Irish nationality is an ancient spiritual tradition, one of the oldest
and most august traditions in the world. Politically, Ireland’s claim
has been for freedom in order to the full and perpetual life of that
tradition. The generations of Ireland have gone into battle for no other
thing. To the Irish mind for more than a thousand years freedom has had
but one definition. It has meant not a limited freedom, a freedom
conditioned by the interests of another nation, a freedom compatible
with the suzerain authority of a foreign parliament, but absolute
freedom, the sovereign control of Irish destinies. It has meant not the
freedom of a class, but the freedom of a people. It has meant not the
freedom of a geographical fragment of Ireland, but the freedom of all
Ireland, of every sod of Ireland.
And the freedom thus defined has seemed to the Irish the most desirable
of all earthly things. They have valued it more than land, more than
wealth, more than ease, more than empire.
“Fearr bheith i mbarraibh fuairbheann
I bhfeitheamh shuainghearr ghrinnmhear,
Ag seilg troda ar fhéinn eachtrann
’Gá bhfuil fearann bhur sinnsear,”
said Angus Mac Daighre O’Daly. “Better to be on the tops of the old bens
keeping watch, short of sleep yet gladsome, urging fight against the
foreign soldiery that hold your fathers’ land.” And Fearflatha O’Gnive
spoke for the generations that preferred exile to slavery:
“Má thug an deonughadh dhi
Sacsa nua darbh’ ainm Eire
Bheith re a linn-si i láimh bíodhbhadh,
Do’n inse is cáir ceileabhradh.”
“If thou hast consented (O God) that there be a new England named
Ireland, to be ever in the grip of a foe then to this isle we must bid
farewell.”
I make the contention that the national demand of Ireland is fixed and
determined; that that demand has been made by every generation; that we
of this generation receive it as a trust from our fathers; that we are
bound by it; that we have not the right to alter it or to abate it by
one jot or tittle; and that any undertaking made in the name of Ireland
to accept in full satisfaction of Ireland’s claim anything less than the
generations of Ireland have stood for is null and void, binding on
Ireland neither by the law of God nor by the law of nations.
A nation can bind itself by treaty to do or to forego specific things,
as a man can bind himself by contract; but no treaty which places a
nation’s body and soul in the power of another nation, no treaty which
abnegates a nation’s nationhood, is binding on that nation, any more
than a contract of perpetual slavery is binding on an individual. If in
a drunken frolic or in mere abject unmanliness I sell myself and my
posterity to a slaveholder to have and to hold as a chattel property to
himself and his heirs, am I bound by the contract? Are my children bound
by it? Can any legal contract make a wrong thing binding? And if not,
can a contract executed in my name, but without my express or implied
authority, make a wrong thing binding on me and on my children’s
children?
Ireland’s historic claim is for Separation. Ireland has authorised no
man to abate that claim. The man who, in the name of Ireland, accepts as
“a final settlement” anything less by one fraction of an iota than
Separation from England will be repudiated by the new generation as
surely as O’Connell was repudiated by the generation that came after
him. The man who, in return for the promise of a thing which is not
merely less than Separation, but which denies Separation and proclaims
the Union perpetual, the man who, in return for this, declares peace
between Ireland and England and sacrifices to England as a
peace-holocaust the blood of fifty thousand Irishmen, is guilty of so
immense an infidelity, so immense a crime against the Irish nation, that
one can only say of him that it were better for that man (as it were
certainly better for his country) that he had not been born.
I have proved this terrible infidelity against a living Irishman,
against all who have supported him, against the majority of Irishmen who
are now past middle life, if I can establish that the historic claim of
Ireland has been for Separation. And I proceed to establish this.