NEW IRELAND PAMPHLETS · NUMBER THREE
PRICE TWOPENCE
THE
ISSUE
The Case for Sinn Fein
BY
LECTOR
AS PASSED BY CENSOR.
NEW IRELAND PUBLISHING COMPANY, Limited
13 FLEET STREET, DUBLIN
1918
THE ISSUE
INDEPENDENCE.
Does Ireland wish to be free? Do we alone among the ancient Nations ofEurope desire to remain slaves? That, and that alone, is the questionwhich every Irish elector has now to answer. Let us put everything elseout of our minds as irrelevant claptrap. Let nothing distract us from thissingle issue of Liberty. We must turn a deaf ear to sentimental whiningabout what this or that man did, his length of service, his “fighting onthe floor of the House,” and so on. Whatever may have been done in the wayof small doles, petty grants, and big talk, the fact is that we are notFree and the issue is, Do we want to be Free?
Why should we be afraid of Freedom? Would any sane adult voluntarilyprefer to be a slave, to be completely in the control and power ofanother? Men do not willingly walk into jail; why, then, should a wholepeople? The men who are afraid of national liberty are unworthy even ofpersonal liberty; they are the victims of that slave mentality whichEnglish coercion and corruption have striven to create in Ireland. WhenMr. John Dillon, grown tremulous and garrulous and feeble, asked for anational convention this autumn “to definitely forswear an IrishRepublic,” he was asking Ireland to commit an act of national apostasy andsuicide. Would you definitely forswear your personal freedom? Will Mr.John Dillon hand his cheque-book and property over to some stranger andindenture himself as a serf or an idiot? When he does, but not till then,we shall believe that the Irish Nation is capable of sentencing itselfcheerfully to penal servitude for all eternity.
It was not always thus. “I say deliberately,” said Mr. John Dillon atMoville in 1904, “that I should never have dedicated my life as I havedone to this great struggle, if I did not see at the end of it thecrowning and consummation of our work—A FREE AND INDEPENDENT IRELAND.” Itis sad that, fourteen years later, when the end is in sight, Mr. Dillonshould be found a recreant and a traitor to his past creed. Thedegeneration of such a man is a damning indictment of Westminsterism.
Parnell, too save for one short moment when he tried by compromise to foolEnglish Liberalism but was foiled, proclaimed his belief in IrishIndependence.
This is what Parnell said at Cincinatti on 23rd February, 1880:—
“When we have undermined English misgovernment, we have paved the wayfor Ireland to take her place among the nations of the earth. And letus not forget that that is the ultimate goal at which all we Irishmenaim. None of us, whether we be in America or in Ireland, or whereverwe may be, will be satisfied until we have destroyed the last linkwhich keeps Ireland bound to England.”
Were he alive to-day, when the last link is snapping, on what side wouldParnell be? Would he forswear an Irish Republic or would he proclaim oncemore, as he said in Cork (21st Jan., 1885): “No man has a right to fix theboundary of the march of a Nation. No man has a right to say: Thus farshalt thou go and no farther. And we have never attempted to fix the neplus ultra to the progress of Ireland’s nationhood and we never shall.”
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