spectacle of national disunion and apathy, of failing vigour and vanishing
ideals, it saw the beginning of a movement destined to arrest the decline
of one department of the national life. The foundation of the Gaelic
League in 1893 may be regarded as the turning point in the history of the
language. When it was on the verge of extinction its decline was stayed
by the enthusiastic patriotism of Dr. Douglas Hyde. Non-political and
non-sectarian, the League worked for the restoration, preservation and
diffusion of the Irish language, Irish music and Irish industries. In its
councils Catholic priests and laymen worked side by side with Protestant
laymen and ministers. It not only revived the language (its first and main
object) but it proved incidentally, as if in answer to a frequent but
foolish criticism, that Irishmen of different creeds and political
opinions could sink their differences in the common interests of
patriotism. It kept rigidly and sternly aloof from all connection with
professedly political parties. It had no more to do with official
Nationalism than it had to do with Ulster Unionism. It resisted with
success the attempts of some of the clergy to interfere with its
programme: in the case of the parish priest of Portarlington who objected
to mixed classes on the specious ground of public morals it asserted its
rights to control its own activities and established once for all, so far
as it was concerned, the principle that the sphere of the clergy's
activities is not co-extensive with human life. It criticized the
Hierarchy with as much independence as it would have criticized a local
Board of Guardians; and in the end it won and held the enthusiastic
support of the best elements in Irish life. Looking from things temporal
and devoting itself to things of the mind, it widened the horizon and
cleared the outlook of many districts through all Ireland. P. H. Pearse
said with truth "The Gaelic League will be recognized in history as the
most revolutionary influence that ever came into Ireland." The revolution
which it wrought was moral, intellectual and spiritual and its influence
in strengthening and developing the national character can hardly be
over-estimated. Blamed alike for doing too much and for not doing enough,
it adhered with undeviating consistency to its own programme and has been
fully justified by its work. It stimulated activities in spheres far
remote from its own. It enriched Anglo-Irish literature through the works
of writers to whom it opened a new field and for whom it provided a fresh
stimulus. There is hardly a writer in Ireland to-day of any promise in
either prose or verse who does not owe a heavy debt to the work of the
Gaelic League.
The Gaelic League proceeded upon the assumption that Irishmen possessed
and ought to possess an interest in the language of their own country. It
did not argue the point or indulge in academic discussions upon the
utility of Gaelic as a medium of communication or upon the psychology of
language. Its simple appeal to a natural human feeling found a response
wider than could have been evoked by a learned controversy or effected as
the fruit of a dialectical victory. But language is only a part of
nationality and the attachment of a human being to the language of his
country is only a special case of his attachment to the nation. This,
though the Gaelic League held aloof from all politics (in the narrow sense
of the word), is what gave to the work of the Gaelic League a real
political importance. The stimulation of national sentiment in one
department gave a stimulus to the same sentiment in other departments, and
the new and vigorous national sense which it fostered was bound to lead
sooner or later to expression in political action. But even after this
political activity began to be manifest, the League confined itself to its
original work, and held as much aloof from politics infused by its own
spirit as from the forms of political action which held the field when its
work began.
Sinn Fein is an expression in political theory and action of the claim of
Ireland to be a nation, with all the practical consequences which such a
claim involves. It differs from previous national movements principally in
the policy which it outlines for the attainment of its ultimate end, the
independence of Ireland: though it should be understood that nearly every
point in the Sinn Fein political programme had been at least suggested by
some previous Irish Nationalist thinker. In opposition to the
Parliamentary Party it held that for Ireland to send representatives to
Westminster was to acknowledge the validity of the Act of Union and
virtually to deny the Irish claim to an independent legislature. In
contrast with the National movements of '48 and '67 it disclaimed the use
of physical force for the attainment of its ends. While it held as a
matter of abstract political ethics that a nation subjugated against its
will by another nation is justified in regaining its independence, if it
can do so, by any means at its disposal, including force, yet as a matter
of practical Irish politics it renounced the use of force unequivocally.
"It is because Ireland is to-day unable to overcome England on the
battlefield we preach the Sinn Fein policy," wrote the principal exponent
of the policy in 1906. The remnants of the Fenian Brotherhood had no
sympathy with a policy such as this: and though representatives of the
"physical force party" were allowed to express their opinions in the Sinn
Fein papers, their views were not officially adopted and never became part
of the Sinn Fein policy. At least one prominent member of the old Fenian
Party saw reason to adopt the Sinn Fein policy in preference to that of
armed force. "I would not," wrote John Devoy from New York in 1911,
"incite the unorganized, undisciplined and unarmed people of Ireland to a
hopeless military struggle with England." This renunciation of force was
however very different from O'Connell's famous declaration of his
intention not to fight. While Sinn Fern held that the most practical way
to establish Irish freedom in the twentieth century was not the way of
force it never concealed its opinion that force was a legitimate method of
securing national rights. In fact no responsible national leader has ever
held any other opinion in any country.
Nor was the Sinn Fein Party in its inception a Republican Party. It was
strictly constitutional, and in fact forfeited the support of many ardent
Nationalists by adherence to this definitely constitutional policy. While
the Parliamentary Party claimed to be the only constitutional party by its
use of the forms of the existing constitution, Sinn Fein laid claim to the
merit of a superior constitutionalism. It relied upon the Renunciation Act
of 1783 which declared that the right "claimed by the people of Ireland to
be bound only by laws enacted by his Majesty and the Parliament of that
kingdom, in all cases whatever, and to have all actions and suits at law
or in equity which may be instituted in that kingdom decided in his
Majesty's courts therein finally and without appeal from thence shall be
and it is hereby declared to be established and ascertained forever and
shall at no time hereafter be questioned or questionable." The Act of
Union, carried as it was, was a clear breach of this declaration, and the
policy of Sinn Fein was to ignore, holding it as null and void, the Union
and every subsequent arrangement made in contravention of the Act of 1783.
If it came to a question of constitutionalism Sinn Fein took up a High
Tory attitude compared with the accommodating constitutionalism of the
official Nationalist Party.
Though Sinn Fein as a political organization in being did not exist till
1905 the way had been smoothed for it and several actual steps taken
several years before. The first symptom of the coming movement was the
establishment of literary societies which drew their inspiration from the
Young Ireland movement of the 'forties, and the publication in Belfast by
Miss Alice Milligan of the _Shan Van Vocht_, a literary and political
journal which became a semi-official exponent of the new Irish-Ireland
movement. The centenary celebration of the Rebellion of 1798 led to a
quickening of interest in the history of Irish separatist movements and an
endeavour was made to keep the interest from dying out by the
establishment of '98 Clubs. Finally in 1899 the _United Irishman_ was
founded by Mr. Arthur Griffith.
The title which Mr. Griffith chose for his paper is significant. The
adoption of the name of John Mitchel's paper was more than a hint that
John Mitchel's policy was to be revived. But it was to be the policy, not
of the abortive revolution of '48, but that expressed earlier in a
prescient passage. A plan (said Mitchel) for the repeal of the Union "must
develop not one sole plan followed out to the end, but three or four of
the possible and probable series of events which may evidently lead to the
result. It must show (for one way) how a parliamentary campaign, conducted
honestly and boldly, might bring the state of public business in
Parliament to such a position that repeal would be the only solution; for
another way, how systematic passive opposition to, and contempt of, _law_
might be carried out through a thousand details, so as to virtually
supersede English dominion here and to make the mere repealing statute an
immaterial formality (this, I may observe, is _my_ way); and for a third
way how, in the event of an European war, a strong national party in
Ireland could grasp the occasion to do the work instantly.... It should
also show how and to what extent all these methods of operation might be
combined." In this one passage Mitchel sketched successively the Parnell
policy, the Sinn Fein policy and the policy of the Easter Rising.
_The United Irishman_ ran as a weekly paper from March 4, 1899, to April
14, 1906. During this time twenty-three issues were seized and confiscated
in the Post Office and upon three occasions in the year 1900 the paper was
publicly suppressed. In 1905 the Secret Service threatened the printer
with prosecution unless the printing of the paper was discontinued; and in
1906 the increasing liabilities of the United Irishman Publishing Company
(who engaged Mr. Griffith as editor) led to the discontinuance of the
paper. But before it ceased publication the Sinn Fein Movement had been
successfully inaugurated. The paper was remarkable for the ability with
which it was edited, the literary excellence of its articles both
editorial and contributed, the range of its topics and the freedom which
it allowed to the discussion in its columns of different views. Its
contributors included many of the best-known Irish writers, though many of
them were not (or did not remain) in sympathy with its political
propaganda. It championed the cause of the Gaelic League, of native
industries, of native music and of native games. It spread information
upon the mineral resources of Ireland, its waterways, its railways, its
vital statistics, and the menace of emigration. It republished as serials
such standard works as John Mitchel's _Apology_ and an authorized
translation of D'Arbois de Jubainville's _Irish Mythological Cycle_. Mr.
Best contributed a series of articles on "The Old Irish Bardic Tales." It
published a drama by W. B. Yeats and its columns were always open to
literary and dramatic criticisms and discussions. It had a weekly column
on European politics. And finally it argued with courage, brilliancy and
passion the cause of Irish independence.
The editorial in the first number gives a general idea both of the style
and of the teaching of the paper. "There exists, has existed for
centuries, and will continue to exist in Ireland, a conviction hostile to
the subjection, or dependence of the fortunes of this country to the
necessities of any other; we intend to voice that conviction. We bear no
ill will to any section of the Irish political body, whether its flag be
green or orange, which holds that tortuous paths are the safest for
Irishmen to tread; but, knowing we are governed by a nation which
religiously adheres to 'The good old rule--the simple plan--that those may
take who have the power, and those may keep who can,' we, with all respect
for our friends who love the devious ways, are convinced that an
occasional exhibition of the naked truth will not shock the modesty of
Irishmen and that a return to the straight road will not lead us to
political destruction.... To be perfectly plain, we believe that when
Swift wrote to the whole people of Ireland 170 years ago, that by the law
of God, of Nature, and of nations they had a right to be as free a people
as the people of England, he wrote commonsense; notwithstanding that in
these latter days we have been diligently taught that by the law of God,
of Nature, and of nations we are rightfully entitled to the establishment
in Dublin of a legislative assembly with an expunging angel watching over
its actions from the Viceregal Lodge. We do not deprecate the institution
of any such body, but we do assert that the whole duty of an Irishman is
not comprised in utilizing all the forces of his nature to procure its
inception.... With the present day Irish movements outside politics we are
in more or less sympathy. The Financial Reformers ... are incidentally
doing good in promoting an union of Irishmen in opposition to their one
enemy; the resuscitation of our national language is a work in which
everyone of us should help; at the same time we would regret any
insistence on a knowledge of Gaelic as a test of patriotism. It is
scarcely necessary to say we are in full sympathy with the objects of the
Amnesty Association; but we shall not at any time support an appeal to any
such myths as English Justice or English Mercy.... Lest there might be any
doubt in any mind we will say that we accept the Nationalism of '98, '48
and '67 as the true Nationalism and Grattan's cry 'Live Ireland-Perish the
Empire!' as the watchword of patriotism."
The political creed of the _United Irishman_ was the absolute independence
of Ireland; and though it did not advocate the methods of armed revolution
it opened its columns to those Nationalists who did: though its policy was
the re-establishment of the Constitution of 1782, not the establishment of
an Irish Republic, it contained articles written by Republicans who made
no secret of their views. But the object of this, confusing to the
careless or intermittent reader, was gradually to build up a kind of
national forum in which all "real" Nationalists might have their say, and
to induce a general consensus of opinion in favour of the new policy. Its
aim at first was strictly critical and educational. In writing of the '98
Clubs the editor says: "We look to them for the fostering of a national
and tolerant public opinion, which will raise the _morale_ of the people,
so grievously lowered by the squalid agitations of the past; we look to
them for the inculcation of the doctrine of self-reliance, without which
neither our land nor any other can hope for salvation; and we look to them
anxiously for the teaching and training of youth, for our future depends
largely on the young." Everything was made to turn upon the question of
self-reliance and independence: what inculcated or enhanced these
qualities was good, what hindered them was bad or (at best) indifferent.
Political independence was regarded as the sequel and corollary of moral
independence, and all political action that sacrificed this stood
self-condemned. Under this condemnation fell in the first place the Irish
Parliamentary Party: their policy was derided as one of "half-bluster and
half-whine": when Mr. Redmond spoke, in an unguarded moment, of "wringing
from whatever Government may be in power the full measure of a nation's
rights" he was bluntly told that all this was "arrant humbug." "After one
hundred years of the British Parliament we are poorer and fewer, and our
taxation has been multiplied by ten. All the signs of the times point to
the continuance of this policy of practically burning the candle at both
ends; and our self-respect and our status before the nations of Europe
would be infinitely raised by a manly refusal to lend the support of our
presence to an assembly in which our interests are ignored whenever they
clash, and sometimes when they do not clash, with the interests of
England. If our 'Parliamentary representatives' had spirit, they would
have retired from the British Parliament when the Home Rule Bill was
defeated, and have told their constituents that they were wasting time in
fighting Ireland's battle with British weapons and that further
representation at Westminster was 'neither possible nor desirable.' That
would have been a protest that would have roused the attention of the
civilized world and even now it would be well that such a protest should
be made; for it _is_ waste of time and money and a source of degradation
to countenance a system which ignores us.... By turning their attention to
the practical development of industries in Ireland and pledging
themselves to a policy of practical support and preference for the
products of Irish labour, our people can undoubtedly advance the social
condition and prosperity of the country; but while they are hoping against
hope for some vague indefinite assistance from Westminster, a genuine
manly effort in this direction is impossible."
If the Parliamentary Party was charged with futility and lack of dignity,
other Irish movements were criticized with a similar candour. Even the
Gaelic League did not win the entire and unqualified approval of the
national Mentor. The "persistent labouring of the fact that the language
question is non-political" was held to savour of a certain lack of candour
and of courage. The Gaelic movement (it was said) had for its aim "the
intensifying of Irish sentiment, the preservation of Irish ideals": it
aroused enthusiasm "by awakening memories hot with hate and fierce with
desire of vengeance on the foreigner." It was asserted that "as a factor
towards freedom, and as such _alone_, the people will respond to its
claims upon them: for them culture has no charms"; and the League was
bluntly told that it could not continue to pursue its policy of aloofness.
"With politics," wrote William Rooney (who seems to have held a unique
position of authority and trust in the new movement up to the time of his
early death), "as at present understood, and which, after all, mean
nothing but partisanship, the Gaelic League has rightly had nothing to do;
but with politics, in the sense of some public policy aiming at the
reincarnation of an Irish nation, it cannot refuse to meddle." The Gaelic
League, like the Parliamentary Party, pursued its way undisturbed: but the
criticism was not unmarked. And the Catholic clergy (so often represented
as immune from the criticism of all good Irish Nationalists) were
faithfully (and not always tenderly) taken to task when they wandered from
the straight path; it was said that they took no effective steps to arrest
emigration: that they "next to the British Government" were "responsible
for the depopulation of the country": that they failed to encourage Irish
trade and manufactures: that the priests "made life dull and unendurable
for the people": that the Hierarchy had backed the Parliamentary Party
against the Nationalists of '48 and '67: that they were apathetic on the
question of the language. It was asserted that the priesthood with their
exaggerated caution with regard to the natural relations of the sexes had
"brought a Calvinistic gloom and horror into Ireland"; "To-day the land is
dotted with religious edifices but the men and women whose money built
them are fleeing to America to seek for bread." "It is high time this
monstrous hypocrisy should be faced and fought. While the country is
making a last fight for existence its people are being bled right and left
to build all kinds of church edifices and endow all kinds of church
institutions and their money is being sent abroad to England, Italy, and
Germany.... We strongly advise the Irish people not to subscribe a single
penny in future towards the eternal church building funds unless they
first receive public assurances that their money will be expended in
Ireland." These criticisms are characteristic of the candour and
consistency with which the test was applied to all movements, bodies and
institutions in Ireland: were they or were they not a factor in the
material and moral upbuilding of the Irish nation as a free and
self-reliant community.
The war against the Transvaal Republics made the question of recruiting
for the army a question of public importance in Ireland during the early
days of the paper, and its articles on the subject first brought it into
conflict with the Castle authorities. That Mr. Chamberlain's policy was
directed to the extinction of Transvaal independence was self-evident and
the war on that account was not popular in Ireland. In the Boers
struggling hopelessly for the maintenance of their freedom was seen an
analogue of the long Irish struggle for independence, and any Irishman who
enlisted in the British army was denounced as "a traitor to his country
and a felon in his soul." But it was not the crushing of Transvaal
independence in which the army was employed that formed the only argument
against enlisting. The official returns of the statistics of venereal
disease in the British army were printed with a commentary of provoking
frankness. The excesses of the British army in Burmah and the charges made
against the soldiers for offences against Burmese women were insisted
upon to prove that no decent Irishman could join the army. But in fact it
was something more than the sufferings of the Boers and the Burmese which
inspired this attitude. The British army was regarded as the instrument by
which Ireland was held in subjugation, as the force which upheld the power
to whose interests Ireland was sacrificed. One of the concluding numbers
of the paper printed the text of an anti-recruiting pamphlet for the
distribution of which prosecutions were instituted. It concluded: "Let
England fight her own battles: we have done it long enough. Let her arm
and drill the sickly population of her slums: the men of the hills and
country places in Ireland will go no more. Let her fight for the extension
of her Empire herself, for the men of the Gael are not going to be bribed
into betraying themselves and their country again at the bidding of
England." It was found difficult to obtain convictions against persons who
distributed these pamphlets. Even in Belfast a jury refused to convict a
man for this at the instance of the Crown: though the accused made no
excuse or apology, and though his counsel said in his speech to the jury,
"You are fathers and brothers, and there is not one of you who would not
rather see your boys in hell than in the British Army."
The seizure of the _United Irishman_ by order of Lord Cadogan in
consequence of its anti-recruiting propaganda served only to advertise its
attitude, and secure for it some of the popularity which attends whatever
is in conflict with the authorities in Ireland. It also urged the paper to
further efforts in the same direction and from the time of Queen
Victoria's visit in 1900, "who now in her dotage," as the leader on the
subject ran, "is sent amongst us to seek recruits for her battered army,"
it was in constant conflict with the Irish police.