Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Debate on the Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland, signed in London on the 6th December 1921: Sessions 14 December 1921 to 10 January 1922 (Author: The Deputies of Dáil Eireann)
Session 7
DÁIL EIREANN PUBLIC SESSION Wednesday, January 4th,
1922
THE SPEAKER (DR. EOIN MACNEILL) took the Chair at 11.15 a.
m.
MR. FRANK FAHY:
When speaking yesterday I
made use of the words the supporters of the Welsh Wizard. I
admit that these words may bear the interpretation put upon them by
the chairman of the plenipotentiaries. I did not see it at the time.
What I meant by that reference was the supporters of the English Prime
Minister in the English Press. I did not for a moment mean to suggest
that there were any supporters or followers of the Welsh Wizard in
this assembly, because if anyone outside this assembly or inside it
suggested such I would deal with them as sternly as is in my
power.
MR. A. GRIFFITH:
I am quite satisfied
that Mr. Fahy did not intend to convey the impression that his words
gave at the time.
MR. DONAL BUCKLEY (KILDARE):
A Chinn Chomhairle agus a lucht na Dála, I
will begin by asking what was the mandate we, the members of the
Dáil, got from our constituents in the last election ? I know
the mandate I got anyhow was to look for freedom, to strive for
freedom for the country. When the plenipotentiaries left Ireland for
the last time I presume they had in their possession a document in
which was stated the minimum demand Ireland was to make on England,
and coming up to the last moment on the eve of the morning on which
that document was signed there was a threat held over the heads of
these delegates. If there was a threat, the object of it must have
been to minimise that demand that they had in their
possessionthat they were about to make. It is admitted that the
threat was made. Therefore I conclude that the minimum demand which
they had in their possession when they left Ireland must have been
minimised before these Articles of Agreement were signed. Therefore
they must have been signed for something less than freedom for Ireland
to my mind. How can it be said that we have freedom if we picture to
ourselves John Bull standing four square in this country of ours, with
a crúb of his firmly fastened in each of
our principal ports? We are told that in each of these ports there
will be what is called a care and maintenance partya
very nice mild term. What does it really meanthis care and
maintenance party? It means a British Garrison in each of these ports
with the Union Jackthe symbol of oppression and treachery and
slavery in this country, and all over the world, in Ireland
especiallythat this symbol of slavery will float over each of
these strongholds, blockhouses of John Bull. Yet we are told we are
getting freedom in these Articles of Agreement. I recall to mind one
incident that happened during the last election whilst I was
addressing a meeting in my constituency. A few of the khaki-clad
warriors had fastened a Union Jack to a lamp post right beside the
platform from which I was to address the meeting, and I remember
stating distinctly to that assembly that I would not rest satisfied
until every vestige of that rag was cleared out of the country. The
assembly agreed with me, and before the words were scarcely out of my
mouth a rush was made by half-a-dozen boys from the crowd and although
the flag was defended by seven or eight of the warriors that flag was torn down. How can
it
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be said that we are going to have freedom with this document when the
flag which symbolises slavery continues to float all over the country,
here, there and everywhere, not alone in these four ports, but wherever there is a signal station or
any other sort of station belonging to the British? The people of
Ireland at this juncture have been stampeded by the rotten Press of
Ireland. Lloyd George is rubbing the palms of his hands and laughing,
I doubt not, at the spectacle which is anything but creditable to
Ireland that has made such a fight up to this. To my mind the country
wants a tonic of some sort to set it thinking. The country is not
thinking. It has been stampeded and it now seeks to stampede its
representatives. Well there is one representative anyway that won't be
stampeded. I stand to-day for the same object for which I stood on the
platform through out my constituency and for the same object for which
my constituents elected me and I mean to continue so. I shall vote
against the Treaty. [Applause].
MR. A. MACCABE (SLIGO):
A
Chinn Chomhairle agus a lucht na Dála, tá níos
mó ná beagáinín le rá agamsa ar an
gceist seo, agus caithfe me labhairt as Bearla. In saying that I
have decided to vote for this Treaty I think I should personally
express my regret at finding myself in opposition to many of the
leaders who piloted the national cause through the storms of the last
five or six years. It is
certainly no pleasure to us on this side of the House to stand up and
declare ourselves in opposition to one especially who, in the eyes of
the great majority of our countrymen, symbolises a national ideal. But
in this cause no feeling of personal admiration, of personal animus
either, can be allowed to influence our judgment or prevent us doing
our duty to the people that sent us here. My duty at the moment I
consider to be to examine the Treaty on its merits, and to decide,
quite irrespective of the circumstances attending its signature,
whether it was a settlement the country could honourably and
profitably accept. I have come to the conclusion that it is, and I am
going to vote for it. My action in doing so is governed by two considerations. The first is that the Treaty
represents goods delivered and not promised to usgoods that we
all know were never offered or, indeed, seriously asked for before.
The second is that, as a matter of expediency, it is better to take
these than run the risk of war or chaos and all that it means to our
people and the prosperity of the country. Now, before going on to
discuss the value of the goods delivered, and the advisability or
otherwise of accepting them, which are really the only questions that
matteror at least, should matterI should like to explain
my position regarding the Republic. It is this: I regard the oath as a
binding obligation on me to use every endeavour to secure the
realisation of the ideal. It never, in my mind, barred any particular
methods of achieving it, nor did it specifically mention the methods
advocated by the opposition. To me, recognition of Irish nationality
and the securing of practically complete control of our Army and
natural resources which this Treaty brings us, are things that no
Republican in his sober moments could or should refuse to accept. It
will be said, of course, that in voting for the Treaty we are
abandoning our principles, that we are breaking our oath, that we are
betraying the Republic, that we, in fact, are guilty of all the sins
in the calendar. For my part I don't mind what anybody says or thinks
about me as long as I do my duty to the country, and my conscience is
clear. But the opponents of this Treaty should remember that there are
other principles and ideals involved in the issue besides
Republicanism. There is, for instance, the ideal of a peaceful and
happy Ireland, or that no less dearly cherished one of a united
Ireland. There is government by the consent of the governed on which
we took our stand throughout this war. Then what about the principles
of Christianity? Are they worth any consideration? After the sermon
addressed to the sinners on this side of the House by my old and, I
must say, sincere friend, Deputy Etchingham, I take it; that his
disciples, including his no less ardent acolytes, are familiar with
the Commandments on which the principles of their religion are
based.
MR. ETCHINGHAM:
Arran Islands.
MR. MACCABE:
I surrender that to the
opposition for external association
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in connection with the Free State. How many of them, I wonder, could
stand up in this House and say they have never violated any of the
Commandments? This is not a Webster, nor a text-book of international
law, but it is the law the opposition is appealing to against this
Treaty. The book has no high-sounding title. At school we used to call
it the "Halfpenny Catechism." I'll read out the Ten Commandments, as
by law established, as Moses would have added were he a constitutional
lawyer, to Teachtaí opposed to the Treaty, and any of them who
have never violated the principles for which they stand are at liberty
to make themselves seen and heard. I see none of you have stood up to
protest your innocence. It is as I thought: no one on the opposition
side denies having offended against fundamental principles of the law
my friend, Deputy Sean Etchingham, would have us, on this side,
observe to the letter. I'm not saying, mind, that it should not be the
law, but I maintain that, in their attitude to the Treaty, if they
take the Ten Commandments as the law, they are no less principled than
we are. If they succeed in having the Treaty rejected, they set aside
every religious and political principle I know of, for they propose to
accept as final a settlement that will not bring us a Republic; they
postpone for generations, perhaps, the realisation of the ideal of a
united Ireland, and they gamble recklessly on the lives and welfare of
four and a half million people. As to the
oath, all I can say is that it is unpalatable to meit is, I
believe, to us all. Nor do I like the idea of being associated
internally or externally with a man eater; but I am prepared to take
the Treaty for what it is worth, and as a stepping stone to getting
more. Now I candidly do not believe that any of us are saints, not
even my friend who gave the sermon a few days ago. This world is no
place for saints, and the Church wisely refrains from canonising
anybody whilst he or she is in this life. If the Commandments were the
principles upon which international relations were grounded the
attitude of the opposition to this Treaty would be the correct one,
even though it might not be the honest one. But the trouble is that
nations like individuals have different sets of principles, and
interpret or disregard them just as it suits their circumstances. The
British for instance, murder Indians on principle, and the great
audience outside says "Amen." The Kaiser and his opponents sent armies
to the shambles for a principle. East Ulster refuses, at least for the
time being, to come into Ireland on principle. We could make a very
plausible case for decimating the population of the corner counties on
principle but our Christianity and the good sense of the President and
his Cabinet forbid it. On principle, too, Miss MacSwiney would have
the whole population of Ireland wiped out of existence, man, woman,
and child.
MISS M. MACSWINEY:
I beg your pardon. I
never said anything of the kind. It is only on the principle of which
I spoke that you can avoid wiping them out of existence.
MR. MACCABE:
She would not leave us even a
grasshopper [Laughter]. That is the inference I drew from
her speech, and I think most of the House drew the same inference from
her speech.
MISS M. MACSWINEY:
Then I say if that is so
the intelligence as well as the principle is on our side of the House
[Laughter and applause].
MR. MACCABE:
Thanks. [Renewed
Laughter]. We see here the abyss into which a blind and
reckless pursuit of one principle leads and the danger to any nation
of having people of such mentality in charge of its destinies. It may
be that Miss MacSwiney's mind and outlook are distorted by the
terrible experiences she has passed through. If so there is some
excuse for
MISS M. MACSWINEY:
Again I protest against
my name being used in that connection. I did not, and will not, use it
myself in that connection. I did not bring anything of my personal
experiences into my public speech here. I protest and ask the
protection of the Dáil against any member using my name in such
a connection [to Mr. MacCabe] and besides I assure you
that I am quite sane on the point.
MR. MACCABE:
Am I in order, a Chinn
Chomhairle?
p.216
MISS M. MACSWINEY:
Not in using my
name.
MR. MACCABE:
I just used the subject matter
of your speech.
MISS M. MACSWINEY:
Leave out my
experiences.
MR. MACCABE:
From the inference I drew from
the speech I can regard it as her suggestion that Ireland should fight
to a finish even though half of the population were wiped out. That is
nothing less than a criminal incitement to national suicide, whatever
you (Miss MacSwiney) may think of it. I think it is quite evident to
anyone who studies history that principle plays a very small part in
international politics. And before we embark on a crusade to have the
Ten Commandments written into international law I'd suggest that we
try to have some of the Teachtaí whom we have heard speak
against the Treaty converted to Christianity. The awkward fact at the
moment is, that despite anything we can do or say in Dáil
Eireann, the politics of the world are being, and will continue to be,
dictated by expediency. I am voting for the Treaty for reasons of
expediency and I consider, even though I were violating a principle,
that it is my bounden duty to do so. Most of us are new to politics,
and we do not realise the responsibilities of the office we hold. If
we did the interests of the country and the lives of our people would
come first in our consideration, and our principles and religious
scruples long afterwards. There is another aspect of the campaign that
is being carried on against this Treaty which I would like to refer
to, while on this point of principle. It is the exploitation of the
dead; and for the sake of their memory as well as in the interests of
truth I beg to protest against it. I knew a number of these splendid
men in their lifetime, amongst them Tom Clarke, the first
President-elect of the Irish Republic. I agree with what Mrs. Clarke
has saidthat be would have voted against it. But he could not
be expected to do otherwise considering that he worked almost alone
for a lifetime to keep the flame burning. I also knew Terence
MacSwiney very intimately, and I knew him as a sound Republican. I
don't believe that he, or any of his comrades, would have died for
Document No. 2, if it came to a choice between itself and the Treaty,
nor, what is more, do I believe that he would sacrifice the whole
population of Ireland on the altar of his principles. Now, nobody
objects to people voting against the Treaty because they have a
personal grievance against England, but I do suggest that it is unfair
asking other people to vote for their grievance, for this is what it
really amounts to. Is it not enough to have eight, nine or ten votes as the case may be, but not sufficient
anyhow to defeat the Treaty, cast on this personal issue? Where does
the country come in? I would remind all these Teachtaí who have
such grievances that they were not sent here to avenge the wrongs
committed in the war, but to secure an honourable peace, and I hold
that this is an honourable peace, for when the honours are counted up
they are all on our side. It is England that has surrendered, we have
surrendered nothing. I would, therefore, appeal to them to rise above
their personal prejudices and think of themselves, not as the sisters,
or wives, or mothers, or brothers of dead patriots, but as
representatives of the people, with the fate of a country in their
hands. The earth belongs to those who are on it, and not to those who
are under it, and to the living and not the dead we owe our votes. I
would ask them also before they launch the country again into war, or
worse, to think of the millions of wives and mothers and sisters who
are waiting expectantly for peace, and to picture the disappointment
and despair which the news of the rejection of the Treaty will bring
into their homes.
MADAME MARKIEVICZ:
Don't speak for the
women.
MR. MACCABE:
I know what the women want just
as well as the interrupter.
MADAME MARKIEVICZ:
You are an old woman, I
know.
MR. MACCABE:
Thanks very much. I know just
as well, if not better, than Deputy Mary MacSwiney what the people
want in their heads and hearts, and I know it is not war. I wonder is
p.217
there one woman in this assembly who could rise to the great
opportunity, one woman who would sink her feelings, sink her cravings
for vengeance, sink her principles even, and, sacrificing her
personality as others sacrificed their lives, vote for the good of her
country. Such an act of self-elimination would, in my opinion, appeal
to the whole world as an act worthy of a country woman of Terence
MacSwiney. I won't say any more on the question of principles or on
the question of Christianity. Perhaps I have said enough; perhaps I
have said too much. I did not mean to grate on anyone's sensibility or
insult anyone. I just spoke in the way I thought necessary in a crisis
like this when the issues should be placed straight before the country
and no personalities dragged into it [hear, hear]. Now
coming to the Treaty I'd like to say at the outset that I'm not
enamoured of it. I don't like the oath, I don't like the enemy in our
ports, and I don't like the Governor-General in substance or in
shadow. But Document No. 2 is open to all these objections
for
MADAME MARKIEVICZ:
No, it is not.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
I have several times
said I will bring that document forward, and bring it as an amendment.
Unless it is here I do not think it fair to be referring to
it.
MR. MACCABE:
It is most unfair to us and the
country to suppress it.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
I am ready at any time
to bring it forward if the other side agree to I bringing it forward
as an amendment.
MR. A. GRIFFITH:
Early in the proceedings
the other side asked President De Valera to publish it at the
beginning of the Session and he refused.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
Do you object to my
bringing it here as an amendment and publishing it then?
MR. M. COLLINS:
Are we going to conduct a
debate or are we going to have an old woman's wrangle?
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
There is no question of
wrangling. This is an important matter. A document has been referred
to piecemeal and an attempt made to prejudice it. I am ready to bring
forward the document as an amendment to the Treaty. There is nothing
keeping it from this assembly or the nation except the fact that the
other side want a direct vote on the Treaty. Now I am ready at any
time to move it as an amendment.
MR. MACCABE:
I do not object to Document No.
2 but I object to No. 8, certainly, which is being prepared for
us.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
There is no document
being prepared and I must be protected from these references, or else
allowed to bring forward the document. I must insist on a vote being
taken here in this assembly whether this document can be brought
forward as an amendment or not.
MR. M. COLLINS:
I have done my best in a few
instances to try and have the debate conducted without interruption,
and I do think that speakers when making references ought to have the
protection of you, Sir. If we are to discuss Document No. 2 and not
the Treaty, let us discuss Document No. 2, and any speaker on our side
and any speaker on the other side is entitled to make due reference to
the things that have been said, and things that are
possibilities.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
I formally give notice
that I am going to move to-morrow, and put it to a vote in this House,
that this document be brought forward as an amendment to the
Treaty.
MR. A. GRIFFITH:
I suggest that President de
Valera should hand that document to the Press as we asked him a
fortnight ago.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
I am giving notice
insisting on my rights as a member to put forward this as an
amendment. I will do it to-morrow.
ALD. COSGRAVE:
A member is entitled to speak
once. I understand
p.218
the President has already spoken once, and the President did not
introduce any document, nor did he move an amendment although the
Minister for Home Affairs, who spoke afterwards, said he seconded the
President's amendment.
MR. A. STACK:
I beg your pardon.
ALD. COSGRAVE:
The official records will
contain all that you said.
MR. A. STACK:
The official records will show
your inaccuracy.
ALD. COSGRAVE:
A member having spoken once
is not entitled to speak a second timeif my interpretation of
the Standing Orders is correct he is not entitled to speak a second
time. Consequently it is not open to the President to move an
amendment. I put that point of order to you.
THE SPEAKER:
That point only arises in the
case of the President actually moving the amendment.
MR. MACCABE:
Am I in order
to
THE SPEAKER:
I thought you gave way to the
interruptions. If you held your ground you would not be interrupted.
You can continue. I will allow no further interruptions.
MR. MACCABE:
As regards the Treaty in
general I would ask consideration for it on four
main grounds: first, that it enables us to set to work at once
building up the Gaelic State with a distinctive language, culture, and
civilisation. This will be, in itself, the best bulwark we can have
against that peaceful social penetration, which is supposed to follow
in the train of a Governor General equally with a Republican upper
ten. For my part I don't see how the
Teachtaí opposed to the Treaty, if they have as they say such
faith in the spirit of the Irish people, can maintain that their
nationality or their morals will be undermined by the presence of a
Governor-General or a Viceroy. The important thing is that the real
governors of Ireland, the police, the military and the auxiliaries,
sixty or seventy
thousand of them all told, leave us. For my part I look on this
Governor-General as a very useful bogey man. He will be to Irish
Nationalism and Irish Republicanism what the Pope is to Orangeism in
Belfast [Laughter], and until we have achieved complete
independence I'd regard it as a disaster to lose this tangible
stimulus to work for it. We all know what nationality did for the
development of the language and for native culture, and we can imagine
what a driving force it would lose were there anything in the nature
of a settlement that the nation would be deceived into believing
represented the attainment of the ideal. A second ground on which I
would recommend the Treaty is that it is an official recognition of
our status as a distinctive nationthe first ever we got since
Confederate days, and then it was only as an appanage of the English
Crown. Clause 1 says in plain language that we have the same status in
the British Commonwealth of Nations that the Dominions have. I think,
even apart from Mr. Lloyd George's letter, we can say that, as a
Dominion, we are entitled to enter the League of Nations. If not, I'm
sure in their own interests the British Dominions will have something
to say about it. Now, Mr. Childers says that certain facts, such as
distance and inherent strength affect, or are likely to affect, the
status of the Irish Free State. Of course it is evident that the
argument of distance used against this Treaty is a two-edged weapon
and cuts both ways. I surrender that to the opposition for an
experiment in external association with the Irish Free State. How we
are going to get an Irish Republic set up further away from England's
door than an Irish Free State I do not know; but I know this, that
distance did not save the South African Republics, even though one of
them was in external association with the Empire, when England chose
to attack them. As to strength, I think this Treaty makes it plain
that our powers of self defence will be such that no enemy, however
long-ranged his guns, will be in a hurry to return here once our army
is organised, and I think it will be conceded on all sides that a
national army is in itself a guarantee that our status will be at all
times respected. And as far as the defence of our coasts is concerned
I see nothing in the Treaty which will prevent us making our shores as
impregnable against enemy attacks as
p.219
were those of Suvla Bay against the fleets of the world. And the
experiences of the war go to prove that assaults from the sea on well
organised land defences are neither profitable nor effective. But what
puzzles me in regard to this question of defence is how the opposition
can say that we will be at the mercy of the enemy when we have
established government and a thoroughly equipped army, in view of the
fact that we were able to paralyse British Government in Ireland for a
number of years past without either. However, there are other
guarantees we can rely on apart from the army; the guarantees implied
in the membership of the British Commonwealth and the League of
Nations. The British Dominions, for their own sakes, will see that our
status is respected, but we have a higher and more impartial, if less
interested, community to appeal to if we think our rights are
infringed, in the League of the Free Nations. Membership of this means
admittance to the family of nations, in other words, the international
recognition we sought so vainly in the early days of the Republican
movement. Was it not on this issue admission to the Peace Conference
or, in other words, admission to the comity of nations, what is known
as the Plunkett election was fought in North Roscommon? To-day a door
is opening for us, but because it is not the hall door we are too
proud to enter. We must go in tall hats, with brass dog chains across
our vests, and our hands in our trousers pockets, just to impress the
hall-porter. It reminds me of an incident that occurred in my part of
the country during the Versailles Conference, when the question
everyone was asking was would de Valera be admitted to the Peace
Conference. There, as elsewhere in Ireland, the people take a very
lively interest in public affairs, and every night at the fireside, as
most of us know by this, they discuss the national question in all its
moods and tenses. One very stormy night after the East Clare
electionwhen excitement was at its heightthe ramblers in
a certain house decided to have a peace conference of their own to
debate the political situation. After the preliminaries were settled
the question arose as to who should play de Valera. It was, as I
stated already, a wet, stormy night, and when it was mentioned that de
Valera would have to remain outside the door knocking until he was
admitted, no one was very anxious to play the role. As no volunteer
was forthcoming the assembly decided unanimously to give it to a
member who happened to be very careful of his health and not very
popular. He was therefore ordered out and, when the door was locked,
told to keep knocking until the Peace Conference had decided whether
he should be admitted or not. Needless to say, once the Conference
started its deliberations it was not in a very big hurry coming to a
decision regarding de Valera's admittance. For several hours he was
left there at the mercy of the wind and rain, breaking his knuckles on
the door that would not open. At last, disgusted at the treatment
meted out to him by the Peace Conference, and realising the joke that
had been played on him, he delivered a few resounding on the door and
left. He never thought of the back door which would have admitted him
and saved him from the dangerous attack of pneumonia which he
contracted as a result of his night's exposure to the storm. Now this
story, I think, has a particular application to the issue we are
discussing at the moment. We, in this assembly, have the option of
admitting Ireland to the comity of nations by a side door, or a back
door if you like, or letting her play de Valera at the hall door for
God knows how longpoor old Ireland in her threadbare shawl
standing there in the rain and storm for another long night with no
certainty, even at the end of that night, of getting in. We on this
side of the House at least, will not be a party to the joke, and I
hope those opposed to the Treaty will consider before the vote whether
Ireland is a fit subject at the moment for either a gamble or a joke.
The third ground on which I would consider this Treaty worthy of
support is that it offers a solution of the Ulster difficulty which
places us well on the road to a united Ireland. I know there are
members in this House who would advocate the coercion of the Ulster
minority, and other members who would not even stop at that. Again I
say that the land of Ulster belongs to those who are on it and not
under it, and I take this opportunity of complimenting our President
p.220
on the statesmanlike solution of the difficulty which appears in the
Treaty. Minorities have been forcibly brought inside the boundaries of
a number of nations liberated in the recent war, with results that
should give us to pause before we launch on a coercion campaign
against the corner counties. The recent history of some of these
nations is well worth studying, and I'd specially commend it to those
Teachtaí who rail at the plenipotentiaries and the Cabinet for
not securing a united Ireland right off. Of course they do not realise
that this Treaty gives us just as much control over the destinies of
East Ulster as the British Parliament has and, what is still more
important, an excellent chance of getting complete control. The
economic argument is all in our favourthe railways, the
markets, the customsand this will always continue to be the
decisive argument in favour of unification. For my part I'd prefer to
see East Ulster stand out at first, so that our minorities may get a
chance of having justice done to them in the making of boundaries and
for the additional reason that I would not care to see a province of
the size of North Ireland as it stands come into the Irish Free State.
The establishment of the Irish Free State is, to my mind, not only a
big step towards the ideal of an independent Ireland, but also a big
step towards the ideal of a united Ireland, for were we to set up a
Republic here in Southern Ireland I fear the unity which we all aspire
to would hardly come in this generation. On the other hand, I look
forward with confidence to the day when the demand for a Republic will
come from a united Ireland, and that day we can say with certainty
England will not and dare not refuse it. The fourth ground on which I
consider the Treaty worthy of support is that it gives us all the
essentials of economic freedom. One item of vital importance to
Ireland has been almost overlooked in the discussion of the Treaty and
that is the question of trade and commerce. The delegates have
succeeded in bringing back full and complete fiscal freedom, thereby
winning the right for us to protect our industries against English or
any other foreign goods, to trade freely with the outside world, and
to make commercial treaties with whom we may. This power has always
been regarded in Ireland as the acid test of freedom, and we can only
appreciate its importance properly when we remember that it was on
this principle the Volunteers of '82 took their historic stand for
independence. The picture of the Volunteers in College Green with the
motto "Free Trade or else" suspended from the muzzles of their guns is
eloquent of the importance the Irish nation has always attached to the
right which our delegates have now once and for all established by the
Treaty. With this control I believe we will be able to make Ireland
economically strong enough to resist any aggression or threat of
aggression from without; and this economic strength is the first thing
we should aim at for it means a bigger and more vigorous population, a
self-contained country and, if you like to put it so, much greater
fighting potential. If we got a Republic of the Cuban type, for
instance, we would in return have to surrender some of our freedom on
such vital matters as trade and defence, for it too would have to be
in the nature of a compromise and, putting the Central American brand
of freedom side by side with ours, I think ninety-nine men out of every hundred, if it were a matter of choice, would any
day vote for ours. I'm not going to say war with England is inevitable
if the Treaty should be rejected. I think, in fact, there has been too
much exploitation of this bogey by people on the side of ratification.
Lloyd George would scarcely be such a fool as to declare war on us
over the wording of an oath. He might even be persuaded to go further
and give us a Republic of the Central American variety with all the
forms of independence and none of the substance. Any of these
settlements would, of course, entail a compromise of some kind on our
part. What would we have to compromise? Nothing that I see except some
of the substance we have got in this Treatycontrol of our
customs, control of our army, and probably another port or two. Where would the independence that we say we are
working for come in then? Where is it in Cuba, for instancethe
beau-ideal of some prominent members of the opposition?
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
Another
misrepresentation.
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MR. M. COLLINS:
Another
interruption.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
I am entitled to
interrupt when he makes a misrepresentation.
MR. MACCABE:
This is some of the substance
of freedom that Cuba had to surrender for her so-called
independence:No Treaty with foreign power, etc.; no debts that
current revenue will not meet; intervention in certain circumstances;
Naval and coaling stations; Reciprocal Treaty; Government by a
Commission from 1906 to 1909. Now I put it to any sensible man or
woman whether it is not better to take the essentials of freedom first
which we are undoubtedly getting in the Treaty and look for the
symbols afterwards, or plunge the country into chaos on the chance of
getting this shadowy independence, but with the dead certainty of
creating Mexican conditions in the country. Then there are other
things to consider which no one here has thought it worth while
mentioning although, to my mind, they are the real kernel of the
situation. We are in a very backward condition, socially and
economically speaking. We have, in fact, as far as the other countries
of Europe are concerned, been practically standing still for nine or ten years; the land
question is still us far as ever from settlement; a number of our
industries are leading a precarious existence: labour is restless and
aggressive. Do the Deputies opposed to this settlement think that all
the elements interested in these vital questions will stand passively
impracticable at the moment? Do they for an ideal that to most of them
seems by and let this fight go on indefinitely think the farmers, the
backbone of national Ireland, broken and disheartened by the crash in
prices, will stand idly by while we run the country to ruin? For this
is what rejection really meansnot war. War against England
would probably unite the army if it would not unite the country, but
our enemies are too wily to force war on us. It is not war we are
faced with but disunion, internal strife, chaos, and a retreat,
perhaps, to the position we held when this war began. Finally there is
this aspect of the question to be considered: the moral effect of a
prolonged state of war on the population. We have already seen the
effect it has had on such countries as Germany and Russia and, to a
lesser extent, on Englandhow it has put passions of every kind
in the saddle. Murder, robbery, arson, every brute instinct asserts
itself when the doctrine of force alone is being preached abroad. Life
will become cheap. Men will settle their quarrels with Webleys instead
of their fists. The striker will abandon the peaceful method of
picketing for the bomb and the torch. The landless workers will have
recourse to more deadly weapons than hazel sticks in attacking the
ranches. I'm not painting the picture any blacker than it is likely to
be if this fight is to be carried on to a finish or until Document No.
2 is signed, sealed and delivered. For my part I stand by the goods
that have been already delivered. In case this House does not stand by
them I'd make one request to the succession Cabinet before sitting
down. It is this: Give us Dominion Home Rule, give us Repeal of the
Union. Give us anything that will stamp us as white men and women, but
for Heaven's sake don't give us a Central American Republic.
MRS. MARGARET PEARSE:
I rise to support the
motion of our President for the rejection of this Treaty. My reasons
for doing so are various, but my first reason for doing so I would
like to explain here to-day is on my sons' account. It has been said
here on several occasions that Pádraig Pearse would have
accepted this Treaty. I deny it. As his mother I deny it, and on his
account I will not accept it. Neither would his brother Willie accept
it, because his brother was part and parcel of him. I am proud to say
to-day that Pádraig Pearse was a follower and a disciple, and a
true disciple, of Tom Clarke's. Therefore he could not accept this
Treaty. I also wish to say another reason why I could not accept it is
the reason of fear. As I explained here at the private meeting, that
from 1916I now wish to go over this again in publicfrom
1916 until we had the visits from the Black-and-Tans I had
comfortable, nice, happy nights and happy days because I knew my boys
had done right, and I knew I had done right in giving them freely for
their
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country, but when the Black-and-Tans camethen no nights, no
days of rest had I. Always we had to be on the alert. But even the
Black-and-Tans alone would not frighten me as much as if I accepted
that Treaty: because I feel in my heartand I would not say it
only I feel itthat the ghosts of my sons would haunt me. Now
another thing has been said about Pádraig Pearse: that he would
accept a Home Rule Bill such as this. Well he would not. Now, in my
own simple way I will relate a thing that happened, I think it was in
1915 or 1916. He sent me into Dublin on a very urgent message, and
when I came to Westmoreland Street I saw on the placards Home
Rule Bill Passed. At that time I knew very little of politics.
I was going on a very urgent message as I told you. I leaped out of my
tram, got into another and went as fast as I could up the roads of
Rathfarnham. When I went in I found him, as usual, writing, and he
turned round and said: Back so quickly? Yes, said I,
the Home Rule Bill is passed. He sat writing: the tears came
into his eyes. He got up and, putting his arms around me, said:
Little mother, this is not the Home Rule Bill we want, but perhaps
in a short time you will see what we intend to do and what freedom we
intend to fight for. He then asked me about what he had sent me
for, but I had come back without it. Never mind, he said, I
will do it myself to-morrow; go and get something to eat. I said
to him then: What are you going to do? Mother, he said,
don't ask me, but you will know time enough. Now, in the face
of this, do you mean to tell me Pádraig Pearse would have voted
for this Treaty? I say no! I am sure here to-day the man to whom
Pádraig Pearse addressed these wordsI am certain he is
presenthe said that he could understand the case for
compromise, but personally rejected it. As an instance: when
discussing the now much-mooted question of Colonial Home rule he said
that had he ever a voice in rejecting or accepting such proposals his
vote would be cast amongst the noes. Well now my vote for
accepting this is equal to his. I may say just a word on the oath. Our
friend Mr. MacCabe read out the Ten Commandments. All I can say is
what our catechism taught us in my days was: it is perjury to break
your oath. I consider I'd be perjuring myself in breaking the oath I
had taken to Dáil Eireann. An oath to me is a most sacred vow
made in the presence of Almighty God to witness the truth, and the
truth alone. Therefore that is another reason of mine. Now men here
may think little of an oath, and think little of a word of honour, but
I repeat here a little incident that happened twenty minutes before Pádraig Pearse was
executed in Kilmainham, and it will let you know what he thought of a
word of honour much less an oath. He, poor fellow, had something
written for you Irishmen, and to-day I am ashamed of some of you here.
Had that note then come out from Kilmainham, I am sure we would have
had many more on our side in rejecting this Treaty, but the priest
whom he wished to take out that document had given his word of honour
to the British Government that he would take out nothing.
Pádraig asked him to take out the documentat least, to
take it to his mother, because he knew that if his mother got it, it
would be put into the right quarters. The priest told him:
Pádraig, he said, I have given my word of honour to
take out nothing. Well, Father, he said, if you have
given your word of honour don't break it, but ask those in charge to
give mother this because she is bound to hear it sometime and I want
to get it out now. If that document had been got outit may
be got yet, but, alas! I am afraid it is too latethe people
here would not have made up their minds so willingly to go the wrong
path and not the right path. People will say to me: The people of
Ireland want this Treaty. I have been through Ireland for the past
few years and I know the hearts and sorrows of the wives of Ireland. I
have studied them; no one studied them more, and let no one here say
that these women from their hearts could say they accept that Treaty.
They say it through fear; they say it through fear of the aeroplanes
and all that has been said to them. Now I will ask you again: there
are some members here who may remember what Pádraig Pearse said
in the early autumn of 1916. He said it when he was inspecting the
Volunteers at Vinegar Hill. He told them there
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on that day: We, the Volunteers, are formed here not for half of
Ireland, not to give the British Garrison control of part of Ireland.
No! we are here for the whole of Ireland. Therefore Pádraig
Pearse would not have accepted a Treaty like this with only two-thirds
of his country in it. In the name of God I will ask the men that have
used Pádraig Pearse's name here again to use it in honour, to
use it in truthfulness. One Deputy mentioned here about rattling the
bones of the dead. I only wish we could recall them. Remember, the day
will comesoon, I hope, Free State or otherwisewhen those
bones shall be lifted as if they were the bones of saints. We won't
let them rattle. No! but we will hold what they upheld, and no matter
what anyone says I feel that I and others here have a right to speak
in the name of their dead [Applause].
MR. EOIN O'DUFFY:
I think too much time has
already been wasted in idle recrimination, by trying to fix
responsibility for this error and that error. Now the
plenipotentiaries are accused of doing this thing, and the next moment
the Cabinet, or perhaps the President, is accused of doing that thing.
Cannot it be agreed that we are all out for the one thingto
secure the freedom of our country and that if we differ at all we only
differ in ways and means [hear, hear]. Every one of us is
entitled to our opinion. One side disagrees with the
plenipotentiaries. They disagree with Arthur Griffith and Michael
Collins on a point of policy. Another side disagrees with President de
Valera on a point of policy; but let not this disagreement blind us to
the sterling worth of these three menthese
three men who, above all others, have done the
most to break the enemy's strength in this country. I still refer to
England as our enemy in the country. I hold that I, as a more or less
silent member of the Dáilthis is the first time I
attempted to speakthat I am as much responsible for everything
that occurred as well as everybody else. I was present here at the
Session of the Dáil before our plenipotentiaries went across. I
heard the correspondence read from Lloyd George to the President, and
heard the replies from the President to Lloyd George. I heard what
took place at the different Cabinet meetings; certain documents were
handed out to us, and on that data I am in a position to make up my
mind. I am sure everybody here is in the same position. Let us, then,
get away from all these things of trying to fix responsibility and,
even at the eleventh hour, consider the Treaty before us on its
merits. There is not very much to be gained by making flank attacks in
a place like this, how ever decisive they may be elsewhere. I think,
too, it should be agreed that no partyunfortunately there are
two partiesthat neither party has the
monopoly of patriotism, that neither party has the monopoly of
principle, and that neither party can claim to be the sole custodians
of the nation's honour. Now as regards the Treaty I am in favour of it
for two or more reasons. The first reason is that
only one or two out of the 35,000 people I
represent are against it; and the second reason is that I believe the
judgment of my constituents is correct on this occasion under the
circumstances. As regards my right to voice the feelings of my
constituents, that has already been threshed out here and in the
Press. I need not labour it except to say, in my own opinion, the will
of a constituency should prevail against the will of any one
individual who may happen to be their mouthpiece at this particular
time. It cannot be denied that this Treaty has the support of the
country. The position is so grave that Deputies should weigh it very
carefully before they take the responsibility of flouting the
practically unanimous voice of the sovereign people of Ireland, before
they refuse point blank to faithfully voice their people's will,
because the people's will is mightier than the sword. I do not propose
to go into the military situation. I did that in Private Session and
all I would say now is that I'd ask the Deputies to bear in mind the
facts I placed before them. The officers here who have the courage to
stand up and state what they know to be true from experience, stated
it also in Private Session; but now, unfortunately, in Public Session
these same officers have been called cowardly and dishonest, said to
be lacking in military knowledge, and I think some one said it would
be better if some of them had fallen in the fight. Well we cannot
prevent any civilian
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who happens to be a member of this House making remarks like
thisintolerable and unseemly remarks. We cannot stop that, but
the people who fought with us officers know us, and those people will
not believe those remarks; and I hope, too, that if we have to go to
fight again, and if we have to fight along with these people, that
they will have no less confidence in us. I do not propose to occupy
your time by going into the merits of the Treaty, except very
superficially. The principal clauses that appeal to me are the
evacuation of Ireland by England's forces, civil and military, and the
setting up of our own army, trained and fully equipped. That, I admit,
is not freedom, but as the Minister of Finance said in his statement,
it is freedom to secure it. Our comrades died, in my opinion, to bring
about Freedom, and I think it is towards freedom when a British
soldier or a British policeman, in uniform, cannot be seen in the
streets of Dublin; I think it is towards freedom when we will have our
own National Army established here to safeguard the liberty of our
people. The deaths of our comrades, and their deaths alone, brought
that about [Applause]. Parnell was quoted here as saying
that no man has the right to set limits to the march of a nation. No
man has a right to try to make a nation travel faster than it is able
without replenishing it on its journey, if it finds it difficult to
reach the goal. I know that freedom is worth all the blood that has
been shed for it; but why to-day should we, fully alive to all the
facts of the situation, why should we sacrifice the manhood of
Ireland, the young men that we require so much to build up the future
of the Irish nation? Have the young men of Ireland to be sacrificed to
get up a step on the ladder, and in order to secure what this Treaty
gets for usto get the British forces out, to get the Irish
forces in, and to develop our own life in our own way, free from
interference by England's armed forces or, what is worse, by peaceful
penetration. There are a number of things in the Treaty that we do not
like, but we must understand that liberty in every country is
restricted by treaties and mutual understandings in relation to its
neighbours. I think there is not a small nation in the world has
secured so much by physical force alone, without any outside support,
as Ireland [hear, hear]. Through the success of our arms
and methods of warfare it has been rendered possible for us to
negotiate a Truce and later on a Treaty. On the ratification of this
Treaty Ireland passes from what was known all over the world as a
domestic question to a position of sovereign status in the League of
Nations. In practice, Ireland is invested with almost all the
attributes and essentials of nationhood. There is no longer any
obligation on us to take part in England's war or pay for it. We have
full control in internal affairs and full control of external trade
and commerce. But, what is most important of all, we have the
language, because without the language I do not think we would be
qualified for full independence. Now we may assume the hustle for
freedom is only beginning; we have now our destinies in our own hands
and if we do not secure freedom then it is our own fault. I think we
will secure our freedom; I prefer to trust the Irish people. Let us,
in God's name, go ahead and build the Irish nation. I have confidence,
whatever may be our decision here, whether the Treaty be accepted or
rejected, that every man and woman in this assembly and every man and
woman outside this assembly will work together harmoniously for the
freedom of our country. In South Africa the Boers had a Republic
before the South African War. They were beaten by force of arms and
forced to submit to more humiliating terms than this Treaty offers us.
Would it be considered dishonourable on the part of the Boers, if
opportunity offered, if they tried to secure back the Republic again?
I hold there is no finality in this world, and to secure the freedom
of our country there is more surety by ratifying this Treaty than by
rejecting it. The position we occupy to-day has been truly won by the
living and the dead. It is not our goal, but I hold that it brings the
ball inside the fourteen yards' line. Let us
maintain our position there and by keeping our eye on the goal the
major score is assured. I now come to the North-East, and I want to
say a little on that because very little has been said about it up to
the present. At the outset I should say that I am not very
enthusiastic over the Ulster clauses in
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this Treaty, and I think nobody is; but no one in this House, I think,
suggests now, or ever suggested, that Ulster should be coerced. We are
unanimous about that. It is all very fine to say, as has been said by
another Deputy, that the plenipotentiaries and those who support them
have betrayed Ulster. The people of Ulster will understand at once
that such idle statements as those, not followed by acts, will bring
them no farther. Only one Deputy speaking against the Treaty dealt
with Ulster at any length at all. He was interrupted and asked for his
policy and he said that he had none because it was none of his
business. I hold it is the business of everyone who has a policy with
regard to Ulster to bring it forward, and surely, above all, it is the
business of a man who lives in Ulster and represents an Ulster
constituency to come forward with a policy . I say he is the man and
not the plenipotentiaries or the men who support them. If he has a
policy I'd prefer to have his opinion. I have spent the greater part
of my life in Ulster. I know it well. I know the business men of
Ulster don't want separation because they fear economic
pressurethe boycott has given them a taste of that. In the
Gazette every week at least two or three of the principal men in Belfast appeared there
for bankruptcy. With bankruptcy staring numbers of others in the face
they will see that the Northern Parliament comes to terms with the
rest of Ireland, and if they refuse to do it they will kick them out.
Though the present war was between Ireland and England, Belfast has
lost thousands of pounds in business. Since the Truce they have made a
desperate effort to bring back their old customers again, and now of
their own free will I am satisfied that they will not cut themselves
adrift from a prosperous Ireland. I could quote instances we had of
bitter dissatisfaction on the part of Ulster business men with the
policy of Messrs. Coote, McGuffin and Co. To put it shortly, the
business men of the North-East want to join up with the rest of
Ireland. They are in favour of this Treaty being ratified, but the
Orange assassins are against it. Personally I would prefer, and a
number of Ulster Catholics agree with me, that it would be better,
perhaps, that Ulster should not come in with the rest of Ireland for a
time; that they should stay out just for a trial. Later on they will
find out that they have to come in, and they will be easier spoken to.
It was put up here also that part of Monaghan, part of Cavan and part
of Donegal would be included in the Northern Counties' Parliament. The
man that made that statement does not know anything about Monaghan. He
paid one or two flying visits to it and he is not
going back. I know the people of Monaghan, and I know the Unionists of
Monaghan. The non-Catholics there are not fools. We made it very clear
to them that if they were prepared to join up with the enemy they
would get the same treatment as the enemy. Nine or ten of them have got the treatment of the
Black-and-Tans, and they admitted they did not get that because of
their religious belief, but the got it because they were part and
parcel of the enemy. The people of the six
counties know that under this Treaty they will be dealt with, as the
Minister of Finance said in Armagh, not only justly but generously.
Now I may be asked how do I reconcile with that statement a statement
of my own at Armagh in which I said I was prepared to use the lead on
Ulster. I did not then, nor do I now, recommend the lead for the
purpose of bringing Ulster in with the rest of Ireland. What I said
was that if the Orangemen were to murder our people in cold blood as
they had done in the past, then they should get the lead. If they
continue to do this my prescription remains the same. Let us consider
for a moment what will happen our unfortunate people in the North-East
if this Treaty is rejected. My opinion is that there will be callous,
cold-blooded murder there again. Of all the atrocities committed in
this country by the Black-and-Tans, and God knows there were many,
there was nothing to equal the atrocities committed on our Catholic
people in Ulster by the "A" and "B" Specials. We have instances of it
in Belfast, Dromore, Cookstown, and Newry. I could describe it to you
but I do not want to do it. Their action in each case was the same:
they took out our people's eyes, put sticks down their throats, broke
their arms and legs, and then shot them. That was the policy adopted,
and it was the same everywhere; so it
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must have been an agreed policy. That is the lot that is before our
people there if we are not in a position to defend them and ourselves.
The Ulster Deputies who vote against this Treaty must understand they
have a very grave and solemn responsibility on their shoulders if they
throw Ulster back into the position it was in before. I can see no way
of avoiding it except acceptance of this Treaty. I know Ulster better
than any man or woman in this Dáil because I have faced
Ulster's lead on more than one occasion with lead, and in those places
where I was able to do it I silenced them with lead. I would have
silenced them in very ease with lead if I had as much lead as they
had. A lot of people are talking about the non-Catholics of Ulster but
it was very little help and encouragement I got from these people for
the last two years I was trying to carry on the
war against the combined forces of Carson and England, and I can lay
claim to as many successes as any man in the country. If the fight
should begin again I will, please God, take my place in the fighting
line, but I will take good care I will have with me some of these men
who are trying to make history for themselvesI will take good
care that they take a little risk also. One Deputy in referring to our
army officers said: You who profess to be soldiers. He said it
very ironically and sarcastically. I say, and I am speaking on behalf
of our soldiers, we do not profess to be anything but what we are. We
are not, perhaps, qualified for the positions we hold; we have no
military training, but we are doing the very best we can; and I
thought no person chosen to be a member of this House would stand up
and criticise statements made by an officer in Private Session. I did
not think that day would come so soon. I do not pretend to speak for
the dead. All I will say isLord rest the souls of those
brave men who fell, and those who fell under my command. God forbid
that I would betray them. At this very moment there are over forty brave men awaiting the hangman's rope. Seven of
these come from my Brigade and I got a message from them. That message
is: Don't mind us; we are soldiers, do what you think best for
Ireland. [Applause]. I rather think that would be the
message a great many of our Volunteer dead would give if they were
able to do it [Applause]. That message does not say they
would accept this Treaty; that message does not say they would reject
this Treaty; it says they leave it to the Government of Ireland to do
what we consider as best. I do not want to keep you very much longer.
As regards the oath, I am no authority on these things, but I must say
that my conscience is at ease on the matter. Until we secure an
isolated Republic there will be some symbol or some form of connection
with Britain. While there is there must be some form of oath or
recognition, and we should not be wasting our time over any form of
words which, when examined very carefully, will have more or less the
same meaning. There will be always some form of recognition of his
Brittanic Majesty until we get an isolated Republic. It was said here
that the Treaty was signed under duress, under threat of war. Well, I
do not think, personally, it was necessary that any threat of war
should be made. I hold we are in a state of war now; it is only
suspended by the Truce. We have our liaison officersif there
was peace we would not have liaison officersand the enemy have
their liaison officers. If negotiations had broken down, or if at any
time the Truce broke, there would be a resumption of hostilities. The
plenipotentiaries were aware of that and they should have known a
breakdown in the negotiations would have led to a resumption of
hostilities. I think that is what was in their minds when they said
they were signing under the threat of a terrible war. In conclusion I
want to say what I think might happen in the event of the Treaty being
rejected. It is only my own opinion. It is generally admitted here
that there will be either war or political chaos. Personally I would
prefer war. I agree with another speaker who said he would prefer war
to political chaos. I fear that political chaos would break the morale
of our army in less than six months' time. There
would be unofficial shootings here, unofficial raids there,
indiscipline and, perhaps, disaffection. Should that happen, all our
efforts are in vain, for our only hope is in the army. For this reason
I believe we must renew hostilities if we are to keep the army knit
together in a fighting
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bond. I do not know would England declare war on us. I am not
concerned with that or have no fear personally. But I feel we must
renew hostilities if we are to hold the army together, and my opinion
is that the army is our only hope. I am glad that a Deputy from Cork,
in speaking for his Brigade, said he was prepared. I know he is
prepared, and I know the army in my constituency is prepared; but I
know also they have a policy and I know a good many others here know
what they are going to do. But fighting on the field as a soldier is
one thing, and taking responsibility for it here is quite another
thing. Personally I consider, and I think I said it before, that the
chief pleasure I felt in freedom was fighting for it. But as a Deputy
with a very big responsibility on my shoulders I have to weigh the
pros and cons very carefully. I might be asked, and probably would be
asked: What about the army if the Treaty be ratified? My answer
to that is: we are not bound to have an Army under this Treaty if it
is ratified. It says we may. But I say this: we can have an
Irish Volunteer Army that will be a model to the world in discipline
and courage.
MR. LIAM MELLOWES:
I have very little to say
on this subject that is before us, because I stand definitely against
this so-called Treaty and the arguments in favour of
acceptanceof compromise, of departing from the straight road,
of going off the path, and the only path that I believe this country
can travel to its freedom. These arguments are always so many at all
times and with all causes, while the arguments in favour of doing the
right and straight thing are so few because they are so plain. That is
why I say I have very little to say. An effort has been made here from
time to time by speakers who are in favour of this Treaty, to show
that everybody here in this Dáil was prepared mentally or
otherwise to compromise on this point during the last few months. I
wish, anyway, as one person, to state that is not so. I am speaking
for myself now on this, and I state certainly that, consciously or
unconsciously, I did not agree to any form of compromise. We were told
that when the negotiations took place we were compromised. We have
been told that since this Dáil meeting. This is not so because
negotiations do not connote compromise. Entering into negotiations
with the British Government did not in the least presuppose that you
were going to give away your case for independence. When the British
Government, following upon the Truce, offered, as it did, to discuss
this whole case of Ireland, Ireland had no option but to enter into
such a discussion. To refuse to have done so would have been the worse
thing for the Irish case, and would have put Ireland very wrong in the
eyes of the world. There was no surrender involved in entering into
such a discussion; and when the plenipotentiaries went on their
journey to England they went, not as the plenipotentiaries of a
Republican Party in Ireland, not as the envoys of any political creed
in this country, but they went as the envoys plenipotentiary of the
Irish Republican Government, and, as such, they had no power to do
anything that would surrender the Irish Republic of which they were
plenipotentiaries. They were sent there to make, if they could, a
treaty of settlementpersonally I doubt if it could be
donebut they were not sent to bring about what I can only call
a surrender. I am not placing the plenipotentiaries in the dock by
stating this, but I am stating what are plain facts. It is no
reflection on them to state these things. In item 3 of the
instructions given to the plenipotentiaries it is stated: It is
also understood that the complete text of the draft Treaty about to be
signed will be similarly submitted to Dublin and a reply awaited.
The Dáil had no chance of discussing this Treaty as it should
be discussed because the ground was cut from under the feet of the
Dáil with the publication of this Treaty to the world before
the Dáil had a chance of discussing it. The delegates, I
repeat, had no power to sign away the rights of Ireland and the Irish
Republic. They had no mandate to sign away the independence of this
country as this Treaty does. They had no power to agree to anything
inconsistent with the existence of the Republic. Now either the
Republic exists or it does not. If the Republic exists, why are we
talking about stepping towards the Republic by
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means of this Treaty? I for one believed, and do believe, that the
Republic exists, because it exists upon the only sure foundation upon
which any government or Republic can exist, that is, because the
people gave a mandate for that Republic to be declared. We are hearing
a great deal here about the will of the people, and the
newspapersthat never even recognised the Republic when it was
the will of the peopleuse that as a text for telling
Republicans in Ireland what the will of the people is. The will of the
people, we are told by one of the Deputies who spoke here, is that
this Treaty shall go throughthat this Treaty shall be ratified
[hear, hear]. The will of the people! Let me for a moment
carry your minds back to the 21st January, 1919, and I am going to
read to youI make no apology to this House whatsoever for the
length of time I keep them in reading it, or to the people of Ireland
for the length of time they are waiting while this thing is being
discussedI am going to read the Declaration of the Independence
of this country based upon the declared will of the people at the
elections in 1918, and ratified since at every election
[Applause]. This is the official translation of the
Declaration of Independence as contained in the official report of the
proceedings, of the Dáil on that date:
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
military occupation against the declared will of the people: and
whereas the Irish Republic was proclaimed in Dublin 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 defence, to
insure peace at home and goodwill with all nations and to constitute a
national polity 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 majority, its firm allegiance to the Irish Republic: now
therefore we, the elected representatives of the ancient 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: we 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
proclaim that independence to be a condition precedent to
international 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 long 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 we have pledged ourselves to carry through to
Freedom.
There, to my mind, is the will of the people. There is the Irish
Republic existing, not a mandate to seek a step towards an Irish
Republic that does not exist. The will of the people! The British
Government has always sought, during the last century of this struggle
in Ireland, to get the consent of the Irish people for whatever it
wants to impose upon them. If the English Government wanted to make
concessions to Ireland it had the power to do so even though it had
not the right, and we could take whatever it was willing to give
without giving away our case. But this Treaty gives away our case
because it abrogates the Republic.
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The British Government passed a Home Rule Bill; it is still upon the
statute book of the British Government and was never put into force
because, when the time came to put it into force, the British
Government found that the Irish people did not want it. The British
Government since then has passed Act after Act and each time has been
forced to overlook its own Acts, to forget about them, and to-day
through this Treaty the British Government seeks to gain the consent
of the Irish people to this measure. The British Government intends to
try and find a way out because it has more experience than ourselves
of what it means to have the people of Ireland with itto get
the assent of the Irish people to whatever it wants to do with
Ireland. The will of the people! Why, even Lloyd George recognised the
will of the people at one time. Speaking in the House of Commons in
April, 1920, he said: If you ask the people of Ireland what they
would accept, by an emphatic majority they would say we want
independence and an Irish Republic. There is absolutely no doubt
about that. The elected representatives of Ireland now, by a clear
definite majority, have declared in favour of independenceof
secession. Now, when Lloyd George admits that, it seems strange when
we ourselves say that we never believed in the Irish Republic; that it
was only a myth, something that did not exist, and that to-day we are
still working towards the Irish Republic. To my mind the Republic does
exist. It is a living tangible thing, something for which men gave
their lives, for which men were hanged, for which men are in jail for
which the people suffered, and for which men are still prepared to
give their lives. It was not a question so far as I am aware, before
any of us, or the people of Ireland, that the Irish heifer was going
to be sold in the fair and that we were asking a high price so that we
would get something less. There was no question of making a bargain
over this thing, over the honour of Ireland, because I hold that the
honour of Ireland is too sacred a thing to make a bargain over. We are
told this is a question as between document referred to as No. 1 and
Document No. 2. At this moment there is only one document before this
House, and when that is disposed of as I do hope it will be disposed
of in the proper way, then we will deal with any other documents that
come up in the same way if they are not in conformity with the Irish
Republic. There is no question before us of two
documents or two sides, but there is a question
of maintaining the existing Republic of Ireland or going back on it,
throwing it out and accepting something in substitution for it with a
view to getting back again to the Irish Republic. Let us face facts as
we did so often during the last few years. We are not afraid of the
facts. The facts are that the Irish Republic exists. People are
talking to-day of the will of the people when the people themselves
have been stampeded as I know because I paid a visit to my
constituency. The people are being stampeded; in the people's minds
there is only one alternative to this Treaty and that is terrible,
immediate war. During the adjournment I paid a trip to the country and
I found that the people who are in favour of the Treaty are not in
favour of the Treaty on its merits, but are in favour of the Treaty
because they fear what is to happen if it be rejected. That is not the
will of the people, that is the fear of the people [hear,
hear]. The will of the people was when the people declared for
a Republic. Under this Treatythis Treaty constitutes
concessions to Ireland. It is, if you like, a new Coercion act in the
biggest sense in which any Coercion act was ever made to Ireland. One
thing you must bear in mind and make up your minds about: the
acceptance of this Treaty destroys the existing Irish Republic.
Whether we like it or not we become British subjects, British
citizens. We have now a common citizenship with the English people,
and evidently there is going to be a new citizenship
inventedAnglo-Irish Citizenship. It is well known what you are
going to get under this Treaty. The very words Irish Free
State, so called, constitute a catch-phrase. It is not a state, it
is part of a state; it is not free, because England controls every
vital point; it is not Irish, because the people of Ireland
established a Republic. Lloyd George may well to-day laugh up his
sleeve. What must his thoughts have been, what must his idea have
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been, when he presented this document for signature? lf they divide
on this, we can let them fight it out, and we will be able to hold the
country; if they accept, our interests are so well safeguarded that we
can still afford to let them have it. Rejection, we are told,
would mean war. I, for one, do not hold it would mean immediate war at
all, but I do hold that the unanimous rejection of this Treaty would
put our case in such a fashion before the world that I do not believe
England would, until she got some other excuse, dare to make war on
the basis of the rejection of that. The question is not how to get a
step towards the Republic. The question for us to decide here as the
Government of the Irish Republic is how we are going to maintain the
Republic, and how we are going to hold the Republic. Instead of
discussing this Treaty here we should be considering how we are going
to maintain the Republic after that Treaty has been rejected and put
upon one side. We have acted up to this in the belief that the
authority for Government in Ireland has been derived from the Irish
people. We are now going to change that. If this Treaty goes through
we are going to have authority in Ireland derived from a British act
of Parliament, derived from the British Government under the authority
of the British King. Somebody stated here there was more intelligent
discussion down the country on this Treaty. I agree perfectly with
him. I was in the country and I met the people at their firesides. I
met people in favour of the Treaty, but I found no one under any
delusion about it whatsoever. We have been told, presumably as a
reason for accepting this, that before in Ireland chieftains and
parliaments, and representatives of the people had admitted the right
of the British Government to exist here. We were reminded of King John
visiting the Irish chiefs and we know what happened the Irish chiefs
when the Irish people realised what the Irish chiefs had done: We know
the day when you had the Irish O'Donnells the Queen's
O'Donnells, and the Irish O'Reillys the Queen's O'Reillys.
I wonder will we ever see the day when we have the Irish Republicans
the King's Republicans. The Parliament of 1782 did not
represent the people of Ireland because it admitted the King as its
head. This is the first assembly in the history of Ireland, since the
British occupation, which is representative of the people of Ireland.
It is here because the people of Ireland wished it to be here. The
Parliamentary Party after years of efforts, when they in their turn
had done their best, they went the way that all compromising parties
go. Compromising parties may last for a time, may do good work for a
time in so far as they are able to do that good work, but inevitably
they go the way all compromising parties go. As it was with the Irish
Parliamentary Party so it will be with the Irish Free State Parties
and I say that with all respect. The Irish people have, thanks be to
God, the tradition of coming out and speaking their true selves no
matter how many times they may be led astray. Has the whole object of
this fight and struggle in Ireland been to secure peace? Peace we have
preached to us here day in and day outpeace, peace,
peace
A DEPUTY:
Peace with honour.
MR. MELLOWES:
Yes! that is what we want. We
do not want peace with surrender, and we do not want peace with
dishonour. If peace was the only object why, I say, was this fight
ever started? Why did we ever negotiate for what we are now told is
impossible? Why should men have ever been led on the road they
travelled if peace was the only object? We could have had peace, and
could have been peaceful in Ireland a long time ago if we were
prepared to give up the ideal for which we fought. Have we now to give
it up for the sake of this so-called peace? If peace is that which is
to be the pursuit of the people then this Treaty will not bring them
peace because there will be restless souls in the country who will not
be satisfied under this Free State to make peace in this Free State
possible. I use no threats, but you cannot bring peace by compromise.
You cannot bring peace to a people when it does not also bring honour.
This Treaty brings neither honour nor anything else. It brings to the
people certain material advantages, such, I say, as they could have
had long ago if they were prepared to sink their
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identity as Scotland did. Ireland has never been prepared to do that,
and I do not believe she shall ever be prepared to do it. If this is a
step towards the Republic how can it be contended that it means peace?
Under the terms of this Free State are you going to be strong enough
to say to the British Government Hands off? You will have an
army, it is true, but it will be an army in which the incentive which
kept the fight alive for the last few years will be lacking. Who will
tell the British Government, when the time has come to tell it, keep
its hands off? Will you be any more united then than you are now? Will
all of you in favour of this Free State look forward to the time when
you are going to say to the British Government: You must not have
anything more to do with us? You will not. Human nature, even the
strongest human nature, is weak, and the time will inevitably come, if
this Free State comes into existence, when you will have a permanent
government in the country, and permanent governments in any country
have a dislike to being turned out, and they will seek to fight their
own corner before anything else. Men will get into positions, men will
hold power, and men who get into positions and hold power will desire
to remain undisturbed and will not want to be removed, or will not
take a step that will mean removal in case of failure. I only speak my
mind on this matter. But to me it is very clear there is only one road
this country can travel. It is the road we tried to travel together as
best we could. It is the right road, and now if there should be a
parting of the ways some of us, if God gives us the strength and
courage, will travel it no matter what. Under this Treaty the Irish
people are going to be committed within the British Empire. We have
always in this country protested against being included within the
British Empire. Now we are told that we are going into it with our
heads up. The British Empire stands to me in the same relationship as
the devil stands to religion. The British Empire represents to me
nothing but the concentrated tyranny of ages. You may talk about your
constitution in Canada, your united South Africa or Commonwealth of
Australia, but the British Empire to me does not mean that. It means
to me that terrible thing that has spread its tentacles all over the
earth, that has crushed the lives out of people and exploited its own
when it could not exploit anybody else. That British Empire is the
thing that has crushed this country, yet we are told that we are going
into it now with our heads up. We are going into the British Empire
now to participate in the Empire's shame even though we do not
actually commit the act, to participate in the shame and the
crucifixion of India and the degradation of Egypt. Is that what the
Irish people fought for freedom for? We are told damn principles. Aye,
if Ireland was fighting for nothing only to become as most of the
other rich countries of the world have become, this fight should never
have been entered upon. We hoped to make this country something the
world should be proud of, and we did not enter into the fight to make
this country as the other countries, where its word was not its bond,
and where a treaty was something to be struggled for. That was not the
ideal that inspired men in this cause in every age, and it is not the
ideal which inspires us to-day. We do not seek to make this country a
materially great country at the expense of its honour in any way
whatsoever. We would rather have this country poor and indigent, we
would rather have the people of Ireland eking out a poor existence on
the soil; as long as they possessed their souls, their minds, and
their honour. This fight has been for something more than the
fleshpots of Empire. Peace! peace! is the consideration. Is this
Treaty going to bring you peace? No! Under Clause 7 you are going to
be made a cock-pit of the next naval war in which England is engaged,
because your docks and coast-line are given up, unfortunately, to the
British Government to use as it sees fit. As against that we are told
if we do not accept this Treaty we are going to have war. Every
argument that I heard here to-day in favour of this Treaty is the
argument I heard years ago against the question of ever attaining an
Irish Republic. Every argument used here was the argument used by the
Irish Parliamentary Party when fighting elections in this country.
Every argument I heard here to-day was the argument everyone here had
to answer in reply
p.232
to those who faced them years ago. War! we are told. Were the people
of Ireland afraid of war when they faced conscription in this country?
They were threatened with annihilation. It was a question then of
whether they would fight at home or abroad and they decided to fight
at home. When the General Election came on they were threatened with
war again. They were told that the corollary to acceptance of the
Republican mandate or the Republican platform was war. The people of
Ireland did not flinch. They accepted the issue and the issue, as we
have seen since, was not war, but the people of Ireland did not
flinch. This Treaty reminds me of the Treaty of Versailles, of the
miserable end up to that bloody holocaust when the nations of the
earth, after fighting supposedly for ideals, parcelled out amongst
themselves the spoils of the young soldiers. The misguided young men
who fought in that conflict were left disillusioned. Is this Treaty
going to be a Treaty of Versailles? Are the Irish people to be told
that when we spoke of a Republic we did not mean it? Are the Irish
people to be told that when we spoke of independence we meant to be
inside the British Empire and that when we spoke of ideals we meant
morally? I say no! We did not mean that. You could point out to me for
all time, day after day as long as you like, the material advantages
to be gained under this Treaty, and it would remind me very much of
what I have read about our Saviour. Having fasted for forty days He was taken by the devil to a height from
which He was shown the cities, towns and fair places of the earth and
told He could have all those if, bowing down, He would adore the
devil. We are told to-day that we will get these things in return for
the selling of our honour. I say selling of our honour; others here
may not mean it; others here may not have the same view of it as I
have, but my view is that we are selling the honour of Ireland for
this mess of pottage contained in the Treaty. Under the future of this
Free State, if it goes through, when are we going to know when we will
have sincerity in Ireland about the Republic? After you get the Free
State what will you take on hands, and what do you mean, when you talk
of something next? The Government of the Free State will, with those
who support it now liking it or not, eventually occupy the same
relationship towards the people of Ireland as Dublin Castle does
to-day, because, it will be the barrier government between the British
and the Irish people. And the Irish people before they can struggle on
will have to do something to remove that Free State Government. That,
I think, has been the history of this country most of the time, as it
is the history of most countries that go the way now urged by those
who support the Free State. If the Free State is accepted and put into
operation it will provide the means for the British Government to get
its hold back again. It could not beat Ireland with force, it did its
best. No war the British Government initiated here could he worse than
the terrible mental strain imposed on the people during the last eighteen months. And that war was not levelled so
much against the Irish Republican Army as against the people of the
Irish Republic, because the British Government had a surer view of the
people than we had. They felt that if they could crush the people of
Ireland that would mean the end of things in Ireland until the next
necessity arose. The British Government did not, for very obvious
reasonsbecause of what it would mean on conditions abroad, and
because of what the outside world must necessarily
concludeallow this warfare, as far as it could prevent it, to
become one as between the British Army and the Irish Army. But it
tried to maintain the appearance of it being a warfare conducted by no
representative people, by people who counted for nothing against the
forces of the civil authority, and that is why the Black-and-Tans and
the Auxiliary forces were organised for special service here. The
British Government still keep up the pretended show of maintaining the
civil authority in Ireland, even though that civil authority had to be
maintained by force of arms. And it was because the British Government
saw there was a tangible government here, that the Irish Republic did
exist, that it had its hirelings to murder its representatives, to
murder Lord Mayor MacCurtin, to murder Mayor O'Callaghan, and to do to
death Terence MacSwiney. The British Government recognised that there
was a Republic, even though some of our
p.233
representatives now do not, and the British Government recognised that
it must be at the representatives of the Republic that blow must be
struck. It knows to-day that the people have the Republic in their
minds, in their spirit, and that any act they can do can not crush it.
We placed Ireland upon a pedestal for the first time in the history of
this country. For the first time in the history of this country we had
a Government established by the directly declared will of the people.
That Government rested upon the surest of all foundations and placed
Ireland in a position it was never in before, since its subjection.
Ireland was put forth to the world as a headlight, as a beacon
beginning to shine for all time to guide all those who were
struggling. The whole world was looking to Ireland for a lead. This
downtrodden, this miserable country, as some of you called it, was,
during the last few years, the greatest country in God's earth. Are
we always going to adopt the attitude of seeking something that is a
little in front of us while the world always moves on? Ah! how
little that Deputy knew of what the world is. How little that Deputy
knew that here in this country of ours is contained the germ of great
and wonderful things for the world. The world did not move on; it is
Ireland has moved on and Ireland has left the world far behind. We can
get very insular sometimes, but it is well for us sometimes to see
that we are not so downtrodden and miserable as some of us think we
are. This country was one of the best in the world. It has fought a
fight that will ring down through the ages, and maintained itself well
against all the tortures and inflictions that a foreign tyranny knows
so well how to impose. It maintained its way up to this stage, and
now, not through the force of the British Government, not because of
the weight of the British armies, but through the guile of the British
Government, and the gullibility of ours we are going to throw away the
Irish Republic. Somebody talked about facts. These are facts. We are
told that we must have unity. Yes, we want unity, and had unity in
Ireland during the last few years, but we had it only on one
basisthe basis of the Republic. Destroy that basis and you
cannot have unity. Once you take yourselves off that pedestal you
place yourselves in a position to pave the way for concession after
concession, for compromise after compromise. Once you begin to juggle
with your mind or conscience in this matter God knows where you will
end, no matter how you try to pull up later on. You can have unity by
rejecting this thing; you cannot have unity by approving of it.
Rejection means that the Irish Republic exists here, and that we are
still the Government of the existing Irish Republic. Accept it and
there is no Irish Republic existing because you have destroyed it,
because you have abrogated the right of the Dáil, and this
Dáil exists here as the Republican Government. It did not exist
here for the purpose of changing its status. It was placed here by the
people to work for the recognition and the interests of the Republic
not to take steps towards the gaining or abolition of it. The Republic
is here because it is in our wills. Destroy that by accepting this
Treaty and there is no Republic. And you will not have unity and you
will not have peace. You can have unity though you may not have peace,
but you certainly will have unity and honour by rejecting this Treaty.
Accept it and you will destroy the Republic, and even though you gain
for Ireland the material advantagesyou point out control of our
language, et ceterathough you gain these things you throw away
that which Ireland found since 1916, that which, after all, imbued
Ireland in this phase of the struggle. 1916 did not represent the will
of the people; 1916 found very little support from the people, but
1916 has been supported by the people since, and it has been 1916 that
based their ideal when they declared for a Republic. From 1916 down to
the present day that struggle has gone on. Person after person has
been induced to come in and do his or her part. Now, if you accept
this Treaty you are going to establish in this country a Government
that does away with the Irish Republic. It is not a step towards the
Irish Republic but a step away from it. That Treaty admits the right
of the British Government to control the destiny of Ireland. Even
though you have control of some of the material resources of the
country you are going to put yourselves in the position of being
within the British Empire,
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and outside, away from the rest of the world. During the last few
years we were beginning to occupy a unique position in the world. As
long as we looked upon ourselves as being independent we could appeal
to the outside world and so long were we certain of receiving sympathy
and help. Now you are inside the British Empire if you accept this
Treaty, and, turn where you will, you will be told you are a domestic
concern for the British Empire. The League of Nationswhat does
it mean to this country? The League of Nationsthe League of
Robbers! We stand, some of us, where we always stood and despite all
that has been said in favour of this Treaty we mean to continue
standing where we stood in the past. Whatever may happen, whatever the
road may be in front of us, we intend, with God's help, to travel it.
The time will come yetI hope it will come soonwhen those
who are going to depart from the straight road will come back to it.
Then we will be together to the end of this fight. I am sorry to
inflict such a long statement upon the Dáil. It was not my
intention to do so when I stood up, but ideas keep coming to your
mind, probably, when you feel so keenly on a matter which represents
the ideals for which one has struggled and fought, the ideals for
which one is prepared to do the same again, but for which one is not
prepared to compromise or surrender no matter what the advantages may
be. [Applause].
[The House adjourned at 1.30 p.m. to 3.30
p.m.]
The House resumed at 3.45 p.m., the SPEAKER (Dr. Eoin
MacNeill) in the chair.
MR. DESMOND FITZGERALD:
I want to say at the
beginning, with regard to the last speaker before lunch, that I agree
practically with every word he said. There is one thing I want cleared
up because it may be a very fundamental difference. During the
speeches in this Dáil there has been constant repetition of the
words Irish Republic, and it has given the impression that the
declaration of the Irish Republic was a declaration in favour of a
form of Government as distinct from what I understood it to be. I
remember in 1917 a meeting at which the President spoke in the Mansion
House, where he said that he accepted the words Irish Republic
as the best means of making it perfectly clear to the world that we
have stood for absolute independence, whereas it seems to me during
the course of the discussion in the Dáil that a great many
people are fighting for a Republican principle rather than a national
principle. Now the last speaker quoted from the Declaration of
Independence read at the time, in January, 1919. Now I have always
understood by a Free Irish Republic that we meant an independent
Ireland, and I think that is borne out by that Declaration of
Independence which was read by the member for Galway, and I think it
bears out the point made by the member for Monaghan yesterday, namely,
that the Irish Republic was looked upon as a means to an end, as one
of the weapons used in fighting for the freedom of our country. In the
Declaration of Independence adopted by the Dáil in January,
1919, it says: Whereas the Irish people is resolved to secure and
maintain its complete independence. It says that, and it goes on
to sayand it is before you to-daythat In order to
promote the common weal, to re-establish justice, to provide for
future defence, to insure peace at home, and good-will with all
nations, and to constitute a national polity based upon the people's
will with equal rights and opportunities for every citizen, et
cetera. That was said to be the object we had in mind by complete
independence. Now, in reading the present Treaty it seems to me that
it tends to promote the common weal; to re-establish justice; to
provide, possibly to a limited degree, for future defence; to secure
peace at home and good-will with all nations, and to constitute a
national polity based upon the people's will with equal right and
opportunity for every citizen. It is because I see in this Treaty
means to attain those ends that I am supporting this Treaty. And in
the declaration of the Dáil in January, 1919, which ratified
the establishment of the Irish Republic, it ordained 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
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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. Those things were laid down at that first meeting of the
Dáil, and I think that, without being worried by words,
including the words Irish Republic, there is only one thing to
guide us here now as ever, and that is the well-being of the Irish
nation. I have always held, and I hold still, that for the complete
well-being of the Irish nation sovereign independence is required. We
are faced now with this Treaty, and with no alternative to it as far
as I can see. I propose supporting the Treaty, because I am satisfied,
looking at it, I think, as impartially as possible, that not only does
it make for an immediate improvement in the future of this country,
but, judging by the possibilities of what will happen by ratification
or acceptance, it seems to me that we shall be much nearer the
ultimate goal at any period such as I mentioned, by acceptance than by
rejection. And I consider that in acceptingfor always the one
basis as a guide for our actions in this country is the welfare of the
Irish nationthat we are not in any way breaking any pledge or
abandoning any principle by doing what we are doing. It seems to me
that we have one thing to rest assured of, the one thing that was made
clear by the last few years' history of this country, and that is,
that the tradition of Irish Independence and of Irish Nationality was
too strongly embedded in us to be overcome by British Terror or by the
disastrous period which preceded 1916. And I say that, given the
powers, limited though they be to some small extent by this Treaty,
there is no fear whatever of any going back. I look upon the Treaty as
an entrenchment of the position so far gained, and I don't see that it
is any abandonment of principle. Many things have been asserted about
this Treaty which I consider quite unwarranted by any ordinary
reading, and I agree with the speakers in this House that it will be
the duty to read it in the light most favourable to ourselves. The
last speaker said that the Government of the Free State would occupy
the same position as Dublin Castle occupies now with regard to the
people of this country. That may be so, but there will be this
difference: our grievance with Dublin Castle is that it is there, and
that it is not in our power to remove it except by physical force, and
we have not had, so far, that force to remove it; but I cannot see how
anyone can read this Treaty in such a way as to think that any
Government which is undesired by the Irish people cannot be removed by
the express will of the Irish people [hear, hear]. The
last speaker asked how would we know when the time would come to fight
again; how would we know when the time would come to strike for what
he called an Irish Republic. In the declaration that is posted around
the walls now which was made by the leaders of 1916 it was pointed out
that in the last three hundred years Ireland
had risen in arms some six or seven times. We have no reason to think that our
generation or the generations coming after it will be less worthy
Irishmen than those who have gone before; and it seems to me that if
we accept this Treaty it will be worked by the people as well as they
can, always working as Irishmen, thinking of the well-being of their
country and when the time comes when they find that there is anything
in the Treaty that comes between them and the well being of their
country they, by the very oath they take in it, and by the whole
tradition of our people, have only one course before them, and that is
to act for the well-being of their country without any regard to
anything else what ever. It has also been generally understood here
that a Treaty is a thing which is made for eternity. It is no such
thing. It is well recognised that a Treaty exists as long as it suits
two parties to keep it. The last speaker
suggested if ever it was for Ireland's good that the Treaty be
abandoned we were bound in honour to keep to it. I think it is
established the world over that a Treaty exists only until such time
as one of the parties to it formally denounces it. I am satisfied that
this Treaty bears that interpretation better than any other. It means
this, that we do allow a certain limitation of our sovereignty by
occupation of certain of our ports; that is to say, that we allow our
sovereignty to be interfered with to a rather less degree than the
sovereignty of Spain is interfered with by the occupation
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of Gibraltar. I would ask the member for Cork, who stated his
objection to it was that he would see British ships from his house
every morning, if he thinks at the present time Spain, in its weak
condition, is justified in not considering the feelings of the people
of Algeeiras, who also see British forces every morning when they look
out? Does he think that Spain is insulted and that she is bound in
honour, without any regard for circumstances, to declare war, and to
declare war continually on England until that one point is effected? I
do not think so. There are one or two points in
the Treaty which have been laboured very much. One was the
Governor-General, as he is called. The first clause in this Treaty
says that the Executive shall be responsible to Parliament in this
country. In Britain the Executive is, in fact, responsible to the
Parliament, but in form it is responsible to the King. In Ireland,
under the Treaty, it is clearly laid down that the Executive is
responsible to the Parliament. The opponents of the Treaty contend
that the King or his representative on the Council constitutes the
Executive. They quoted the Canadian Constitution, 1869, section 9.
That may be so if you like. In that case the King or his
representative is responsible to the Parliament according to Clause 1
of the Treaty, and the Parliament is responsible to the people.
Therefore I shall put the interpretation on the Treaty that the
representative of the King of England will be responsible to the
Parliament in Ireland which is responsible to the people. If the Crown
or its representative means anything more than a symbol of State as
Mr. Childers contends, he is the servant of and responsible to the
Parliament and the people. Thus we have in the Treaty itself the very
demand of the President: That the legislative, executive and
judicial authority of Ireland shall be derived solely from the people
of Ireland. I am satisfied that this Treaty bears that
interpretation, and does recognise the sovereignty of Ireland.
Sovereignty is of the people and is unalienable, and for that reason I
say that, having only one formula to guide usit is a formula
which is not a mere formula, but absolutely basicthat, as the
servants of the Irish nation, without abandonment of principle or
without any breaking of oaths, we are doing a thing it is quite
feasible for us to do in supporting this Treaty. The Republic has been
spoken of as if it were a thing existing unchallenged. If that is so,
I don't know what we were fighting for. We were fighting for the
independence of our country, and that independence was interfered with
because England still held our country. Now we have England
recognisingwhether she agrees that she is recognising it or
notthis document in front of us is a recognition of the
sovereignty of Ireland, but there is still a limitation of the
independence of Ireland. That limitation is agreed to, say, under
duress. I don't know of any Treaty that is not signed under duress,
and I am quite satisfied that the Treaty was signed under duress not
only by the plenipotentiaries, but by the representatives of the
British Government. Everyone agrees that it was never love of justice
or love of Ireland that induced Mr. Lloyd George to agree to that
Treaty. He agreed to it because it was in our power to make it worth
his while to agree to Irish independence to that extent. For that
reason he signed it under duress and we signed it under duress. By
accepting it we have sufficient belief in the Irish people that they
will conserve their energy and build up their country, so that at any
future time, if it be found that England is acting as the enemy of
this country, we will be in a better position to deal with her than we
are now [hear, hear]. And I am quite satisfied if at any
time Ireland is in a strong enough position to challenge England with
a fair chance of success, if England still persists in acting as our
enemy, that she will receive final confirmation of the desire of the
Irish people for the complete independence of their country.
[Applause.]
MR. SEUMAS FITZGERALD (CORK):
During the
adjournment I took the opportunity to test my constituents, and to the
best of my ability during that short time I felt the pulse of my
constituents. I found the following: those individuals who, to my
certain knowledge were always against us favoured the Treaty. It was
to be expected of them. Those whom we brought with us in the present
fight
p.237
supported the Treaty first because it was boomed in the Press as a
great victory. Now they feel compelled to accept it as a mere
compromise. The sympathisers and the workers themselves find
themselves in a very curious position. They now, what they did not at
the beginning of this Session, understand what the Treaty actually is.
They realise that we have not won; that Lloyd George has won. They
believe that no matter whether you call this, Government of
Dáil Eireann, Government of the Republic, or call it the
Government of the Saorstát that, for good and all, if we accept
this treaty sovereign independence is gone. They feel, some of them,
that they should accept the Treaty under duress, but if there is any
possibility of uniting and practically unanimously rejecting this
Treaty they would prefer that such would be done. Then there are those
who bore the brunt of the fight during the past two or three years. They
areand I have ascertained their opinions almost
unanimously against this Treaty, war or no war. Now one argument that
I had to meet that was a fairly serious argument from my point of
view; the Press boomed it and the country swallowed it: it was the
point of view expressed by Deputy Mellowes that we as a Dáil
had, before we sent plenipotentiaries to London definitely made up our
minds to agree to compromise. I do not wish to enter into details to
controvert that statement. There is an official publication of the
Dáil containing all the correspondence that passed between
President de Valera acting in his capacity as President of the
Republic and Lloyd George; and I defy any single individual to show me
throughout the whole of that correspondence by letter and telegram
where the interests of the Republic were compromised. Now, the
question of the mandate gives a good many Deputies a serious trouble
of mind. What is my mandate? The only mandate that I ever remember
having received was a mandate to come here to this second Dáil,
and to the best of my ability safeguard the interests of the Republic
established on the twenty-first January,
1919.
MR. M. COLLINS:
What about 1916?
MR. FITZGERALD:
Now that mandate is clear
enough. The individuals who asked me to accept that mandate have not
asked me to change. I have in my pocket resolutions passed by Sinn
Fein Executives in my own area, and the most important Councils in my
own areathose resolutions have not found their way into the
Pressreiterating confidence in the Dáil, and expressing
at the same time confidence that their representatives will do what
they think best in the interests of Ireland. That is my mandate. But
even so I find that, without considering the individuals whom I have
mentioned, that I have found out that I can also take from them a
somewhat similar mandate. Support of the Treaty by those who support
it in my constituency is based upon fear, and such a mandate cannot be
a true mandate. I have found that the thing that is uppermost in the
people's mind is peace rather than the Treaty. Everybody, including
myself, is anxious for peace. The people are longing for peace. All
are not for the Treaty. It is discussed and it is also cursed. Well,
if I find that the people want peace rather than the Treaty, and if I
believe that the rejection of this Treaty will give us an opportunity
of establishing a real and lasting peace, I would be interpreting, to
the best of my ability, the wishes of those individuals who long for
peace by voting against the Treaty. The last Deputy who spoke seemed
to imagine that England does not mean that this Treaty will be
binding. Why are Treaties made at all otherwise? If treaties were not
binding we could have war practically in every decade. England would
not put certain words in this Treaty unless she honestly intended to
see that they were carried through. We know that even upon certain
points in the Treaty that she even threatened war. I would imagine
that she meant what she said when she asked that this certain phrase
or clause would be inserted in the Treatyif she threatened war.
The Treaty is no empty formula to her. She, and not us, has won on
principle. The Deputy from Cork, Deputy Walsh, gives an instance of
how the provisions of the Treaty could be circumvented, and he stated
that Germany gained a few extra points out of the Treaty of
Versailles. I maintain that, as regards
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essential details, that certain points may be gained from treaties
from time to time, but I maintain that on fundamentals treaties are
essentially binding. They may alter in respect of questions about
finances and particular clauses, but I do not believe that on such
fundamentals as the questions of sovereignty or defence that England
does not recognise that that Treaty is binding. The Deputy who spoke
before me claimed that it was not irrevocable in so far as it was
signed under duress. What was the duress under which the Treaty was
signed? All the plenipotentiaries who signed were not there, and I
hold that the duress to make that Treaty invalid should be personal
and immediate duress. I do not believe that any of the
plenipotentiaries were threatened with immediate death at that period,
or that they were threatened with immediate torture. The duress was
not immediate. If the matter was brought as a contentious matter
before any International Court of Law I believe that, irrespective of
England's strength, England would win. Now about the question of the
alternative if this Treaty is not ratified. I give those who are
supporting the Treaty, or a majority of them, credit, in so far as I
believe them to be out for an ultimate Republic. Now I maintain that
this Treaty is irrevocable, and to secure an ultimate
Republicthe only way we could do it is to cast aside that
Treaty, and that means a declaration of war upon England. It is a
matter of choice therefore with me as to whether war will be
immediate, or whether we must be prepared for war. Let the people
understand both alternatives. The alternative on our side is immediate
war, and the alternative on the other side, in so far as the Treaty
does not satisfy the aspirations of those who signed it, is future
war. Some of the speakers who support the Treaty do not believe that
war will be necessary. They believe that we could gradually encroach
upon this Treaty and that we could take this thing and this thing
and this thing, as I heard it expressed. I do not believe that
that is at all possible. For instance, we will just conceive in our
minds the principal people who will work the Irish Free State if it
does happen to come into operation. They will be people, the majority
of themI do not mean those who are supporting the Treaty, but I
mean those who will come into the Irish Free State Government from
outsidewhose purely material and sordid interests will hamper
your movements in that direction every way they possibly can. The
Deputy from Cork, Deputy Walsh, offered a parallel in South Africa.
Does he designedly forget the efforts that South Africa made during
the period of the great war in Europe to regain a Republic? She was
faced with the bitter opposition of her own people, and she lasted but
a few months. What will happen if in endeavouring to secure an
ultimate Republic in the future, we try to take the Opportunity of
England's temporary weakness at such a period and attempt by force of
arms to re-establish a Republic? The chaos that you imagine will
follow the rejection of this Treaty will be nothing to the chaos that
will follow such a course if adopted at such a period. I maintain that
our moral position is such at the present time that we can better face
war now than we can in ten or twenty years' time. The people of Ireland imagine
that it is only solely on the question of the ratification of this
Treaty that the alternative of war has been spoken about. I think the
members of the Dáil will readily admit that they themselves
faced war when they directed the President to transmit the reply he
did transmit to Lloyd George on the 24th August last. They will admit
that there was a probable break when our President refused to take as
granted the letter that he sent to Lloyd George at Gairloch on the
13th September as not having been handed to Lloyd George when the open
threat of war was contained therein, and the Dáil accepted that
and the country does not seem to have realised it. Even the second
last telegraphic communication sent by our President to Lloyd George
invited the alternative to open warfare at that time, and the warfare
did not come although it took ten full days for
the British Cabinet to make up their minds, from the 19th to the 29th
September. They did open negotiations, and the result was that our
plenipotentiaries went to London. Therefore those who imagine that the
only alternative is war are not acting
p.239
fairly towards the country. If the Treaty is unanimously or otherwise
rejected it is due to the President and his Cabinet to formulate a
policy, and with that confidence in him that won so much for Ireland,
I firmly believe that our confidence in him will not be misplaced at
such a juncture. The last speaker said that one of my objections to
the Treaty was that a British naval force would be in occupation of
Cork Harbour, and that from my residence I would see it evening, night
and morn. That was not my argument. My argument was that from my
reading of the Treaty I can see the British naval force not there for
five years, but there for ever. He pressed
forward as an analogy the situation in Algiers. The situation is
somewhat different. Algiers is, in a different sense, de facto
dependent on France.
MR. GRIFFITH:
Algeciras, which is part of
Spainnot Algiers which is the opposite side
altogether.
MR. FITZGERALD:
I don't know anything about
that. I understood him to speak of Algiers. I maintain that certain
countries are de facto dependent on other political bodies, but those
other countries are better off than we will be under this Treaty in so
far as those countries themselves are sovereign. Deputy Fitzgerald, I
think, says he believes that Ireland will have sovereign independence
under this Treaty. Sovereignty is to me the complete independence of a
state from all other states, that the state derives its rights solely
from itself and are native to itself; that they are not delegated to
it by another state; they are not exercised by virtue of powers
conferred on it by any other state or body, that legally and
judicially the state is not subject to any other political body. The
position that we find at the present timethe Government of the
Irish Republic functions on rights derived from itself and native to
itselfbespeaks the Government of the Irish Republic as a
sovereign assembly. Under this Treaty the authority of the Irish Free
State is delegated to it by the British Parliament as legally and
judicially subject to the British Crown, and as such, I maintain it
cannot be accepted that Ireland under the Treaty will be a sovereign
independent nation. The only other thing that it can be is that it
will be a subordinate nation of the British Empire. I have heard
arguments brought forward here in regard to the sovereign independence
of Canada and Australia. In so far as their authority is derived from
Britain and is exercised under this superior jurisdiction of Britain I
cannot accept it that Australia and Canada are sovereign nations.
After the great war the Allies imposed obligations on
Germanyand Austria as wellobligations which she could
not resist, but Germany still remains sovereign. Legally and
judicially its authority was its own and was derived from itself and
was not delegated to it by the Allies. I would really prefer this
Treaty to recognise the fundamental of Irish sovereignty and be
prepared to sacrifice other considerations such as financial
considerations, truce clauses, aye, and defence clauses, but only for
a certain period. Persia, Afghanistan and others allow other nations
to exercise certain powers which are their's alone by right, but they
are still sovereign. The reason why I would prefer such is this, that
the people at all times will agitate for material concessions. The
people as we know them will not at all times agitate for the ideal.
The people will be very slow indeed to agitate for the idea of
sovereignty which we have now lost under this Treaty if we accept it,
when war will be the only method of regaining it. I do not know of any
nation on this earth that does not claim that sovereignty as a natural
attribute of the state. Why do we not demand the same right? You call
It the Irish Free State. Fundamentally it is not so. Now about the
clauses of the Treaty. I will not debate them. The clauses containing
the oath and the Governor-General, and the point about common
citizenship are repulsive to every individual whom I have met in my
constituency who has created the present situation or assisted to
create it. It is, undoubtedly, causing them great anxiety. The Deputy
from Cork, Deputy Walsh, said that if he thought the Treaty would
bring disunity to Ireland he would vote against it. From his inference
I gathered that he meant Ulster. Does he take into consideration a
more grievous and a more disastrous disunity than the one he spoke of?
I
p.240
speak of the disunity that is bound to comethe disruption of
the national movement. Deputy O'Duffy said that if he were offered the
alternative to war or chaos that he would prefer war. I believe
national chaos is bound to come out of the acceptance of this Treaty
unless some superhuman effort is made by somebody who has not yet come
along to try and retrieve the position that we have lost. The Deputy
also stated that the peaceful penetration of England is now at a
standstill. I maintain that it is now and now only that the peaceful
penetration of Britain is percolating through this country. He also
mentioned about prisoners in Belfast awaiting execution. I am much in
the same position myself. There are several individuals from my own
constituency at the present time under sentence of death in Cork
prison. At the same time I well remember that a communication was sent
to the Press by the Brigade Commandant who at that time was
responsible for the operation for which those men were adjudged
guilty, that those men were perfectly innocent. From what I know of
those men I do not believe that they would wish that their predicament
should be allowed to trouble my conscience in this matter, and I
firmly believe that they are quite prepared to stand by any decision
the Dáil would make. But I know the attitude of one,
personally. He has been sentenced to fifteen
years and he is at present serving that sentence. He is well known to
practically every Deputy in the Dáil, and when visited last
Christmas by his sister it was natural that something should crop up
about the Treaty. Now I maintain that there is very little difference
between a man under sentence of execution and an individual who is
condemned to fifteen years' penal servitude.
Some, I think, prefer to be shot straight away, but this individual
said that he wished it would he known that he would prefer to rot
inside in jail for the fifteen years than accept
this Treaty [Applause]. There is, at least, one opinion
from an individual who has just as much to say as the individuals who
are under sentence of execution. Now, I think it was the President who
mentioned the point that if what is contained in this Treaty were
contained in a further act that England thought fit to impose upon the
country, that it is quite possible that we would seize upon the Act
and work it to the best advantage. Deputy MacGarry sought to bring an
unfair inference from what was contained in James Connolly's book
admitting his acceptance of the Government act of '98. There is a
difference in going forward and going backward. James Connolly, at
that time, by seizing on that Act would be going a step forward. In
taking that step he would not have signed any treaty bartering away
the sovereign rights of the Irish people. In conclusion I wish to
state that the men in my area who count will never accept this Treaty.
There is nothing in the Treaty which binds England to remove the
English Garrison out of this country. There is stated in a subsequent
letter sent by Mr. Lloyd George to the Chairman of the Delegation, Mr.
Arthur Griffith, that they will evacuate Southern Ireland. I wonder
where they will go to? Then again,there is nothing in the Treaty that
does not give England quite a legal right to bring her troops into
Ireland whenever she deems so fit.
MR. MILROY:
Except the Irish Army.
MR. FITZGERALD:
The men who count in my
area, I say, will never accept this Treaty. They ask that we should be
united and refuse to accept it, because it will bring Ireland no
peace. I am of the one mind only, and I ask that this Treaty be
unanimously or nearly so rejected. After that we will put our minds
together and try and re-establish our own position and make one more
try. Those men have asked me to bring forward this suggestion here,
that we should not accept this, and that we and the whole nation
should make one more serious effort to try and re-establish the
position that we had before December 5th.
DR. R. HAYES:
A Chinn
Chomhairle, I have never at any time during the past three years, at any of the sessions, taken up very
much of the time of this assembly, and now, at its last session, I
certainly am not going to do so. In that respect at least I will try
to be consistent. I am voting for the Treaty and I also am supporting
p.241
its adoption; and although I recognise that it confers a status on
this country that it had never since the English invasion, at the same
time I recognise that it does not give us everything that we wish for.
To me, anyhow, it is a compromise, but surely there are times, there
are occasionscritical occasionsin a nation's history
when it is justifiable to compromise, especially when the object of
the compromise is not an ignoble one. It is a necessary compromise to
me, anyhow, but it certainly is a compromise without dishonour.
Speaking of compromises, to me it seems that the signing of this
Treaty was the final result, the culmination of a whole series of
compromises, during the past four or five monthsall necessary compromises. One of
the very first acts in the negotiations was a compromise. Our army was
not defeated, it had not surrendered, and yet the enemy capital was
selected as the meeting place for the two
delegations. As a political proposition in relation to an immediate
settlement with England it seems to me that the Republic ceased to
exist four or five months
ago. I agree with Deputy Mellowes that the real Republic, the
Republican ideal, still exists, and is still cherished in the hearts
even of those people who support this Treaty. I think that it has been
unfair and unjust the criticism that has been levelled at the
Delegation over these negotiations. They were selected by this
assembly and by the Cabinet of this assembly to make a bargain, not on
the Republican basis, but on the basis of association with Britain's
Commonwealth. They made that bargain and they have brought back the
bargain, and I think, considering the governing circumstances, that it
is a pretty good bargain. I am firmly convinced of one thing regarding
this Treaty, and it is this: but for the oath contained in it, ninety-nine per cent. of this Dáil would
accept it, as a compromise at least. I say that the oath is just as
unpalatable to those who are voting for the Treaty as it is to those
who are voting against it. Some Deputies referred to the clash of the
oath, the incompatibility of the oath with the Fenian tradition. A
night or two before the adjournment I happened to
be reading the recollections of a Fenian leader, and I came across in
it his opinion of the oaths to English monarchs. As a personal
explanation I may say here that I wrote out that opinion and showed it
to a friend out here in the lobby, and next day it appeared in leaded
type in one of the Dublin newspapers, surrounded with a frame. I want
to make it clear that I had nothing to do with getting it into the
paper. The Fenian leader I refer to was John O'Leary. I think every
member of this assembly will agree that John O'Leary, up to the day of
his death was a consistent and unrepentant Fenian. I have here this
opinion. It is not taken out of its context. Let England cease to
govern Ireland, and then I shall swear to be true to Ireland, and to
the Queen or King of Ireland, even though the Queen or King also so
happen to be Queen or King of England. It has never been with me, and
never shall be, any question of forms of government, but simply
freedom from foreign control. If I may say so, while reading the
book memory carried back to me the first occasion in my life on which
I saw the Fenian leader, John O'Leary, and the first occasion on which
I saw the Chairman of the Delegation, Arthur Griffith; they were
chatting together in a Dublin street. I think if John O'Leary were in
this assembly he would see eye to eye with Arthur Griffith on this
question. I do not intend to delay the House any longer. I shall
finish up by saying this: If I were convinced this Treaty meant the
final reconciliation of Ireland with England I would have very little
hesitation in deciding upon which way my vote should go. But it is not
the end [hear, hear]. The adoption of this Treaty will
enable us, as the Chairman of the Delegation said in his opening
address to rebuild here in this country the old Gaelic civilisation
that went down at the Battle of Kinsale [hear, hear]. Its
adoption will mean the revival and spread of Gaelic culture. It will
mean the leavening into everybody's Irish life the old traditional and
the old heroic memories. These things are not mentioned in the Treaty
clauses, but they are implied there, and any one of them is just as
important as, say, fiscal autonomy. Finally, a Chinn
Chomhairle, I support this Treaty because it places in the hands
of the Irish nation powerful weapons, material
p.242
weapons and spiritual weapons, that will enable it to achieve its full
destiny. [Applause].
MR. JOHN O'MAHONY:
I, like other Deputies,
have received several messages within the last few days from my
constituents, and one of those I received was this: I have no doubt
but that eighty or ninety
per cent. favour the ratification here, more especially after reading
de Valera's substitute oath. Now, I have got friends in this
assembly as dear to me as my own life, but I certainly must say I
never read that oath in No. 2 Document.
MR. MILROY:
You know where it is.
MR. O'MAHONY:
I wish now to be as brief as
possible. Like most other Deputies I have, since the adjournment,
received letters, telegrams, and resolutions from public bodies and
individual voters in my constituency requesting, in some cases
demanding, that I vote for ratification of this so-called Treaty.
While I have every possible respect for the individual opinions of my
correspondents, I wish to point out that they are, after all, only
individual opinions. They are not the opinions of the people. I would
say the same of Councils. They are not the people either. They are the
elected representatives of the people just as we are here, but our
Republican mandate, our national mandate, from the people, is much
clearer and much stronger than the mandate given to any County
Council, District Council or Board of Guardians. I may be asked what
about the Comhairle Ceanntair of Sinn Fein which,
by a majority, has called upon me to vote for the Foreign Minister's
motion. I am well awarenone betterof the weight and
importance of the Comhairle Ceanntair of Sinn
Fein in my constituency. I know its members and their worth. During
the last three years they have worked well and
worked sincerely with me, and for me in the Republican cause. I have
always consulted the Comhairle Ceanntair, and
have always paid the greatest attention to its views where matters
affecting my constituency were concerned, but even it is not the
people of Fermanagh. The Comhairle
Ceanntairand I am deeply grateful for ithonoured
me by selecting me as a Republican candidate, but it was the people
that elected me as a Republican Deputy to Dáil Eireann; and I
have yet to be convincedresolutions, letters and telegrams like
those I have already received will not convince methat the
people have turned down the Republic that seven
short months ago they elected me to maintain and uphold. If the people
of Fermanagh gave me a mandate to vote for this fleshpots of
Egypt alternative to renewed war that the British Government is
seeking to force upon us, a mandate given in the same manner and
carrying the same weight as that which they gave me last May, I admit
that I would feel bound to consider it, I would feel bound to act upon
it; I would feel bound at once to place my resignation in their hands,
because I could not, even at their bidding, forswear my allegiance to
the Irish Republic. But before I place my resignation in their hands I
would, as within my right and in accordance with my duty, record my
vote on the issue that is before us here and now. During the last
week's organised campaignto stampede or try to stampede the
Dáil Deputies into approving of this Treaty in the British
Government's ultimatumwe have heard a lot in speeches and Press
letters about precedents for our obeying, like automatons, the alleged
wishes of the people; and examples have been cited down to Abraham
Lincoln. None of these examples is, in my opinion, analogous to the
situation in which we find ourselves to-day. In all of them the
questions at issue were questions at best of domestic politics; with
us the issue at stake is the maintenance or surrender of our national
independence. We can find a true analogy to our present position in
our own time in the case of the Boers. In 1902 the British Government
presented to the Boers the same ultimatum as it has now presented to
ustake these terms or take a war of extermination. When the
representatives of the Transvaal and of the Orange Free State met in
combined session at Vereeniging to consider the terms it was found
that, while one section of the Deputies were given a free hand,
another section had a definite mandate from their constituents, and it
was generally felt that such a mandate would prevent a free exercise
of their
p.243
judgment by the Deputies who had received it. The difficulty was
alluded to in his inaugural address by the President of the Transvaal
Republic, and before the discussion opened, General Botha asked for a
direction on the matter. Judge Hertzog, the legal representative of
the Orange Free State, and an acknowledged authority on constitutional
law, statedI quote his exact words: It is a principle in law
that a Deputy is not to be regarded as a mere agent or mouth-piece of
his constituents, but, on the contrary, when dealing with public
affairs, as a man vested with full powerswith the right,
whatever his brief may be, of acting to the best of his judgment.
General Smuts, States-Procureur of the Transvaal, endorsed Judge
Hertzog, and their decision was unanimously accepted. The Deputies
with a specific mandate felt themselves as free to use their own
judgment as the Deputies without one, and the decision at which they
eventually arrived was at variance with the mandates that many of them
had from their people. I am not now concerned with the character of
either the mandates or the decision of the Boers. I cite their case
simply to prove the principle that members of all parliaments are, in
their acts and votes, free agents. I quote it to show, in spite of the
campaign of intimidation being pursued by the pro-British Press in
Ireland, that we Dáil Deputies here in Dublin, are as free
agents as were the Boers at Vereeniging. In fact we are freer, because
none of us has received from our constituents any mandate of any kind
on the question that is before us.
MR. MILROY:
Question?
MR. O'MAHONY:
I will answer you. If I leave
this matter here some of our pro-British papers will probably be
asking: If all this is true, where do the people stand? I
answer that the people stand
MR. MILROY:
For the Treaty.
MR. O'MAHONY:
Where they always stood and
always will stand, as the moral source and fount of all national
authority. The Boers recognised this. While declaring their Deputies
to be free agents they also, in the words of the President of the
Transvaal, declared that the surrender or otherwise of their
independence was a question that must be left to the decision of their
people. We declare the same. We recognise the people as sovereign, we
admit that their will is supreme, we acknowledge them as the final
court of appeal. But I wish to point out that this so-called Treaty
question has not yet reached that final court of appeal. It is still
before usthe Dáiland it is for us, as free
agents, to decide it to the best of our judgment. If the people are
not satisfied with our decision then they can turn it down and turn us
down too. But in the meantime, as free and unfettered members of the
Parliament of the Irish Republic, we are privileged, nay, we are
bound, by every principle of law, by every obligation of right, by
every canon of duty, to speak and act and vote as we individually and
conscientiously believe to be in keeping with our oath to the
Republic. Now some reference was made during the course of the debate
to the Republican form of Government as if that form of Government had
ceased to exist or practically never existed. We all believe that the
Minister of Finance was a man who spoke the truth according to his
conscience, and spoke the words he meant to follow. In the beginning
of 1921 he stated in an interview with an American journalist, when
speaking of the Loan: We raised 400,000. Of this sum we lost only
29, which was taken by British authorities from one of our
collectors. The Government carrying on the Irish Republic to-day
cannot talk of compromise. Now, the Treaty is objectionable to me
for various reasons. I remember for many years realising that a wall
was around Ireland, and the voice of Ireland choked. Now, the wall was
pulled down by as great an Irishman as any who sits in this House
to-day and that is the Minister for Foreign
Affairs
MR. GRIFFITH:
It won't do, John.
MR. O'MAHONY:
I thank you Art,
[Laughter].
MR. GRIFFITH:
John, you are the man that
asked me to make peace at any price.
p.244
MR O'MAHONY
Yes, but not at the price of the Irish
Republic.
MR. GRIFFITH:
It will not do, John.
MR. O'MAHONY:
Whatever my friend Arthur
Griffith says, we can have our little jokes
[Laughter].
MR. GRIFFITH:
It is no joke.
MR. O'MAHONY:
If that wall be built around
Ireland, every submarine cable and all the messages sent out to the
world are choked; and if England has her hand on the throat of the
nation, how can you develop the foreign trade of the nation? Some of
our friends on the other side who are voting for this so-called Treaty
seem to have blinded themselves into the belief that they can be Free
Staters and remain good Republicans as well. They may so blind
themselves but they can not blind us, and they cannot blind the
country or the world. No one knows better than the plenipotentiaries
that as far as those who voluntarily accepted are concerned, this
Georgian State is a final abandonment of the claim to independence;
and those who support this Treaty will very soon find also that, on an
issue of national principle like this there can be no such thing as
running with the hare and hunting with the hounds [applause and
counter cheers]. The two oaths are too
fiercely conflicting to admit of either reconciliation or
approachment. Any attempts to compose them must fail now as it failed
before.
MR. KEVIN O'HIGGINS:
What two oaths?
MR. O'MAHONY:
This oath and the oath to the
Irish Republic. We had, as far as the oath is concerned, the same
situation in the days of the New Departure. No matter who may talk
about free Irish Constitutions there is no difference between this
oath that is before us now and the Westminster oath then, except this:
the Westminster oath was only a single-springed trap for unwary
Irishmen, while this new one that the plenipotentiaries want us to
accept secures us for ever with a treble spring. When the policy of
the New Departure was proposed the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which
Mr. P. S. O'Hegarty described a couple of weeks ago as the sheet
anchor of Irish nationalism, promptly and absolutely turned it down.
Thus foiled in Ireland, Davitt and his friends sought to win the
support of the Clan-na-Gael; and the Supreme Council of the I.R.B.
immediately sent the veteran, John O'Leary, to America to counteract
their efforts. Addressing the Clan-na-Gael in New York, O'Leary
denounced the proposal as immoral and impolitic. There is, he
said, to be a pretence of loyalty but in reality treason all along
the line. I do not believe in a policy of dust throwing and lying, but
that is the policy of the New Departure. The Fenian Movement is purely
a national movement. Though I were to stand absolutely alone I would
resist this dishonest and unholy alliance. I believe in righteous
means as well us righteous ends. What John O'Leary said of the New
Departure Republicans in 1878 can, with even more force, be said of
the self-deluded Free State Republicans in the Dáil to-day
[Applause]. In spite of all this, Davitt, O'Connor Power,
J. F. X. O'Brien, John O'Connor, and other members of the Fenian
organisation persisted in their policy and took the Oath of
Allegiance. When John O'Leary learned what they had done his only
comment was: I wish the British Sovereign joy of the British oaths
of turncoats who have already taken and broken the Republican
oath. Would not the unconquerable old Fenian leader, if he were
here to day, use the same words? Would he not employ even stronger
language of those Dáil Deputies who are tumbling over each
other in their eagerness to break the Republican oath that they took
in August last to take this Oath of Allegiance to the British monarch
and thereby to help the British Government to enforce this, its latest
Coercion Art in Ireland? Whatever the result of the vote on this
question, we who are against the surrender of our national
independence can face ourselves, face the people, and face the country
with the consciousness that we have done our duty to the Republic that
we swore to maintain and uphold.
MR. GRIFFITH:
Why not face Fermanagh,
John?
p.245
MR. O'MAHONY:
I will go, and I will tell you
how I will come out of it. I consider, a Chinn
Chomairle, you are not doing your duty [Laughter].
Is it because there is a lasting friendship between the Foreign
Minister and me that you allow these interruptions?
[Laughter].
MR. GRIFFITH:
It is because you came to me
three times and asked me to make peace at any
price.
MR. O'MAHONY:
Do not lose your hair
[Laughter]. We may find ourselves in a minority as Pearse
and his comrades were in a minority in Easter Week; but like them we
will have the satisfaction of feeling that we have saved the soul and
body of the nation from those who would wittingly or unwittingly kill
it, for the purpose of bringing ease and comfort to the material body.
We can face the future with hope, nay with confidence, because we have
with us the two elements amongst our people with
whom the national future lies. We have the women with us, and no cause
that is backed by the national womanhood of the country can ever fail,
just as no cause that lacks their support can end in anything but
disaster and disgrace. We have the youth with us, toothe youth
of the Irish Republican Armyhuman beings endowed by God with
the power of deciding what was right and what was wrong; not mere
goods and chattels to be carried off and used as their absolute
property by our anticipated Free State majority. For opportunism, for
supineness, for contemptibleness, the daily Press of Ireland is unique
in the journalism of the world. However, the young men of the army I
am proud to say, have proved themselves too straight, too true, too
unselfish in their love and loyalty to the Republic to be decoyed from
the path of honour, of righteousness and of duty, to be deceived into
breaking their soldier oaths by such transparent political expediency
on the part of a majority of their Headquarters Staff. We have the
young men of the army with us, we have the womanhood of the nation
with us, and with these two elements on its side
the ultimate triumph of the Republic is assured; because, as Terence
MacSwiney said:
Those who walk in old ruts and live in trembling may bend the knee and
sign their rights away; but one wronged man defrauded of his heritage
can refuse to seal the compact, and with one how many, thank God, will
be found to stand, for the spirit of our youth to-day is not for
compromise.
[Applause]
MR. DAN MACCARTHY:
I rise to support the
Treaty. In what I have to say I hope not to hurt the feelings of
anyone. I am not going to follow on the same lines as the last
speaker. I have only this to say about that speaker: he has no right
or authority to speak for the Irish Republican Brotherhoodto
speak in this Dáiland I doubt his authority to speak for
the army either. He did not go to his constituents to find out what
their views were; he knew their views already. It is all right to say
the Press is stampeding the people; it is all right to compare the
Press of 1916, but the comparison does not hold to-day. The old Boards
who passed resolutions against the 1916 Rising have been wiped out. I
hold in my hand here a pamphlet; it is issued by Sinn Fein, and it
gives a list of the Republican Councils in Ireland: in Ulster there
are forty-two Boardssixteen Republican, ten
Republican-Nationalist, and sixteen Unionists,
in Leinster there are thirty-eight Boards and
the thirty-eight are Republican; in Munster
there are forty-seven Boards and the forty-seven are Republican; in Connacht there are
twenty-seven Boards and the twenty-seven are Republican. Now, these are different
Boards to the Boards that passed resolutions in 1916. You boasted of
the fact that you had wiped out the old Nationalist crowd and a good
deal of the Unionists and elected Republicans in their places. When
these Republicans pass resolutions, Deputies like Professor Stockley
and Deputy O'Mahony tell the Deputies to go to the devil, and that
they would do what they liked in the Dáil.
PROFESSOR STOCKLEY:
When did I tell the
Deputies to go to the devil? [Laughter.]
MR. MACCARTHY:
I meant the
electors.
p.246
PROFESSOR STOCKLEY:
That the electors must
go to the devil! When did I say that?
MR. MACCARTHY:
Not in so many words, but
that is the meaning of what you said, anyhow.
MR. O'MAHONY:
I say the mandate given to me
was given to me by the people, and I stand by that mandate. The people
are the last Court of Appeal.
MR. MACCARTHY:
I object to these
interruptions. I think nobody will deny the fact that I know something
about elections [hear, hear], and I regret to say I am
responsible for having some of the members here to-day
[Laughter]. The 1918 election was not fought on the issue
of an Irish Republic. It was fought for the principle and the right of
self-determination. At that time we had a cartoon about the vacant
chair at the Peace Conference to be filled by Count Plunkett. That is
what the people voted on; not on what particular form of Government at
all. It is only right to say that. Members have no right to say they
were elected on the Republican issue and are not going to take the
oath. They were nothing of the sort. I am not going to debate this
point of the oath. As one of the Whips I have done my best to control
the number of speakers and the length of speeches, but I failed. I am
not going to go over the oath. We have lawyers on both sides who have
made their cases. Some say they cannot take it, while others say it is
all right. I am going to make up my mind like Michael Collinsas
a plain Irishman. I see no allegiance in the oath. If there were I
would not take it. Every speaker who claims to have English blood is
opposed to this Treaty.
MR. LORCAN ROBBINS:
Here is one who is
not.
MR. MACCARTHY:
They do not understand the
people. They put me in mind of the City Councillor going up for
election in the Dublin Corporation who went about for a drive in the
slum area and wept tears about the conditions of the people in the
slums. He knew nothing about it. We sprang from the working people. We
know their lives in the slums. We know them better than these people
and we know what they want. We have heard Deputies speaking about
breaking an oath and what a dishonourable thing it is. Was it
dishonourable for the Fenians to send a major into the British Army to
corrupt British soldiers? Shame on men who speak like that! I am out
to do work for Ireland, and I do not give a damn where a man comes
from so long as we do good work for Ireland. Now, I stand for this
Treaty, and one of the principal things I see in it is the control of
education. Again I say I am a plain man; the education I got was not
very much; it was a National School education. On the map we were
taught that all the places marked red are British possessions. Look
at Ireland! A little spot in the Atlantic. We had there a singing
chart to teach children to sing, in happy Christian days, about being
a happy English child. If that education produced men and women who
would go to the scaffold with a smile on their lips for Ireland, will
Deputies tell me that the education they will get under their own
Parliament, when they are more prosperous, will make them forget all
about Ireland, and bow and bend the knee in front of a great
Governor-General? Men who say that do not know Ireland. They do not
know the people, and have no confidence in the people, and have no
right to be members of this Dáil [cheers]. I
thought it was always a motto of ours in Sinn Fein to try and unite
all Ireland so as to bring freedom in this country and give fair play
to everyone. It is a disgrace for a Deputy to get up and complain
because the Chairman of the Plenipotentiaries offered fair play to the
Southern Unionists. They are our countrymen. We want them with us in
this fight as well as anyone.
MR. ART O'CONNOR:
I do not object to fair
play.
MR. MACCARTHY:
I should like to ask when
your Councils, working under your Local Government Board, were making
a tremendous fight against the British Local Government Board, what
happened? When the Dublin Corporation looked for a loan of 100,000,
and
p.247
could not get it from their so-called popular banks, the Governors of
the Bank of Ireland, who were all Southern Unionists, granted that
loan. If they failed to get that loan they would go down, and if the
Dublin Corporation went down the rest of the local bodies went down.
Make no mistake. The Governors of the Bank are Southern Unionists and
they have done that turn for you. It is well known to the Minister of
the Local Government Board and to the members of the Dáil if
that loan failed you would not be in the position you are in to-day.
You would have broken down. You ought to be perfectly honest in this
matter. I do not see in this Treaty the end, but it is an instrument
put into our hands, and we can use it for the benefit of Ireland. The
alternative is war, or chaos, which is worse than war. Why are we
going to do all that? The Minister for Fisheries gave an excuse and I
wonder some member did not say that four years
ago he consulted his mother and she was against it
[Laughter]. Is it for that we are going to drive the
Irish people to the shambles? Is it for that reason we are going to
break up the solid ranks we have behind us? One of the great boasts of
the Dáil was that they had the people behind them. It is true.
But should you reject this Treaty what are you going to do? Can you go
to England and the world and say the people are behind us? The
President admits the people want this Treaty, and he admits they would
take it. Ninety-five per cent. of the people are
for it [No! no!]. Well, the proof of that is,
anyone that likes to contest a seatas far as mine is concerned,
I would fight the President or anyone in this Dáil and beat him
a hundred to one.
MR. MILROY:
Here is another the
same.
MR. MACCARTHY:
It is the same all over the
country. We must face that issue. We could do nothing if the people
were not behind us. The good, brave fellows in the army could do
nothing were it not that the people were behind the army. The
Dáil could do nothing only that the people were behind it. The
people are not behind the minority in this issue. They are for this
Treaty. They are our masters and we must obey them.
[cheers.]
DR. ADA ENGLISH:
A Chinn
Chomhairle is a lucht na Dála, níl mórán
agam le rá ach dearfa me cúpla focal. A Deputy who
spoke in favour of the Treaty wanted to know why the young men should
be sent to the shamblesI think that was the word he used. I
should be sorry to see young men or old men, or women, or children
going to the shambles, but when there is a question of right or wrong
in it I would be prepared to go to the shambles myself and I do not
see why everybody would not. I credit the supporters of the Treaty
with being as honest as I am, but I have a sound objection to it. I
think it is wrong; I have various reasons for objecting to it, but the
main one is that, in my opinion, it was wrong against Ireland, and a
sin against Ireland. I do not like talking here about oaths. I have
heard about oaths until my soul is sick of them, but if this Treaty
were forced on us by Englandas it is being forcedand
that paragraph 4, the one with the oath in it were omitted, we could
accept it under force; but certainly, while those oaths are in it,
oaths in which we are asked to accept the King of England as head of
the Irish State, and we are asked to accept the status of British
citizensBritish subjectsthat we can not accept. As far
as I see the whole fight in this country for centuries has centred
round that very point. We are now asked not only to acknowledge the
King of England's claim to be King of Ireland, but we are asked to
swear allegiance and fidelity [No! no!] in virtue
of that claim. Perhaps not, but that is the way I read it. For the
last seven hundred centuries, roughly
[Laughter]I mean seven
centuriestime does seem to be long here
[Laughter]. However a jolly long time, any way, Ireland
has been fighting England and, as I understood it, the grounds of this
fight always were that we denied the right of England's King to this
country [No! no!].
MISS MACSWINEY:
Yes.
DR. ENGLISH:
And we denied we were British
subjects. We are now asked not only to acknowledge the
p.248
claims of the English King to be head of Ireland, and to acknowledge
ourselves as British subjects, but we are asked to give him a right to
legalise his claim by giving him a right, by our votes, to the
positionthat is, as far as we could give him the right. We
cannotnobody cangive him a right to the country, or the
votes of anybody give him a claim. It seems to me that the taking of
those oaths is a complete surrender of our claims. It is a moral
surrender. It is giving up the independence of our country, and that
is the main reason why I object to this Treaty. I deny that we are a
possession of the British and this Treaty simply makes us one of the
British possessions. Various Deputies have said that we surrendered
the Republic as soon as we began to discuss any association with
England. I cannot understand that position. It is not surrender of the
Republicany arrangement for association with any other country,
whether England, or Germany, or Japan, or any country in the world.
That did not give away the Republic in the slightest degree. That we
gave up the position of an isolated Republic without alliance, with
England or otherwise, might be claimed, but certainly we did not
compromise in any way our claim to a Republic. We would negotiate
association with England but there was no compromise in it, and I am
sorry Dr. MacCartan is not here, because in his amazing speech he said
he knew the Republic was being killed the moment we began to discuss
association. It was his duty, and the duty of any man who thinks as he
did then to stand up and tell us that, in ignorance or innocence, we
were trying to murder the Republic and kill it; it is not when he sees
the Republic dead. Why did he not warn us in the beginning if he
thought so? I hold that the Republic is not dead, and will not die, in
spite of Lloyd George and the other evil spirits who wander through
the world [Laughter and cheers]. We are told that the
country is for this Treatyit has been told to us in various
forms of words, in various ways. The country is not for this Treaty,
the country is out for peace. The country wants peace and desires
peace. So do we. We all want peace, but we want a peace which will be
a real peace and a lasting peace and a peace based on honour and on
friend ship and a peace which we can keep, a peace that we can put our
names to and stand by. That is the sort of peace the country wants,
and it is only because the country is misled into believing that this
Treaty gives such a peace that the country wants it. The country wants
no peace which gives away the independence of Ireland and destroys the
Republic which has been established by the will of the Irish people
[hear, hear]. We have had painted for us in various lurid
colours the terrors of war and the desire of the people for quietness
and peace. Well, peace is a good thing, but in the days of the famine
the people were also told that they should be peaceful and submissive
and quiet, and accept what the English chose to give themthe
rotten potatoesand let the corn and food be exported out of the
country. There were people then, Republicans and Revolutionists, who
encouraged the people to fight for the country in spite of the men
with the streak, and free themselves and keep the food in the country.
But some of the influences that are working against the country to-day
were working against it then and advised peace. They got
peaceand death and famine. You can lose more mentheir
bodies as well as their soulsby an ignoble peace than by
fighting for just rights [cheers]. The evacuation of the
English troops is one of the things that are being held up to us as
being one of the very good points in the Treaty. It would be a very
desirable thing, indeed, that the English troops evacuated this
country, if they did evacuate it, but I hold that Ulster is still part
of Ireland and I have not heard a promise that the British troops are
to evacuate Ulster. They are still there. I understand they are to be
drawn from the rest of Ireland and, as I read the Treaty, there is not
one word of promise in it about the evacuation of the British troops.
There was, I think, a letter read from the man acrossLloyd
Georgepromising that evacuation would begin in some certain
time, but I should like to know was that promise part of the
arrangement made between the British Government on one hand, and the
plenipotentiaries of the Irish Republic on the other, or was it merely
a private arrangement of Mr. Lloyd
p.249
George? I suppose that the English Government believeif they
were going, even to a slight degree, to evacuate the country, it is
probably because they thought that the country would be held for them
by the Free State troops. They are depending on the acceptance of the
Treaty. If this Treaty is going to be kept are we to understand that
the Free State will hold the country for England instead of the
British Garrison? I have heard, I have listened very carefullyI
think this afternoon was the first time I missed any of the speeches
from the beginning, on the 14th Decemberto those speeches in
favour of the Treaty. I have listened most carefully and attentively
to see if I could find any way in which I could reconcile my
conscience to vote for the Treaty. My position is not the same as when
I came to Dublin. I came up opposed to the Treaty. I am ten times more opposed to it since I have heard the
speeches in favour of the Treaty in this Dáil. We repudiate the
Republic if this Treaty is passed; we repudiate it absolutely. It is a
complete surrender and we don't get peace by it, but we get the
certainty of a bitter split and division in this country, because we
who stand for the complete freedomfor the separatist
ideafor the complete freedom and independence of Ireland cannot
sit down with our hands across. We will work and fight for it, and so
there is bound to be a split. The only chance you could have of unity
is by having the whole Dáil unanimously reject this thing. Then
you would have the country behind you. Unity is a good thing and I am
very sorry to see the unity which was in this Dáil broken up as
it is at present, but I would be very much more sorry to see the
Dáil united in approving of this Treaty, because unity in
wrong-doing is no advantage to the country or the cause [hear,
hear]. What we have got in this Treatythe material
point, I supposeis a truncated form of Dominion Home Rule for
three-quarters of the country. If Dominion Home Rule were the thing we
were fighting for and are satisfied to getas those in favour of
the Treaty seem to thinkwhy, in God's name, did they not tell
us that two years ago and not send out all the
fellows to fight and lose their lives for a thing they did not want?
On what authority did they send out, if the Republic did not exist and
was not in being, any poor fellows to shoot and kill any man of any
nation? If it was not for the Government of the Republic and the army
why did they go out?
MR. P. BRENNAN:
They went out
themselves.
MR. M. COLLINS:
They did.
DR. ENGLISH:
They will go again, I hope, as
soon as this thing is thrown out.
MR. P. BRENNAN:
They might, then. I am from
Clare [Laughter].
DR. ENGLISH:
There has been talk about
compromisethat we compromised the position. I think that is a
most unworthy thing to saya most unworthy thing to say. We had
lots of things to bargain aboutyou had lots of material things
to bargain aboutquestions of trade and commerce and finance and
the use of ports; but nobody ever suspected we were going to
compromise on the question of independence and the rights of the
country. Mr. MacGarry mentioned yesterday Land Acts taken in the past
from England. There was no Republic in Ireland when we took the Land
Acts from England. That makes a very great difference. And the
Republic exists. You can take any Act you like that is consistent with
the Republic but you cannot take anything which gives away the
Republic. It is not in your power to give it away. I have been asked
by several people in the Dáil and elsewhere as to what views my
constituents took about this matter. I credit my constituents with
being honest people, just as honest as I consider myselfand I
consider myself fairly honestthey sent me here as a Republican
Deputy to An Dáil which is, I believe, the living Republican
Parliament of this country. Not only that, but when I was selected as
Deputy in this place I was very much surprised and, after I got out of
jail, when I was well enough to see some of my constituents, I asked
them how it came they selected me, and they told me they wanted
someone they could depend on to stand fast by the Republic, and who
would not let Galway down again
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[cheers]. That is what my constituents told me they
wanted when they sent me here, and they have got it
[cheers]. This isa Chinn
Chomhairle , may I rend a letter which has been received to-day
from the Graduates of the National University of Ireland? It is not to
me, it is to Professor Stockley. As our representative, we have
perfect confidence in your ability to represent us. We disapprove of
any interference by individual graduates in the free actions of our
representatives. We disapprove further of any attempt to stampede
members of the Dáil to act in contradiction of their considered
opinions.M. O'Kennedy.
MR. GRIFFITH:
How many names to
that?
DR. ENGLISH:
Cúig
Cinn. I am only speaking about my own constituents. There is a
point I want to make. I think that it was a most brave thing to-day to
listen to the speech by the Deputy from Sligo in reference to the
women members of An Dáil, claiming that they only have the
opinions they have because they have a grievance against England, or
because their men folk were killed and murdered by England's
representatives in this country. It was a most unworthy thing for any
man to say here. I can say this more freely because, I thank my God, I
have no dead men to throw in my teeth as a reason for holding the
opinions I hold. I should like to say that I think it most unfair to
the women Teachtaí because Miss MacSwiney had suffered at
England's hands. That, a Chinn Chomhairle is really all I want to say.
I am against the Treaty, and I am very sorry to be in opposition to
[nodding towards Mr. Griffith and Mr. Collins.
(cheers)].
ALDERMAN JAMES MURPHY:
I simply want to
publicly define my attitude towards the position in which we find
ourselves. Not being a constitutional lawyer I do not possess the art
of saying nothing in a great many words. Consequently I can relieve
the House by assuring it that I will be very brief. I desire to carry
away with me only one memory from this Session of An Dáil and
that is a remembrance of two very honest speeches
delivered, one of them delivered by Deputy Barton, and the other
delivered by Deputy Dr. MacCartan, whose speech expressed my own
thoughts and feelings. Like Dr. MacCartan I would refuse to vote at
all were it not for one consideration. The consideration is this: that
although in my opinion, this battle for the Republic is lost, one hope
yet remains for the Republic in the future. That hope is the people of
Ireland. I for one, will not consent to sacrifice the people for the
purpose of saving my face, or for the sake of the differences which
exist in this assembly. If the Republicas the plain man in the
street understands itwas not given away when the Truce was
signed, in my opinion the Republic was certainly given away when we
sent plenipotentiaries to London to negotiate a Treaty in which the
Republic was explicitly and implicitly ruled out by the British Prime
Minister in practically every communication he sent us on the subject.
Since then the situation appears to me to have developed into a hunt
after a basis which, when viewed through Irish spectacles would look
like a Republic, and when viewed through English spectacles would
assume the appearance of Dominion Home Rule. The result is neither one
nor the other, and it only remains for me to congratulate all
concerned on their acrobatic performance which, to me, is quite the
most remarkable exhibition of the kind I have ever witnessed. As far
as the Republic is concernedand when I speak of the Republic I
do not refer to the bow-window Republic, or external
association which we have heard so much of latelyI refer to the
Republic as the plain man in the street understands it, and as he will
always understand itas far as that Republic is concerned we
have all walked into a bog, and the desperate endeavours of each side
of the Cabinet to try to throw all the blame on the other side serve
no useful purpose. We know perfectly well both sides are to blame. We
know perfectly well we ourselves cannot escape our own share of the
responsibility of what has happened, because in our child-like trust
we did not maintain sufficiently close control over the Cabinet, and
invested them with too much of our powers. Deputies who come here and
talk about
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retrieving the position which we held before this took place could see
there is no way out, and they know it, and it is only self-deception
to suggest there is. Two alternatives are forced
upon me. Both of them I consider outrageous. I must choose either, or
do as Dr. MacCartan intends doingrefuse to choose at all. I
choose what I consider the lesser of the two
outrages, and I choose it for the reason I have given. I will vote for
the Treaty, not because I consider it a satisfactorynot to talk
of a finalsettlement. Neither do I consider it binding if and
when, the circumstances under which the Treaty was signedthe
threat of a war of exterminationhave disappeared. But I will
vote for the Treaty simply and solely because I believe that this
course contains the only germ of hope for the realisation of the
Republic in the future, that is, the salvation of the lives of the
Irish people. I will follow no leader except my conscience, and this
is the only attitude my conscience will permit me to adopt.
[cheers].
DR. BRIAN A. CUSACK:
I hope to establish a
record for brevity. We have had this Treaty discussed from every
possible point of view, and every impossible point of view, so that I
do not think very much more can be said to throw any light on it with
a view to acceptance or rejection. One has only to make clear one's
own position, and with me, coming here and during the time I have been
here, my idea has been always the same. I accept Deputy MacCarthy's
suggestion that the election of 1918 was one of self-determination,
but as a result of that election a Government was formed and the
Republican Parliament. So we have one fact to go on. There was a
Republic and there is a Republic [hear, hear]. Now, the
people, in the midst of stormy timesin the darkest days of the
terrorbacked the Republican Government that was in possession
of the country. That is the mandate beyond which I cannot go, and
until the people, by a plebiscite or General Election, after that
trust I have no hesitation in saying I will not vote for this Treaty.
In virtue of our British Citizenship! That is enough to stick
in the gills of any man who wants to discuss this. We are Irish
Republican citizens, and I certainly would not dare, without a mandate
from my constituents, to vote for an Irish Republic entering into
English citizenship. If they themselves accept the position of British
citizenship, then we back down. That is their look-out. They can; they
are masters. The will of the people is supreme. That will was
expressed in 1921, less than nine months ago; and
unless a person had a sort of automatic record put up to hear his
constituents' opinions on every particular question discussed here, he
could not know their finally definite views [Laughter].
In 1921 they voted for the continuance of the Republican Government,
and until a General Election or plebiscite is taken the Deputy so
elected must vote for the Republic. This Treaty does not guarantee
that. Therefore we cannot accept it. We had happy pictures painted as
to the lovely things that would happen when the Free State was
established, and a Deputy from Cork told us that the old idea of
British education in Ireland will be alteredwe will no longer
thank goodness and praise, with a smile, that we are peaceful, happy
English childrenour children will be little Gaelic children.
But the Treaty says they will be British citizens!
MR. M. COLLINS:
It does not.
MISS M. MACSWINEY:
It does.
DR. CUSACK:
I cannot read it in any other
way. Many Deputies pointed out that this Treaty was accepted under a
threat of war, and the Deputy from the University said that was not an
argumentthat it should not be used as an argument to get the
Treaty through the House. I agree with him. The country has been
threatened, and always had war more or less with England. We had got
to a strong vantage ground. I believe we should have held there. We
have the Republic still and, in my opinion, this Dáil cannot,
and has no power to destroy it. The Irish people have the right, and
may do so as they will. But, as I say, there is no power in this
Dáil to destroy it. It cannot destroy the Government which it
established. We had Deputy MacCartan who has been appealed to from all
sides of the House. He talked of chaos. The people have gone through
the terror,
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and this Government did not allow the country to fall into chaos. Will
the ability in this House be less in future years than it has been in
the past few years? Will the strain on it be very much greater? And
still chaos never came on the country. If we had a united policy
to-morrow, the people and they are gallant because they stood
the strain magnificentlythey would stand behind the Dáil
if it rejected this Treaty, and we would still win through. We are
getting very impatient that we may see The Day. Better men than any
here have hoped that God would spare them until that day would come,
but they never let the ideal fall until a separate independent Ireland
was achieved. It can never be independent if we are British citizens.
There is somewhat of a good resemblance between the position of things
now and that of the old Irish Parliament of 1782Ministers
trusting the honour of the English, the others doubting that
honourand I remember reading the Bill brought in by Mr. Flood
that would place beyond question Ireland's power and authority inside
her own four shores. The Bill he moved made over
the sole and exclusive right of the Irish Parliament to make laws
affecting that country in all that concerned its external and internal
affairs whatever. Some such thing is necessary in any agreement we
come to with Englandto make sure that the centre and source of
authority will be the people of Ireland, and not any foreign authority
[cheers]. No King of England, and no Ministry of England
or Government of England, has any power to put that power
herethat power must be derived from the people alone. In this
act it is not so derived. The divisions that are at present existing
are somewhat similar to the divisions that then existed. British
Ministers fostered those divisions, and that Bill was voted out. We
know the resultone hundred and
twenty-one years we have gone through. It is quite possible we
may go through some more of it yet unless some definite action is
taken. The Dáil was, of itself, in unity. The best policy, the
only means of achieving that unity again, is by the rejection of this
Treaty. I do not believe the people would he very divided on the
matterthey certainly would not behind a united Dáil. The
daily papers in Ireland are full of ratify the Treaty
resolutionspublic bodies falling in one after another. We saw
the same before, and one gets suspicious. These bodies were elected as
Republicans and I say when they send any message to me to do other
than carry out the mandate I got, that they are false to the promise
they made, because they got a Republican mandate when they were
elected. These are the views of individual men, and not the voice of
their constituents; and I say that until a General Election or
plebiscite it is not for anyone or any of these bodies to say what
policy should be adopted. One must do and act according to the lights
he has. In doing so I will carry out the mandate given me. I was
elected to this Dáil as a Republican and I will leave it as
one. The people have authority to alter; we have not. There are points
in the Treaty perhaps, worth inquiring into, but upon the essential
parts of itthere is not a word guaranteeing the evacuation of
the troops, or, if there is, I would like to see it pointed out, and
even if there is a personal guarantee given as to when the evacuation
will begin, there is none as to when the evacuation will cease. The
last British troops only left South Africa during the past four or five months. That is a
long time. We heard a good deal of the penetration of British business
interests, but how can we prevent it in future? We will be British
citizens also, and will have common-citizenship with them. If
we are into the thing let us be honest about it. There is no mention
either in the Treaty as to the definite number of troops to be
retained as maintenance parties in the various ports. A communication
written by a Minister has no binding force; it is only his word, and
we have had such good faith kept by British Ministers with this
country I do not think this word will carry very far. There is no
mention either, as to the definite number of British troops to be kept
in North-East Ireland. That is an important point. If the British
troops are taken out of what they are pleased to call Southern
Ireland, and merely transferred to Northern Ireland, I do not
think we are much farther on. These are points which might possibly be
cleared up though it is doubtful. One of the greatest German thinkers
made use of the following sentenceit is a very pregnant
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sentence: Everything in this world depends on disinterestedness of
ideal, and firmness of purpose. We have visualised this Republic
far more clearly than we ever visualised this Free State. We have the
Republic. We have established it; we have visualised it; we have held
to the ideal. If we have sufficient firmness of purpose I believe we
never need let it go. [cheers].
THE SPEAKER:
You did not make a record after
all, Doctor [Laughter].
MR. WILLIAM SEARS:
I would like to give it
as my opinion that if this Treaty is rejected this assembly will be
guilty of as great an act of political folly as is recorded in
history. The plenipotentiaries that we sent over to London were
selected by the President himself and confirmed by this Dáil.
There are no men in the Dáil superior to those, if there are
equals, in political foresight and judgment [hear hear].
For two months they contended with the ablest
diplomats of the world, and they succeeded marvelously, in my opinion.
They did not exceed their rights, we are told, by one iota, and yet
they are put in the dock. We know the pains they went to, while in
London, to keep in touch with Dublin; we know about the daily couriers
and the weekly crossings and even they went so far as to urge the
President himself to come to London to keep in closer touch with them.
And yet they are charged here as if they took the bit in their teeth
when they went to London and acted off their own bat. We sent them to
London to make a bargainwhat are the terms?a bargain,
because we told the world that we were not Republican doctrinaires. We
did not expect them to bring home a Republic, but this Treaty will put
us on the shortest road to the completest independence of the country.
I will not compare the terms of the Treaty that has been signed by
England with the terms of the document that has been turned down by
England. I will not compare the attainable with the unattainable, the
bird in the hand with the bird in the bushthere has been too
much time already wasted in those comparisons. I will refer to some of
the solid material advantages already in the Treaty, and see whether
there is any compromise in our accepting them. For the first time in
700 years the English army is to march out of Ireland. I see no
compromise in that. There have been withdrawals in history, as we
know, and I never knew a withdrawal of the kind to be considered a
compromise. We get charge of our own purse, and our own internal
affairs. Is there any compromise in that? lf the delegates brought
home the Republic there are some gentlemen who, I think, would insist
that England should surrender half her fleet as well; and when we
point out to them that we have a seat at the League of Nations I think
they will complain that the four great powers of
Washington do not include us [Laughter]. I think we
should examine the Treaty and if there are, within the four corners of the Treaty, provisions that will
strengthen our nation we should accept it, and I hold there are such
provisions. If, twelve months ago, the Minister
for Defence was marching out to battle he must have two objectsone, to drive the English army out
of Ireland, and a second, to guard and see that there was no further
invasion. If some one then told him that the British Army was being
fumed out without firing a shot would he not say: Well, then I will
devote all my energies to guarding against another invasion.?
Surely he would not say : Leave them there; I would rather have the
pleasure of putting them out myself. And if anyone came and said:
You will have an opportunity of equipping an Irish Army, surely
he would not have refused it. Deputy Seán T. O'Kelly very
rightly said here that whether this Treaty is accepted or not the
fight for the complete independence of Ireland must go on. Certainly
it will. And we have the opportunity of helping the nation towards
that ideal. If, instead of entering on a disastrous war, we took
charge of the schools and universities of the country, then we would
be taking steps to preserve that ideal. There is a great deal of doubt
in the minds of some Deputies as to the patriotism and the courage of
the Irish race; I say we need not put too great a value upon the
courage of our day and generation. Bishop O'Dwyer, of Limerick, said:
As long as grass grows and water runs there will be men ready to
die to advance the cause of Ireland. And we need not think that
the breed of great reformers died with Pearse and
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Connolly. We need not trouble about the future. Some men think that if
every i in this Treaty is not dotted, and every t not
crossed, the future generations of Irishmen will be such poltroons,
with the example of the past five years before
them, as not to be able to preserve the rights which this Treaty puts
into their hands. I call attention to the Governor-General that will
be placed here by England, and again they think that the Irish people
will be such pitiful snobs that this Englishman, with only his own
society to operate upon, will be able to do, in teeth of the Irish
Government, what a whole string of Lord Lieutenants could not do when
they had our whole national purse at their control, and the English
Army in the country. The thing is absurd. I will remind you of
parallel case. Norway and Sweden were in exactly the same position as
England and Ireland are to-day, and Norway was worsted in the war. She
got an army and parliament, but she had to accept from Sweden a
Governor-General. And if the people of Norway were able to resist the
vice regal blandishments, and keep their independence, as they are
keeping it, will not the Irish people be able to do the same?
[cheers]. I will admit with regard to the Gaelic ideal,
that whether it is in a Free State or Republic, as long as we have
powerful British influences on our flank, it will be a terrible uphill
fight to spread the Irish ideal. We can do that if, instead of the
two parties in this Dáil wrangling with
each other, they combine to advance the Gaelic ideal; then they would
be doing better work for the country. All that was said about the
Irish people here reminds me, as it must remind others, of what was
said about the Irish farmers. It was said that if the Irish farmer got
the land he would betray the country. Yet we know that the sons of the
Irish farmers and the Irish labourers were the back-bone of the I.R.A.
[cheers]. Another point that must be emphasised here is:
when those delegates from Ireland met the delegates from England, on
that terrible nightthat strenuous night when they signed that
documentthere was a deed done that rang around the world.
Deputy Etchingham well said that it was like a battle. It was, in this
way: you can not re-stage that Conference no more than you could
re-stage a battle. Since then much water has flowed under the bridge,
and we are enjoying advantages from what they did that night. Why did
they sign, and why was the Treaty published? These questions have been
asked. I do not mind why it was signed or published, but the Treaty
was signed and published. You talk about the Irish people as if they
were fools, stampeded by the Press; but with the Press against them in
1918 they returned the Sinn Fein Party to power [cheers].
The Irish people are the shrewdest people on God's earth. If you go
down and face themfarmer or labourerhe will tell you you
are a fool if you throw away these advantages [cheers].
You talk about 1918! The man who would tell you he would stand by the
Republic in 1918, what does he say to-day? I say this: if you had that
Treaty in 1918, and the alternative was war, you would not get three per cent. of the people to vote for
you.
A DEPUTY:
We had no Republic then.
MR. SEARS:
If you had the Treaty in 1921 you
would not have three per cent. of the people
around you. A Deputy read the declaration of independence to-day. I
was proud to listen. And some of it said: Basing our claim on the
fact that the people of Ireland are behind us. Very well. You went
on the platform and said: We have the people of Ireland behind
us. Look behind you now. They are not behind you. You have not
three per cent. of the people behind you. Are you
going to commit them to the shambles? What is that war going to be?
From the other side we got a hint. We are going to have a march
through Georgia like Sherman, when he burned every town and
village and haggard on his path. You would have thirty-two Shermans marching through Ireland for the
difference between this Treaty and Document No. 2. I say you have not
the people of Ireland behind you, because it is madness, sheer
madness. There is no common sense in that madness. The people of
Ireland are a shrewd people; they know a good thing when they see it,
and they have got a good thing in this Treaty. Some men say: Why,
when they pulled it so far,
p.255
did they not pull it a little farther? As if there was no one at
all on the other end of the rope! [Laughter and cheers].
You want to hold up the two documents and see
what is the difference between them. The difference between this
Treaty and the other document is that England's signature is to the
one document, and in our time it will never be to the other. That
makes all the difference in the world. Why not go one step farther? I
will tell you. That one step would bring you out of the British
Commonwealth of Nations and even Lloyd George, if he tried, could not
carry his people that one last step. Your delegates would not pull
that off if they were there from that moment until this. These are the
realities of the situation. The men who came out in 1916 were under no
false pretence; they came out on their own individual responsibility.
I saw men going to fight for this ideal; I have not the slightest
doubt about itwhether you fight for it or notI know men
in this room who would fight for the ideal of an Irish Republic. I do
not agree with Doctor MacCartan. I applaud the menhonestly
applaud them for itfor it would be a bad day if there were not
Die-hards in the Irish nation. I say: God speed the Die-
hards. Let them fight on, but do not let them step in the way of
our country gaining the material benefits she is so badly in need of.
We are entitled to that. It is all very well to speak of the flame,
but the candle must be kept going too. Now I say this Treaty is a
victory for the Irish Republican Army. This Treaty is the fruits of
efforts of the most gallant band in history who fought against fearful
odds here and suffered and it is the fruits of the victory of the most
patient and heroic people on God's earththe Irish
peopleand they want to consolidate what has been gained, and
when the day comes to make another advance. I share the hope of the
Minister for Foreign Affairs that, with a stronger Ireland, we will be
able to bring about further achievements with out another devastating
war; and that we shall evolve and rise to greater heights; and that
our status will grow too. I am convinced that Ireland will yet see the
fondest dreams of Tone and Pearse realised to the full.
[cheers].
MR. ART O'CONNOR:
I claim the indulgence of
the House for a few moments. I do not know whether I was the cause of
those interruptionswhether I brought them on by my tone or
temper or by what I was sayingbut the result is that one very
material portion of what I said in my speech yesterday is so
disjointed and broken up it may be misconstrued or misinterpreted by
people in the country who read it. I refer to the portion in which I
was alluding to Farmers' Associations and Farmers' Unions. I hope that
no misconstruction will be put upon that. There is no man in this
assembly has a greater admiration for the work that the farmers have
done for the Republic. It is an ill bird that fouls its own nest. I am
a farmer's son. I come from farming people, and I hope and trust that
the farmers of Ireland and the farming members of this Dáil
will not think that I was attempting to throw dirty water on the
farmers of the country. There's an old proverb which says that there
are three things that cannot be recalled: the
spoken word, the hunter's arrow, and the missed opportunity. The
spoken word was yesterday, perhaps the arrow that might
have hurt the feelings of some of the people of this country. The
members of the Farmers' unions have helped me in my work as Minister
of Agriculture. So now I take this opportunity of making this amende honourable, and apologising to the farmers for
any of the things that might be misconstrued in anything I may have
said.
DR. CROWLEY:
I am going against this Treaty,
and I am stating briefly my reasons for doing so. I do so because I
believe the people who elected me as their representative in 1918 are,
each and every one, in their hearts Republican, and I believe, also,
that if they were given a free choice between the Republic and this
Treaty they would without exception, vote for the Republic. I have no
doubt whatever as to the circumstances under which it was signed, and
from the speeches and arguments we have heard in this House, I cannot
help thinking that if, during the British Terror, the Irish Army gave
the civil population the choice of voting for the continuance of the
Terror, or the Partition Bill of 1920, the people would be then
advised, as they are now, for the
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same reason, to vote for the Partition Bill. For the same reason as
they are now clamouring for the ratification of the Treaty it would be
said of those of us who would be voting against the Partition Bill as
is said of us nowthat we were not carrying out the wishes of
our constituents. I can go down to those who are responsible for my
election and say to them that I have kept the pledges I made to them
and, if they so desire it, they can have back the trust placed in me,
and I will give it to them without blemish; but it would not be
without blemish if I voted for this so called Free State of Southern
Ireland.
MR. JAMES BURKE:
I suppose because I happen
to be a lawyer it is necessary to begin with an apology. I shall do so
in order to put myself in order. In case anybody here is afraid,
because I happen to belong to that profession, I am going to indulge
in a long and laboured dissertation on constitutional law, I shall set
their minds at rest on that question immediately. I may say in passing
I am afraid that the greatest offenders in this respect have not been
the professional lawyers, but the amateur lawyers. I think we have
heard quite enough on this subject from both sides of the House
already. I do not think it has done very much to elucidate the matter
under discussion. I have been fighting English constitutional law in
Ireland since I was called to the Irish Bar in 1916. I never held any
position in a British court but in the dock, and I think if I were now
to take my stand on British constitutional law I would be going the
best possible way about justifying Deputy Etchingham's remark that we
are marching into the Empire with our hands up. Accordingly I am not
going to say anything about English constitutional law. Instead, I
would want to state, as briefly and concisely as I can, my reasons for
the position I hold in regard to this Treaty, and in particular those
reasons which were not mentioned by the other Deputies of this House.
I was returned unopposed at the General Election of 1918 for the
constituency of Mid-Tipperary, on the Republican platform. In my
election speech on that occasion I laid stress on three policies which, I believed, if judiciously
combined, would have led to the independence of the country. First,
there was the old Sinn Fein policy as outlined by Arthur Griffith;
second, appeal to the Peace Conference, then sitting, for recognition
of our right to self-determination; and the third was the driving of
the British Government out of Ireland by armed force, backed by the
moral opinion of the world, particularly the United States. I did not
tell the people of Tipperary on that occasion that we were going to
secure our independence by armed force alone, and if I had told them
that, I do not believe I would ever have been elected; and that, in my
opinion, is the only alternative that those opposed to ratification of
the Treaty have now to lay before the Irish people, since all the
other policies contained in that programme have now disappeared. And
in laying that programme before my constituents I did not consider
myself a mere visionary. I did not do it because I wanted to keep
alive a tradition, or hand something down to posterity. I did it
because I believed it was practical politics, and if I had not
considered it was practical politics, I would consider it criminal to
induce the Irish people to vote for it. In justification of my belief
on that occasion, I want to state we were within an ace of winning
because of the heroism of the Irish people and the Irish Army, and
because of the reflection of that heroic effort in the unofficial
pressure from the United States brought to bear on the British
Government. As you here appear to despise itthe Minister for
Finance has, on a couple of occasions, seen fitting to make what I
felt were, perhaps, unfair remarks about the United States. The
country that Lord Northcliffe felt worthwhile to spend 200,000 on
propaganda in, to employ ten thousand
specially trained journalists for advocating the case against Ireland
and Germany, is not a country to be despised. I know from my own
practical experience in the United States that many of those who
helped us, financially and otherwise, did so in spite of pressure
which, although of a different kind, was just us hard to resist as
that which was applied here to those who stood for the Republican
ideal. At the time of the election in 1918 I believe that an
international situation had been created such as would have compelled
the United States, in its own interests, either to declare war on
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England, or to withdraw from her its moral and financial support,
without which her Empire would have become disintegrated; and I
believe if things were kept sufficiently hotand were, in
Ireland, further forcedthose elements in the United States who
were naturally sympathetic to Ireland would draw in a lot of other
elements opposed to British influence from other motives bringing
aboutat all events they would have been conciliated and made
sympatheticbringing about from this war, or from this
revolution of spirit on the part of the United States, three things: First of all, the destruction or the
disintegration of the British Empire; secondly, the defeat or
scrapping of the British Fleet; and thirdly, Irish-Americans fighting
all the time for freedom as we herefor an Irish Republic. But I
then maintained, and still maintain, that no matter what you call
itan Irish Free Sate in external association with the British
Empire, or an Irish Free State in external association, or, for that
matter a nominal Irish Republicso, long as it is enclosed by
the iron wall of England's Navy you never can have a real Republic.
There has been a lot of talk about slippery slopes, and the effort is
made to create the impression that the Irish Republic was standing as
solid as a rock until the Minister for Finance and the Minister for
Foreign Affairs tore it away from its moorings and dragged it over to
London. In my opinion we first broke away from the moorings when Judge
Cohalan and John Devoy of New YorkI feel myself in some respect
responsible also. I do not intend to cast any reflection on any
individual in the matter. I am not going to discuss the merits or
demerits of rival parties.
MISS M. MACSWINEY:
On a point of order. What
on earth have individual policies to do with our Republican
Government?
MR. BURKE:
I am discussing foreign policy, I
believe. I am not going to enter here into the merits or demerits of
the rival parties in that policy; but I wish to maintain that neither
Mr. Devoy nor Judge Cohalan would ever hand over the friendship of the
Irish Race in America to the British Government for anything short of
an absolute independent Republic; whereas the men substituted in their
place wrote welcoming the Treaty or Pact before the signatories' names
were dry. We started down the slippery slopes when the President
agreed to accept a relation between Ireland and England similar to
that between Cuba and the United States.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
Once more I must
protest against these misrepresentations.
MR. BURKE:
I say so far as the Platt
Amendment
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
You know perfectly well
the first article of the Platt Amendment was a declaration of
independence.
MR. BURKE:
That is a matter of
dispute.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
It is not. You should
read the article and let it go down before the House.
MR. BURKE:
That is my contention; I am
giving my own reasons here. We went still further down the slippery
slopes when the President issued a manifesto to Ireland departing
still further from the separatist ideal.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
What is that
document?
MR. BURKE:
A letter you wrote.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
It is very important,
because I stand as the symbol of this Republic and fifty times in this debate references have been made
to this subject in one way or another. I ask any member here to point
to any thing I have said, publicly or privately that bears the
interpretation that is now being sought to put upon it, If I did that
I would deserve to be impeached.
.MR. BURKE:
As soon as I have
done
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
I say it would be a
matter of impeachment. If any member here
MR. BURKE:
I am not saying you gave away
anything so far. I am speaking at present. As soon us we
p.258
agreed to enter into negotiations with the British Government while
their troops were still in occupation of our territory, we took
another step downwards; and when, after a long series of letters, the
Cabinet and President appointed plenipotentiaries to enquire how Irish
national aspirations could be reconciled with the British Empire, we
took another step down the slippery slopes. I am quite prepared to
admit from the position as left by the President to the position as
represented by the documents we are discussing was quite a
considerable slide; and in spite of what some members on our side of
the House said, I am quite prepared to admit it was a very material
slide; but from the position of an Irish Republic as I understand and
define a Republicwhen the British Navy is at the bottom of the
seawas a still greater slide. Whereas one slide was gradual,
the other slide was taken in face of the valuable considerations
contained in the present document. I am not going to criticise either
party. I am very sorry the President took so much objection to my
remarks.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
Because they are not
true.
MR. BURKE:
I am only trying to make the
position clear. I am not going to say one word either for or against
the Treaty. The Treaty is not sufficiently bad to prevent my voting
for it, and it is not sufficiently good to prevent my voting against
it if I saw any rational alternative. But none has been produced so
far. It is a slippery slope, but however, at long last we have reached
a landing stage. The people opposed to the Treaty say we are not to
get off here, but put out again in the expectation of getting back to
the position from which we started. I believe if we take these
people's advice we shall be more likely to continue sliding down than
sliding up. That is why I am in favour of the approval of this Treaty.
[cheers].
MR. J. MACGRATH:
I move the
adjournment.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
I again, simply for the
honour of the nation and the honour of the position I hold, wish to
say I regard my office as a sacred trust. I said when I took it that I
wanted it for the benefit of the Irish people, and that I should
regard my duty as looking after the interests of the Irish people. But
I defy any person in this Dáil, or in Ireland or in America, or
anywhere else, to point out where I have departed one tittle, or one
iota, or one comma from the position of the Republic as established by
the Irish people, either in public or private. The members of the
Dáil know that one of the reasons why I did not go to London
was that I wanted to keep that symbol of the Irish Republic
pureeven from insinuationlest any word across the table
from me would, in any sense, give away the Republic.
[Applause].
MR. M. COLLINS:
There is a motion for the
adjournment which I want to support. I also want to say there was no
suggestion on the part of the Deputy from Tipperary, no suggestion
that the President had done anything; but I do again, for the sake of
the Dáil, protest against any insinuation that I have given
away anything. I have been the custodian of the honour of the country,
and I have given away nothing. [Applause].
MR. DAVID CEANNT:
I would like to make a
suggestion: that all Deputies making insinuations against the
President have the documents there read out to the House.
It was agreed that the House adjourn until 11 o'clock
to-morrow.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
I would like to give
notice that I will move to-morrow the amendment. You have got the
proposals now.
MR. M. COLLINS:
I suggest that we should
take for and against the Treaty first. The document has
been placed in our hands now, and I take it that it is a matter for
our consideration, and the circumstances, I take it, of the
consideration will probably be different from what they are. We ought
to take, in my judgment, the opinionwe ought to take the
division on the Treaty and then take the document.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
I think it will have to
be decided by a ruling.
p.259
MR. DAN MACCARTHY:
Can you have an amendment
to this Treaty? Must not the vote for or against the Treaty?
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
This a resolution. I do
not propose to amend the Treaty. I propose to move an amendment to the
resolution.
MR. GRIFFITH:
I submit that a change has
been made in Document No. 2 which has been before us. It is not within
any member's power to do such a thing without the unanimous consent of
this House, and I entirely object to it.
MR. COLIVET:
I cannot find anything in the
Orders to prevent any member, any time, from moving an amendment. I am
not now supporting the idea that it should be moved.
MR. GRIFFITH:
A document has been put into
our hands this evening that is not Document No. 2.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
You are quibbling. The
Minister for Foreign Affairs is quibbling now.
MR. GRIFFITH:
A document has been put in
which is not Document No. 2.
MR. MACCARTHY:
On a point of order. The
President is a touchy man. He jumps up very quickly when one puts his
own interpretation on this document. Is it in order for the President
to call the Minister for Foreign Affairs a quibbler?
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
I say that the word
quibble has been used here several times. If ever it was once
true it is in this case, because there is nothing changed but in the
setting upa slight change to have it in final form.
MR. GRIFFITH:
This House has here the
document placed in our hands Document No. 2 consisted of twenty three clauses and an appendix. This new
document consists of seventeen clauses. Six clauses are omitted.
MR. COLIVET:
Are we right in discussing the
matter before it is moved at all?
MR. KEVIN O'HIGGINS:
I would like to make
this point. This document, so-called
THE SPEAKER:
The only motion before us is
for the adjournment of the House.
MR. M. COLLINS:
I have no objection to
having this document discussed. I was simply putting forward my idea
for a course of procedure.
THE SPEAKER:
It is evident the course of
procedure is not accepted by members on both sides.
MR. MACCARTHY:
Is it in order for an
amendment to be moved to the Treaty?
THE SPEAKER:
Not to the Treaty but an
amendment can he moved to the motion for the approval of the
Treaty.
MR. KEVIN O'HIGGINS:
This document embodies
a post-rejection policy and it should be a matter for the post
rejection Cabinet if the Treaty is rejected.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
I am responsible for
the proposals and the House will have to decide on them. I am going to
choose my own procedure.
MR. GRIFFITH:
I submit it is not in the
competence of the President to choose his own procedure. This is
either a constitutional body or it is not. If it is an autocracy let
you say so and we will leave it.
PRESIDENT DE VALERA:
In answer to that I am
going to propose an amendment in my own terms. It is for the House to
decide whether they will take it or not.
MR. MILROY:
The President says he he is not
proposing an amendment to the Treaty, but is not the effect of his
proposal one which is a material amendment of the Treaty?
MR. SEAN T. O'KELLY:
The amendment has not
yet been proposed, and the only motion before the House is the one for
adjournment.
The House then adjourned.
p.261