There is a good deal of ignorance in Great Britain, especially among the younger generation, as to the true character of the Nationalist aim, and it is largely because of this that Home Rule has received any support from even a section of the British people. The Nationalists naturally spend a good deal of their time in throwing dust in the eyes of the British electors. If they said in Great Britain, as they say in America and in Ireland, that they are striving for the establishment of an independent Parliament, they know their scheme would fail immediately. ‘Power to manage our own affairs’ is a familiar Nationalist phrase, but Mr. Gladstone's last Home Rule Bill would have given them greater power than the management of their ‘own affairs,’ dangerous though this would be. Some Radical politicians labour under the impression that the Nationalists only desire a system of local government similar to that in Great Britain. For the information of such people it may be pointed out that Ireland already enjoys local government almost identical with local government in Great Britain. The
Mr. Patrick Ford is the paymaster of the Nationalist party, and he certainly would not be satisfied with a glorified County Council in Dublin. He wants to have no dealings with Great Britain, and he has said so in language more forcible than polite. ‘Not only would the Irish race the world over,’ he wrote regarding England, ‘rejoice at your fall, but would to-morrow be willing to sacrifice their lives for the immortality of the honour of being the chosen instruments in the work of bringing your Babylon down to hell.’ Again: ‘If any set of Irishmen see their way to successfully attack England by physical force, why let them go ahead and God bless them. If there is any dynamite or lyddite that will blow the British
A man like this, who gloated over the Phoenix Park murders and who wrote of Sir Curzon Wyllie's assassin in 1909 as the ‘latest martyr to the English Tyranny,’ would not likely submit for any length of time to the Irish Parliament remaining subordinate to the Imperial Parliament. Complete independence is the keynote of the Irish demand, as the following extracts show:
Mr. Parnell, at Cincinnati:
‘When we have undermined English misgovernment we have paved the way for Ireland to take her place among the nations of the earth. And let us not forget that that is the ultimate goal at which all we Irishmen aim. None of us, whether we are in America or in Ireland — or wherever we may be — will be satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which keeps Ireland bound to England.’
The Irish World, March 6, 1880.
At Cork, October 3rd, 1880:
‘We have determined to do our utmost to make Ireland great, prosperous, and free — to take the power of governing Ireland out of the hands of the English Parliament and people, and to transfer it into the hands of our own people. Determined as we are to achieve these ends, we believe that we can only achieve them by making the land of Ireland as free as it was when the waters of the Flood left it.’
At Castlebar, November 3rd, 1885:
‘Speaking for myself, and I believe for the Irish people and for all my colleagues, I have to declare that we will never accept, either expressly or implied, anything but the full and complete right to arrange our own affairs, and to make our land a nation; to secure for her, free from outside control, the right to direct her own cause among the people of the world.’
At Cork, January, 1885:
‘We cannot, under the British Constitution, ask for more than the restitution of Grattan's Parliament. (Renewed cheering.) But no man has the right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation. (Great cheers.) No man has a right to say to his country ‘Thus far shalt thou go and no further,’ and we have never attempted to fix the ‘ne plus ultra’ to the progress of Ireland's nationhood, and we never shall.’
Parnell Commission Report, p. 21.
At London, March 17th, 1885:
‘We can none of us do more than strive for that which may seem attainable to-day, but we ought at the same time to recollect that we should not impede or hamper the march of our nation, that though our programme may be limited and small it should be such a one as shall not prevent hereafter the fullest realisation of the hopes of Ireland.’
At Dublin:
‘I will accept the Home Rule compromise of Gladstone as an instalment of our rights, but I refuse to
At Ballina, April 20th, 1881:
‘It was for these things that I took my coat off in 1880, and it is for these things that I have got my coat off still, and that I intend to keep it off until we have banished traitors and seceders from the Irish ranks, until we have secured once more a united army and a united country, pressing on for the recovery of Irish freedom and Irish legislative independence.’
Mr. W. K. Redmond, at Gorey, August 23rd, 1885:
‘They did not desire to have anything more to do with kings and queens, for the only style of government to which Irishmen could look for freedom and prosperity was one which should be democratic and republican.’
Mr. John Redmond, at Dublin, April 23rd, 1889:
‘Why are we asked to toast ‘Ireland a Nation’ . . . It is the principle that the sons of Ireland and they alone have the right to rule the destinies of Ireland. Gentlemen, I am prepared to maintain that, more than that no Irish rebel leader in the past asked, and less than that, I am here to maintain, that no Irish leader of the present day can, or ought to accept.’
At Kanturk, November 17th, 1895:
‘Ireland for the Irish is our motto, and the consummation of all our hopes and aspirations is, in one word, to drive English rule, sooner or later, bag and baggage from our country.’
At Newry, 1897:
‘I remember when Parnell was asked whether he would, on behalf of the United Nationalist nation that he represented, accept as a final settlement the Home Rule compromise proposed by Gladstone. I remember his answer. He said: — ‘I believe in the policy of taking from England anything we can wring from her which will strengthen our arms to go on for more. I will accept the Home Rule compromise of Gladstone as an instalment of our rights, but I refuse to say that it is a final settlement of the national question, and I declare that no man shall set a boundary on the onward march of the nation.’ That is our (Redmondite) motto.’ — Irish Daily Independent, June 17th, 1897.
At Cork, October 23rd, 1901: ‘This United Irish League is not merely an agrarian movement. It is first, last, and all the time a national movement; and those of us who are endeavouring to rouse the farmers of Ireland, as we endeavoured twenty years ago, in the days of the Land League, to rouse them, are doing so, not merely to obtain the removal of their particular grievances, but we believe by rousing them we will be strengthening the national movement and helping us to obtain our end, which is, after all, national independence of Ireland.’
At Worcester, United States, November 14th, 1901:
‘What are our motives and objects? First of all, our ultimate goal is the national independence of our country. I say, in its essence, the national movement is the same to-day as it was in the days of Hugh O'Neill, of Owen Roe, of Emmett, or of Wolfe Tone — to overturn the foreign domination in our land and to put Irishmen in charge of their own affairs. The object has always been the same, and if we are working by methods that seem slow and ineffective to a free and an armed people, our critics should remember that people must labour with what they have at hand. Whether the freedom of Ireland is attained by moral suasion or physical force, what difference so long as it is achieved?’
At New Ross, June 23rd, 1907:
‘We to-day from this County Wexford send therefore this message to England. We tell her that we Wexfordmen to-day hate their rule just as bitterly as our forefathers did when they shed their blood on this spot. We tell her that we are as much rebels to her rule to-day as our forefathers were in '98.’ — Freeman's Journal, June 24th, 1907.
At New York (interviewed by New York Herald), September, 1908:
‘What Ireland wants is Home Rule and a Government of its own, and that is what Ireland is going to have. I hope to see Ireland placed in the scale of
At Syracuse, U.S.A.: Nationalist
‘They ask us to demand more, and I answer in the words of Parnell: ‘Let us get this first and then demand more.’ We do not set a limit on the march of a nation.’ — Irish World, Nov. 9, 1910.
Mr. Joseph Devlin, M.P., at Philadelphia, November, 1908:
‘I believe in the separation of Ireland from England until Ireland is as free as the air we breathe.’ — Irish World, Nov. 28, 1908.
At New York, June, 1902:
‘Gentlemen, I know there are many men in America who think that the means which we are operating today for the good of Ireland are not sufficiently sharp and decisive. . . . I would suggest to those who have constituted themselves the censors of our movement, would it not be well to give our movement a fair chance to allow us to have as owners the tillers of the land, to have an Irish Parliament that will give our people all authority over the police and the judiciary and all government in the nation, and when equipped with comparative freedom, then would be the time for those who think we should destroy the last link that binds us to England to operate by whatever means
Mr. John Dillon, M.P. :
‘I have never hesitated to express my admiration for the men of '67 (the Fenians), and I declare that our movement is, in all its main principles and the great issues upon which it aims, the legitimate successor of that movement.’ — Freeman's Journal, Dec. 9th, 1888.
At Moville:
‘I say deliberately that I should never have dedicated my life as I have done to this great struggle if I did not see at the end of this great struggle the crowning and the consummation of our work, a free and independent nation.’ — Freeman's Journal, Dec. 5th, 1904.
At Tipperary:
‘That grand meeting in the heart of the great County of Tipperary reminded him of twenty-five years ago, and he took it as a sign of the national revival in Tipperary, as in other counties of Ireland, which will sweep before it all vestiges of English rule in Ireland. They never would have in Ireland a really prosperous and happy land until that rule is swept clean out of it.’ — Cork Examiner (N), Jan. 20th, 1905
Mr. T. P. O'Connor, at Fall River, Massachusetts, October 7th, 1887:
‘The Irish Parliamentary party does not intend to lay down their arms, their constitutional weapons, until they have obtained exclusive independence.’
Father Kavanagh, at Enniscorthy, June 10th, 1908:
‘Ireland,’ he said, ‘would not accept the position of a dependent or an inferior. Ireland must be a self relying nation, not a mere province to be guided and controlled from outside. (Cheers.) She must be free to develop her resources, intellectual and material. What we asked was comprised in the words, ‘Give us back our own.’ . . . We looked forward to the restoration of our native Parliament; but to satisfy the Irish people the Irish Parliament must in all that concerns Ireland be entirely independent and supreme in its decisions. (Cheers.) If it were not so it would be a mockery of our hopes, and if offered in that form he trusted it would be rejected with the contempt it deserved.’ (Cheers.)
Many more quotations of a similar sort might be given, but these should be sufficient to convince any thoughtful man that the object of the Home Rule agitation is to sweep away every vestige of British rule. Catholic Progress, voicing the ecclesiastical view, was not even content with the prospect of destroying British rule, for it wrote:
Home Rule would not settle the Irish question; it would simply be the starting point for a new and more dangerous agitation.