“The Erne shall rise in rude torrents, hills shall be rent,
The sea shall roll in red waves, and blood be poured out,
Every mountain glen in Ireland, and the bogs shall quake,”
is it to be supposed that these apocalyptic disturbances are to usher in
merely a statutory legislation subordinate to the imperial parliament at
Westminster whose supreme authority over Ireland shall remain unimpaired
“anything in this Act notwithstanding”?
The student of Irish affairs who does not know Irish literature is
ignorant of the awful intensity of the Irish desire for Separation as he
is ignorant of one of the chief forces which make Separation inevitable.
V
The first man who spoke, or seemed to speak, for Ireland and who was not
a Separatist was Henry Grattan. And it was against Henry Grattan’s
Constitution that Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen rose. Thus the Pale
made common cause with the Gael and declared itself Separatist. It will
be conceded that Wolfe Tone was a Separatist: he is _The_ Separatist. It
will be conceded that Robert Emmet was a Separatist. O’Connell was not a
Separatist: but, as the United Irishmen revolted against Grattan, Young
Ireland revolted against O’Connell. And Young Ireland, in its final
development, was Separatist. To Young Ireland belong three of the great
Separatist voices. After Young Ireland the Fenians; and it will be
admitted that the Fenians were Separatists. They guarded themselves
against future misrepresentation by calling themselves the Irish
Republican Brotherhood.
It thus appears that Ireland has been Separatist up to the beginning of
the generation that is now growing old. Separatism, in fact, is the
national position. Whenever an Irish leader has taken up a position
different from the national position he has been repudiated by the next
generation. The United Irishmen repudiated Grattan. The Young Irelanders
repudiated O’Connell. The Irish Volunteers have repudiated Mr. Redmond.
The chain of the Separatist tradition has never once snapped during the
centuries. Veterans of Kinsale were in the ’41; veterans of Benburb
followed Sarsfield. The poets kept the fires of the nation burning from
Limerick to Dungannon. Napper Tandy of the Volunteers was Napper Tandy
of the United Irishmen. The Russell of 1803 was the Russell of 1798. The
Robert Holmes of ’98 and 1803 lived to be a Young Irelander. Three Young
Irelanders were the founders of Fenianism. The veterans of Fenianism
stand to-day with the Irish Volunteers. So the end of the Separatist
tradition is not yet.