climatic conditions of Europe, or the Gulf Stream, a real and preponderating influence on the destinies of Ireland. But the Irish claim was to him the claim of a nation to its inherent rights, not the claim of a portion of an empire to its share in the benefits which the constitution of that empire bestowed upon its more favoured parts. For some years after Parnell's death the leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party felt obliged to maintain the continuity of tradition by using the language of the claim for independence and to speak of "severing the last link" which bound Ireland to England; but even in America and Ireland such expressions were heard less and less often from official Nationalists. The final attitude of the Irish Parliamentary Party is admirably summed up in the words of Mr. John Redmond: "Our demand for Home Rule does not mean that we want to break with the British Empire. We are entirely loyal to the Empire as such and we desire to strengthen the Imperial bonds through a liberal system of government. We do not demand such complete local autonomy as the British self-governing colonies possess, for we are willing to forego the right to make our own tariffs and are prepared to abide by any fiscal system enacted by the British Parliament.... Once we receive Home Rule we shall demonstrate our imperial loyalty beyond question."

Ten years before these words were used the Sinn Fein movement had begun, as a protest against the conception of national rights which made such language possible, as the latest form which the assertion of national independence has assumed.

SINN FEIN.

Of the origin of this name as the title of a political party a pleasant tale is told. It is said that some people, convinced that "the freeman's friend is Self-Reliance," and wishing to make it the basis of a national movement, being anxious for a suitable Irish name for such an idea, applied to a famous Irish scholar to furnish it. He told them a story of a country servant in Munster sent with a horse to the fair. The horse was sold and the servant after some days appeared in his master's kitchen, worn out but happy, and seated himself on the floor. To the enquiries of some neighbours who happened to be there, as to where he had been and what he had done, he would give no answer but "Sinn fein sinn fein." The prodigal servant's witty reply eludes the translator. To his hearers it conveyed that family matters were matters for the family: but it was no mere evasion of a temporary or personal difficulty. It was the expression of a universal truth. Society is divided into groups, large or small, which have their own problems and their own interests. Their problems they can best solve themselves, and of their interests they are themselves the best judges. The solutions and the judgments will not always commend themselves to outsiders; but though outsiders cannot be denied the right to hold and to express their opinions they have no rights of veto or of interference. This right of independence, however, is subject in practice to serious limitations, and the history of human society is largely the history of the reconciliation of the competing interests and claims of social groups, each claiming to be in the last resort rightfully independent. One of such groups is the nation, and it is generally recognized that nations as such have rights analogous to those exercised by other social groups. They may be forcibly deprived by another and stronger group of rights the exercise of which seems to the stronger to be inimical to its own interests; or rights may be surrendered in return for what may be judged to be a fair equivalent. But it is not held that rights can be extinguished by force or that, if a suitable opportunity should occur, they may not be regained either by force or by agreement. These things are generally acknowledged in the abstract; but in concrete instances there is seldom an equal unanimity: and a nation whose rights are in abeyance is in a position which seldom admits of a simple or harmonious solution. Ideally it has a right to complete independence: practically it has to be content with as much independence as it can make good; and the methods which it may employ are various, always open to challenge and compassed by uncertainty.

A nation may maintain its moral and spiritual, long after it has forfeited its material and political, independence. To such a nation the more valuable part of its independence has been preserved. But it is hardly possible in the long run for a nation which has become materially and politically dependent upon another to retain its moral and spiritual independence unimpaired. The loss of the latter is the final stage in national decline.

Not only had political independence gone beyond the chance of recovery by either force or argument but material independence had followed it. The trade, commerce and industries of Ireland which had flourished during its brief period of independence had dwindled since the Union and from causes for which the Union was directly responsible. The "equitable proportion" of Imperial taxation to which the taxes of Ireland had been restricted by the terms of the Act of Union had proved to be inequitable, so that Ireland was overtaxed to the extent of two-and-three-quarter millions of pounds per annum: new taxes in defiance of the Act had been imposed: Ireland, again in defiance of the Act, had been made jointly responsible for a debt which was not her own: Irish banks and Irish railways were managed not with reference to Irish interests but in the interests of English finance and English trade: the Irish mercantile marine was no more: the mineral resources of the country in coal and iron remained undeveloped lest their development might act unfavourably upon vested interests in Great Britain. The population had declined at a rate without parallel in Europe: even Ulster, proclaimed to be prosperous because Protestant and Unionist, had seen the population of its most "loyal" counties almost halved in the space of seventy years. Nothing but the removal of the cause could arrest this spreading decay, and the cause was declared to be irremovable: to tamper with it was to lay an impious hand upon the Ark of a grim Covenant.

It may seem extraordinary that such a system should have been accepted, even if the attempt to impose it were made. But in fact the bribe of knowledge is a great bribe; and in this case the consequence of taking it was in obscurity. To learn English was to possess the only key to the knowledge that was offered, and when English was learnt, the language of "progress" crushed the language of tradition. A few far-seeing Irishmen, like Archbishop MacHale, saw the inevitable tendency and endeavoured to correct it; but in general no one noticed that the Irish language was going until everyone noticed that it had gone. Men's minds were set upon other things. The struggle for political independence and political and social equality absorbed energy and attention, and the political struggle had to be carried on by men who understood English. O'Connell's election for the county of Clare struck a deadly blow at the preservation of the language and at all that the preservation of the language implied: he himself, with a miserable servility, refused to speak any tongue but the tongue of Parliament. The National Board of Education did not, it is true, escape criticism: but the criticism was directed not to its educational shortcomings or to its anti-national bias, but to its policy of "religious indifference." The Presbyterian ministers were up in arms against a system by which "the Gospel" was excluded from the schools. They claimed the right to conduct the schools supported by the Board in defiance of the terms upon which the Board had promised to support them. They contended for the principle of a programme in which the reading of the Bible might at any moment without notice be substituted by a Presbyterian teacher for any item on the programme for the day, any Catholic children who happened to be in attendance being allowed to withdraw, the responsibility for the child's spiritual loss being solemnly laid upon the shoulders of the parents. The Protestant clergy, who were supposed as part of their duty to keep schools in their parishes, though they had neglected the duty for generations, followed with similar claims. They stirred up their congregations until mobs took to wrecking the National Schools in counties like Antrim and Down, and rifle clubs were formed under the patronage of the local aristocracy for the defence of their threatened Bibles. Under the Ultramontane leadership of Cardinal Cullen the Catholic clergy adopted a similar attitude. They alleged that the National system was hostile to their faith. Whatever danger to the faith had been contained in it had at any rate escaped the vigilance of Archbishop Murray and the authorities whom he had consulted. But the spirit of religious animosity once let loose could not be chained; and the system which began by promoting the co-education of the two creeds, ended by a segregating of the population from infancy into hostile camps. This accomplished the end which was designed by nobody but reached by everybody, that of breaking down the feeling of national unity and perpetuating feelings which it had been the aim of patriots to obliterate.

But though the closing decade of the nineteenth century presented a spectacle of national disunion and apathy, of failing vigour and vanishing ideals, it saw the beginning of a movement destined to arrest the decline of one department of the national life. The foundation of the Gaelic League in 1893 may be regarded as the turning point in the history of the language. When it was on the verge of extinction its decline was stayed by the enthusiastic patriotism of Dr. Douglas Hyde. Non-political and non-sectarian, the League worked for the restoration, preservation and diffusion of the Irish language, Irish music and Irish industries. In its councils Catholic priests and laymen worked side by side with Protestant laymen and ministers. It not only revived the language but it proved incidentally, as if in answer to a frequent but foolish criticism, that Irishmen of different creeds and political opinions could sink their differences in the common interests of patriotism. It kept rigidly and sternly aloof from all connection with professedly political parties. It had no more to do with official Nationalism than it had to do with Ulster Unionism. It resisted with success the attempts of some of the clergy to interfere with its programme: in the case of the parish priest of Portarlington who objected to mixed classes on the specious ground of public morals it asserted its rights to control its own activities and established once for all, so far as it was concerned, the principle that the sphere of the clergy's activities is not co-extensive with human life. It criticized the Hierarchy with as much independence as it would have criticized a local Board of Guardians; and in the end it won and held the enthusiastic support of the best elements in Irish life. Looking from things temporal and devoting itself to things of the mind, it widened the horizon and cleared the outlook of many districts through all Ireland. P. H. Pearse said with truth "The Gaelic League will be recognized in history as the most revolutionary influence that ever came into Ireland." The revolution which it wrought was moral, intellectual and spiritual and its influence in strengthening and developing the national character can hardly be over-estimated. Blamed alike for doing too much and for not doing enough, it adhered with undeviating consistency to its own programme and has been fully justified by its work. It stimulated activities in spheres far remote from its own. It enriched Anglo-Irish literature through the works of writers to whom it opened a new field and for whom it provided a fresh stimulus. There is hardly a writer in Ireland to-day of any promise in either prose or verse who does not owe a heavy debt to the work of the Gaelic League.

The Gaelic League proceeded upon the assumption that Irishmen possessed and ought to possess an interest in the language of their own country. It did not argue the point or indulge in academic discussions upon the utility of Gaelic as a medium of communication or upon the psychology of language. Its simple appeal to a natural human feeling found a response wider than could have been evoked by a learned controversy or effected as the fruit of a dialectical victory. But language is only a part of nationality and the attachment of a human being to the language of his country is only a special case of his attachment to the nation. This, though the Gaelic League held aloof from all politics , is what gave to the work of the Gaelic League a real political importance. The stimulation of national sentiment in one department gave a stimulus to the same sentiment in other departments, and the new and vigorous national sense which it fostered was bound to lead sooner or later to expression in political action. But even after this political activity began to be manifest, the League confined itself to its original work, and held as much aloof from politics infused by its own spirit as from the forms of political action which held the field when its work began.

Sinn Fein is an expression in political theory and action of the claim of Ireland to be a nation, with all the practical consequences which such a claim involves. It differs from previous national movements principally in the policy which it outlines for the attainment of its ultimate end, the independence of Ireland: though it should be understood that nearly every point in the Sinn Fein political programme had been at least suggested by some previous Irish Nationalist thinker. In opposition to the Parliamentary Party it held that for Ireland to send representatives to Westminster was to acknowledge the validity of the Act of Union and virtually to deny the Irish claim to an independent legislature. In contrast with the National movements of '48 and '67 it disclaimed the use of physical force for the attainment of its ends. While it held as a matter of abstract political ethics that a nation subjugated against its will by another nation is justified in regaining its independence, if it can do so, by any means at its disposal, including force, yet as a matter of practical Irish politics it renounced the use of force unequivocally. "It is because Ireland is to-day unable to overcome England on the battlefield we preach the Sinn Fein policy," wrote the principal exponent of the policy in 1906. The remnants of the Fenian Brotherhood had no sympathy with a policy such as this: and though representatives of the "physical force party" were allowed to express their opinions in the Sinn Fein papers, their views were not officially adopted and never became part of the Sinn Fein policy. At least one prominent member of the old Fenian Party saw reason to adopt the Sinn Fein policy in preference to that of armed force. "I would not," wrote John Devoy from New York in 1911, "incite the unorganized, undisciplined and unarmed people of Ireland to a hopeless military struggle with England." This renunciation of force was however very different from O'Connell's famous declaration of his intention not to fight. While Sinn Fern held that the most practical way to establish Irish freedom in the twentieth century was not the way of force it never concealed its opinion that force was a legitimate method of securing national rights. In fact no responsible national leader has ever held any other opinion in any country.

Nor was the Sinn Fein Party in its inception a Republican Party. It was strictly constitutional, and in fact forfeited the support of many ardent Nationalists by adherence to this definitely constitutional policy. While the Parliamentary Party claimed to be the only constitutional party by its use of the forms of the existing constitution, Sinn Fein laid claim to the merit of a superior constitutionalism. It relied upon the Renunciation Act of 1783 which declared that the right "claimed by the people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by his Majesty and the Parliament of that kingdom, in all cases whatever, and to have all actions and suits at law or in equity which may be instituted in that kingdom decided in his Majesty's courts therein finally and without appeal from thence shall be and it is hereby declared to be established and ascertained forever and shall at no time hereafter be questioned or questionable." The Act of Union, carried as it was, was a clear breach of this declaration, and the policy of Sinn Fein was to ignore, holding it as null and void, the Union and every subsequent arrangement made in contravention of the Act of 1783. If it came to a question of constitutionalism Sinn Fein took up a High Tory attitude compared with the accommodating constitutionalism of the official Nationalist Party.

The editorial in the first number gives a general idea both of the style and of the teaching of the paper. "There exists, has existed for centuries, and will continue to exist in Ireland, a conviction hostile to the subjection, or dependence of the fortunes of this country to the necessities of any other; we intend to voice that conviction. We bear no ill will to any section of the Irish political body, whether its flag be green or orange, which holds that tortuous paths are the safest for Irishmen to tread; but, knowing we are governed by a nation which religiously adheres to 'The good old rule--the simple plan--that those may take who have the power, and those may keep who can,' we, with all respect for our friends who love the devious ways, are convinced that an occasional exhibition of the naked truth will not shock the modesty of Irishmen and that a return to the straight road will not lead us to political destruction.... To be perfectly plain, we believe that when Swift wrote to the whole people of Ireland 170 years ago, that by the law of God, of Nature, and of nations they had a right to be as free a people as the people of England, he wrote commonsense; notwithstanding that in these latter days we have been diligently taught that by the law of God, of Nature, and of nations we are rightfully entitled to the establishment in Dublin of a legislative assembly with an expunging angel watching over its actions from the Viceregal Lodge. We do not deprecate the institution of any such body, but we do assert that the whole duty of an Irishman is not comprised in utilizing all the forces of his nature to procure its inception.... With the present day Irish movements outside politics we are in more or less sympathy. The Financial Reformers ... are incidentally doing good in promoting an union of Irishmen in opposition to their one enemy; the resuscitation of our national language is a work in which everyone of us should help; at the same time we would regret any insistence on a knowledge of Gaelic as a test of patriotism. It is scarcely necessary to say we are in full sympathy with the objects of the Amnesty Association; but we shall not at any time support an appeal to any such myths as English Justice or English Mercy.... Lest there might be any doubt in any mind we will say that we accept the Nationalism of '98, '48 and '67 as the true Nationalism and Grattan's cry 'Live Ireland-Perish the Empire!' as the watchword of patriotism."

The war against the Transvaal Republics made the question of recruiting for the army a question of public importance in Ireland during the early days of the paper, and its articles on the subject first brought it into conflict with the Castle authorities. That Mr. Chamberlain's policy was directed to the extinction of Transvaal independence was self-evident and the war on that account was not popular in Ireland. In the Boers struggling hopelessly for the maintenance of their freedom was seen an analogue of the long Irish struggle for independence, and any Irishman who enlisted in the British army was denounced as "a traitor to his country and a felon in his soul." But it was not the crushing of Transvaal independence in which the army was employed that formed the only argument against enlisting. The official returns of the statistics of venereal disease in the British army were printed with a commentary of provoking frankness. The excesses of the British army in Burmah and the charges made against the soldiers for offences against Burmese women were insisted upon to prove that no decent Irishman could join the army. But in fact it was something more than the sufferings of the Boers and the Burmese which inspired this attitude. The British army was regarded as the instrument by which Ireland was held in subjugation, as the force which upheld the power to whose interests Ireland was sacrificed. One of the concluding numbers of the paper printed the text of an anti-recruiting pamphlet for the distribution of which prosecutions were instituted. It concluded: "Let England fight her own battles: we have done it long enough. Let her arm and drill the sickly population of her slums: the men of the hills and country places in Ireland will go no more. Let her fight for the extension of her Empire herself, for the men of the Gael are not going to be bribed into betraying themselves and their country again at the bidding of England." It was found difficult to obtain convictions against persons who distributed these pamphlets. Even in Belfast a jury refused to convict a man for this at the instance of the Crown: though the accused made no excuse or apology, and though his counsel said in his speech to the jury, "You are fathers and brothers, and there is not one of you who would not rather see your boys in hell than in the British Army."

Though the policy of abstention from Parliament came to be known as "the Hungarian Policy" it was a policy that had been advocated, and to a certain extent practised, in Ireland long before the Hungarian Deputies adopted it. In 1844, the "Parliamentary Committee of the Loyal National Repeal Association on the Attendance of Irish Members in Parliament" presented a report which contained the following: "The people of Ireland, having in vain attempted to obtain from the Imperial Parliament detailed measures of justice, and with equal failure sought the restoration of their domestic Senate or even inquiry into the wisdom of that restoration, have at length sought to obtain those rights by agitation out of Parliament. They have to this end arrayed themselves into a Loyal and National Association to obtain the Repeal of the Union. They try to obtain strength by the reality and display of union and organization. They seek converts by their speeches, their writings, and their peaceful virtues. They are endeavouring to increase their knowledge and their power by reading, thinking and discussing. And to carry out their projects of organization, conversion and self-improvement, they subscribe large funds to a common treasury. Their efforts in the Imperial Parliament having then been so fruitless, and their undertaking at home being so vast, they, the people of Ireland, have consented that such of their members as seek with them domestic legislation, should secede from the Imperial Parliament and control the agitation, instruction and organization of the people at home." This report is signed by Thomas Davis. A correspondence between Thomas Davis and the Earl of Wicklow, to whom certain resolutions of the Repeal Association had been sent, debates the rival merits of the policies of parliamentarianism and abstention. The Earl, who had no intention of leaving Parliament, wrote: "I now believe that there exists amongst the British people an anxious desire to do justice to our country and to atone in every way in their power for the evils of former mismanagement." Lord Wicklow had formed this conviction before 1844. The "Hungarian Policy" of 1902 was framed for the same situation and in face of the same conviction.

THE EARLY YEARS OF SINN FEIN.

In the year 1906 Sinn Fein emerged from the region of ideals and abstractions, of academical discussion and preliminary propaganda, into the arena of Irish party politics with a fully formulated practical policy. Taking constitutional ground with the dictum that "the constitution of 1782 is still the constitution of Ireland," it proposed to show how the people of Ireland, keeping within the letter of a law which they could not otherwise break, might render nugatory the effort to hold the country in dependence upon England in pursuance of the Act of Union. It proposed to arrest the anglicization of Ireland by recovering for the Irish people the management of those departments of public administration in which the anglicizing process was working most markedly to the detriment of Irish interests and which might be remodelled without any actual breach of the existing law. In the first place it seemed necessary to take education in hand, and by the introduction of a system more in accordance with Irish needs and capabilities and characteristics, endeavour to train up a generation of young Irish men and women, imbued with a national spirit and national pride, capable of taking their part in the agricultural, industrial and administrative life of the country. County Councils might do much in this direction through their intimate connection with the administration and policy of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction; a wise use of the means placed by the Department at their disposal might in a few years revolutionize to the advantage of Ireland the entire education of the country. The young men and women thus trained might form the nucleus of an Irish Civil Service, if the County Councils could be induced to abandon their "patronage" in the positions at their disposal and throw them open to competitive examination; others of these trained Irishmen might be employed in an unofficial Irish Consular Service to the great advantage of Irish commerce, handicapped in foreign markets by English consuls in the interests of the English commercial houses. Pressure could be brought to bear upon the Irish banks to adopt a policy more in sympathy with Irish trade and industry. There was deposited in Irish banks a sum of ?50,000,000, the savings of the people of Ireland; yet these banks invested this money in English securities while Irish industries were starving for lack of the capital which the banks refused to lend. The Stock Exchange, controlled by the Government, neglected to quote shares in Irish companies that might be formed for the furtherance of particular industries in particular districts, discouraging investors who were thus left unable to dispose of their shares in the ordinary way. It was hoped that public bodies as well as private persons could be induced to bring pressure to bear on the banks by withdrawing or withholding accounts until they should adopt a more patriotic policy, though it was more difficult to see how the Stock Exchange could be dealt with. The difficulties put by railways and their heavy freights on the exchange of commodities could be obviated by a development of the Irish waterways under the control of popularly elected bodies: the County Councils should see to this and to questions such as afforestation and the encouragement of home manufactures by specifying their use in the giving of contracts for institutions under their control. The Poor Law system should be remodelled in accordance with Irish sentiment and the money expended upon it spent in Ireland upon Irish goods. To ensure the advantage of foreign markets without English interference an Irish Mercantile Marine should be established, what could be done even by a poor country in this way being shown by the example of Norway, where nearly everyone was at least part owner of a ship.

But to stimulate and foster native industry and native manufacture was to Mr. Griffith an urgent and supreme duty. He was convinced that until Ireland became an industrial as well as an agricultural country her economic position was insecure. Thinking always in terms of national independence, which he interpreted to mean national ability to dispense with outside assistance, he looked forward to a time when Ireland should be able not merely to feed her population from her own resources, but to supply them with nearly all the other necessaries of modern life. Irish coal and iron existed in abundance to supply the necessary fuel and raw material; there was plenty of native marble and other stones for building; Irish wool and hides were once famous over Europe for their abundance and excellence. All that was required to make Ireland once more a prosperous manufacturing country was at her disposal within her own boundaries, and only waited for the policy that would call out her latent powers. In an independent State the encouragement required would be forthcoming in protective legislation, pursued until the protected industry became established and able to compete on favourable terms with similar industries in other countries, the work of protection being limited strictly to the task of building up a temporary screen to shelter a budding national industry from the wind of competition until its strength was established. The Irish Parliament in the days of its independence had adopted this policy, which had enabled it during its short life to secure to Irish manufactures an unprecedented prosperity. But Ireland, deprived of legislative powers, might fall back upon a less secure but still efficacious method of protection. Irish consumers might refuse to purchase English goods while Irish goods of the same quality were to be had, and be content to pay in an enhanced price their share of what under other circumstances the State might have expended in bounties to the industry; public bodies might insist upon the use of goods of Irish manufacture; port authorities should arrange port dues so that they should fall most heavily on manufactured goods brought into the country, and should publish periodical returns of the imports of manufactured goods at every port in Ireland; Irish capital should be invited and encouraged to undertake the development of the country on industrial and commercial lines, being assured, in the support of industrial and corporate public feeling, of encouragement and success in its enterprise.

In expounding this theory of protection and of the vital necessity to a country of developing its industrial life Mr. Griffith was confessedly following the economic doctrines of the German economist Friedrich List, "the man whom England caused to be persecuted by the Government of his native country, and whom she hated and feared more than any man since Napoleon--the man who saved Germany from falling a prey to English economics, and whose brain conceived the great industrial and economic Germany of to-day." A man with credentials like these might well be listened to with profit. The commercial policy that made the New Germany could not fail to make a New Ireland, and List made seductive promises. He foretold an increase in population by a combination of agricultural and industrial enterprise greater in proportion than by the development of either industry or agriculture by itself: he denied the possibility of intellectual progress to a country relying solely or mainly upon agriculture: culture marched behind the mill and the factory. But the chief merit of the policy undoubtedly was that it promised a self-contained and independent economic existence, serving as the basis of a distinctive national culture.

The Appeal which the National Council issued for support was based on the ground that the Council "denies the right of any foreign legislature to make laws to bind the people of Ireland, denies the authority of any foreign administration to exist in Ireland, and denies the wisdom of countenancing the existence of an usurped authority in Irish affairs by participating in the proceedings of the British Parliament."

This ambitious programme met with little or no response, and with the collapse of the daily paper the apathy of the general public became more marked. On the mass of Unionist Ireland, especially in Ulster, Sinn Fein had practically no influence. The movement for the reform of the financial relations between England and Ireland which had followed the publication of the Report of the Financial Relations Committee in 1896 had been the last All-Ireland movement in which Unionist Ulster had taken part. But after a brief period of enthusiasm the movement had come to nothing. Though the Report showed that Ireland had been since the Union, and partly in contravention of the express terms of that Act, the victim of grave financial injustice, being over-taxed to the amount of two-and-three-quarter millions of pounds per annum, nothing was done to remedy the grievance. The English Government was obdurate: the landlords gradually ceased to take any prominent part in the movement for fear of prejudicing their class interests. Unionist Ireland, especially in Ulster, allowed its morbid suspicion of everything in which the rest of the country was interested to overbear its patriotism and its common sense, and Nationalist Ireland lost interest in the matter in pursuit of other objects. The Financial Reform Association had been dissolved in 1899 and the country settled down again to the old political struggle. The Nationalist Party fought shy of the raising of all fundamental questions. Its policy was to "wrest from whatever Government was in power the full measure of a nation's rights," that is to say, to gain as full a measure of Home Rule from either Liberals or Conservatives as the exigencies of English politics and the opinion of the English public might make possible. Their aim was not to educate Irish public opinion or to convince Irish opposition. It was taken for granted that the Liberal Party would some day bring in a Home Rule Bill and carry it against the Conservative Party, and that that would end the matter: that the Conservatives would accept "the verdict of the people," yielding to the inevitable, and that the Irish Unionists would have to follow suit. To discuss the fundamentals of the problem, to endeavour to unite Irishmen was tiresome, irrelevant and tending to the subversion of party discipline. For the policy now adopted by the Parliamentarians "a united party" was above all things essential; and the unity desired meant not merely a common aim but an agreement upon all details: the great offence was "faction," and under faction was comprised all independent criticism either of policy or of principle. A party thus constituted was, if things went well and it was wisely led, an invaluable instrument of parliamentary warfare at Westminster; but if things went wrong or a mistake was made, or if Westminster should cease at any time to be the centre of interest, disaster was sure to follow. And this conception of the duty of an Irish National Party overlooked the possibilities latent in Ulster Unionism. To an extent, not at the time fully grasped by anyone in Ireland, it stood not for the Unionist Party, as that party was understood in England, but for itself alone. The exigencies of party warfare required that it, like the Nationalist Party, should attach itself to an English party; that it should adopt the parlance of English parties; that it should declare its unbending loyalty to Imperial interests and the British Constitution. But it was not inclined to admit in practice that the British Constitution could override its own particular interests. It could not be ignored or flouted with impunity; it was the rock upon which all schemes based upon the peaceful possibilities of English parliamentary situations were destined in the end to make shipwreck.

But the rock was not yet in sight and its existence was unsuspected. It was common ground to the two Irish parties that the arena was Parliament and that the prize should go to the party which won the game according to Westminster rules. It is easy now for those who kept their eyes shut to say that they would have opened them if everybody else had not been born blind, and it would be more dignified to say nothing. But the fact remains that the mistake was made.

SINN FEIN AND THE REPUBLICANS.

From 1910 to 1913 the Sinn Fein movement was practically moribund. Political attention in Ireland was largely centred on the fate of Home Rule and the tactics of the Irish Party at Westminster or the struggles of the Party at home with Mr. William O'Brien and the All-for-Ireland League. The Constitution which Ireland might enjoy in 1914 was of more pressing interest than the merits of the Constitution of 1782.

But there were other forces at work in Ireland in opposition to the two official parties of Unionists and Nationalists. There were in the first place the survivors of the Fenians, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, whose ideal was an Irish Republic, independent of any connection with England or indeed with any other country. Fenianism had become to all outward appearance practically dead in Ireland. It had suffered, in the opinion of some at least of its members, from the fact that it had put revolutionary action first and the preaching of republicanism second. As one of them wrote afterwards, "The Fenian propagandist work in the sixties was entirely separatist with practically no reference to Republicanism. Rightly or wrongly I have always held the view that the absence of the deeper Republican thought amongst our people accounted for a considerable amount of the falling away after '67." The people whose republican sentiments were weak "dropped back into the easier path leading only to a much modified national independence." Accordingly after 1867 the Fenians attempted to make republicanism an essential part of their propaganda. There had been a large number of Protestant Irishmen among the Fenians, and, as Republican sentiment had been traditional in Ulster since the days of the United Irishmen, it seemed that a movement aiming at an Irish Republic might have more chance of success among Ulster Protestants than any form of "Home Rule." Besides, the "New Departure," the alliance of Fenianism with Parnell in the Land War, had weakened the movement still more. "It was disastrous," says the same authority, "to the Fenian movement as such, but it drove the Land League through to a degree that no really constitutional movement could ever have reached." In allying itself to some extent with Parnell, in abandoning for the time in his interests its revolutionary propaganda, it seemed to have weakened its own moral force, while it did not succeed in winning even Home Rule. And the fact of its being of necessity a secret society brought it under the ban of the Church. Fear of ecclesiastical censure most often kept young Irishmen out of Fenianism. It was not enough for the Fenians to say, as they did, that to the existence of a secret society whose aims were lawful there was no moral or theological objection. The experts in morals and theology said that there was, and their word, and not that of the Fenians, was accepted on the whole as final. And the actions of the Invincibles during the Parnellite struggle had gravely compromised not Parnell only but the Fenian Party, to which they were supposed to belong. As a matter of fact the Irish Republican Brotherhood had nothing to do with them. It had no sympathy with, nor reliance on, their policy of political assassination. A member of the Brotherhood who joined the Invincibles was regarded as having broken his oath to its members and its constitution. But this was not generally believed, any more than Parnell's statement that he had been no party to the brutal murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish; and the prestige of Fenianism was lowered. Still, the Irish Republican Brotherhood was in existence as a centre of separatist and republican thought and the imminence of Home Rule could not but stimulate its interest. Its members must either decide to lend their support to Mr. Redmond as it had once been lent to Parnell, or to come out, whether openly or in private, as his opponents.

The attitude of this new republican movement to that of the previous Sinn Fein movement is clearly defined in a subsequent leader. "The temporary suspension of the Sinn Fein movement is often cited as a throwback but it is nothing of the kind. Under whatever name we propagate our ideas the Irish Nation must be built on Sinn Fein principles, or non-recognition of British authority, law, justice or legislature: that is our basis and the principles of the Sinn Fein policy are as sound to-day as ever they were. The movement is temporarily suspended because some of its leaders directed it into an '82 movement, thinking they could collar the middle-classes and drop the separatists; but when the separatists were dropped there was no movement left."

Devoted to the cause of an independent Irish Republic and of the union of Irishmen without distinction of creed under one national banner, the cause of Wolfe Tone, the movement attracted idealists who had so far held aloof from the older, non-republican, form of Sinn Fein. Chief among these were P. H. Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh, both poets and men of fine literary gifts, both regarded with affection for their high and disinterested devotion to the cause of Ireland. And in accordance with Irish Republican tradition it took up an attitude with regard to armed revolution somewhat different from that of Sinn Fein. While the latter held that in the present state of Ireland an armed revolution was impracticable, the Republicans, though not directly advising it, held that it had a reasonable prospect of success if England should become involved in a European War. Some Irish revolutionists who had so far held aloof from all political parties were encouraged by this to join the republican branch of Sinn Fein and try to infuse into it a more determined revolutionary spirit.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet