of which this full account is significant and pertinent, an organization
of Irishmen who shared its views generally was being slowly formed. In one
of the early numbers of the paper a contributed article on "A National
Organization" had appeared (and been approved of in a leader), urging the
formation of a party "with the openly avowed and ultimate object of ending
British rule" in Ireland; such an organization should honestly acknowledge
"its present inability to lead Ireland to victory against the armed might
of her enemy" and confine itself "for some time to the disciplining of the
mind and the training of the forces of the nation, whilst impressing on it
that, in the last resort, nothing save the weapons of freemen can regain
its independence.... It need have no secrecy about it whatsoever.... Such
an organization should ... require only two qualifications from its
members, one, that they declare themselves advocates of an Irish Republic,
the other, that they be persons of decent character.... It should adopt no
attitude of antagonism to the Parliamentarians; but point out to the
people that Parliamentarianism is not Nationalism, and leave them, in
their own judgment, to give it what support they pleased. Toleration, free
impersonal criticism, and sympathy with every man seeking, after his own
light, the welfare of our common country, should be distinguishing
characteristics of the organization and its members." Discussion of these
proposals, partly favourable, partly critical, followed and in October,
1900, the first steps were taken in the foundation of the Cumann na
nGaedhal. Its objects were to advance the cause of Ireland's national
independence by (1) cultivating a fraternal spirit amongst Irishmen; (2)
diffusing knowledge of Ireland's resources and supporting Irish
industries; (3) the study and teaching of Irish history, literature,
language, music and art; (4) the assiduous cultivation and encouragement
of Irish games, pastimes and characteristics; (5) the discountenancing of
anything tending towards the anglicization of Ireland; (6) the physical
and intellectual training of the young; (7) the development of an Irish
foreign policy; (8) extending to each other friendly advice and aid,
socially and politically; (9) the nationalization of public boards.
Membership was open to "all persons of Irish birth or descent undertaking
to obey its rules, carry out its constitution, and pledging themselves to
aid to the best of their ability in restoring Ireland to her former
position of sovereign independence." The _United Irishman_ commenting on
this observes: "It comes to interfere with no policy before the people--it
asks only the help and support of Irish Nationalists.... Let us be Irish
in act and speech, as we pretend to be in heart and spirit, and a few
years will prove whether the remedy is not better sought at home among
ourselves than beyond the waters." While the association aimed at the
cultivation of a spirit of self-reliance and the attainment of a moral
independence, it was clear that the realization of its ideals would be a
slow process and would leave the actual political situation much as it
was. The whole Irish nation might talk Irish, play Irish games, support
Irish industries, deanglicize their children, have their own ideas of
foreign policy and love one another like brothers, and yet Ireland would
not have regained independence. The ends of Cumann na nGaedhal were remote
and, if attained, unsatisfactory to those to whom independence meant more
than a mere lofty disregard of the truth that Ireland was as a matter of
fact politically dependent on another country. Something more was needed
to bring the new policy (if it could be called new) into more intimate
connection with political facts. The link with current politics was
supplied by Mr. Griffith in an address which he gave to the third annual
convention of Cumann na nGaedhal in October, 1902, in which he outlined
what came to be known afterwards as the Hungarian Policy. The new policy,
instead of adopting a neutral attitude towards existing political parties
in Ireland, boldly declared war upon the Irish Parliamentary Party. The
Convention passed the following resolution: "That we call upon our
countrymen abroad to withhold all assistance from the promoters of a
useless, degrading and demoralizing policy until such times as the members
of the Irish Parliamentary Party substitute for it the policy of the
Hungarian Deputies of 1861, and, refusing to attend the British Parliament
or to recognize its right to legislate for Ireland, remain at home to help
in promoting Ireland's interests and to aid in guarding its national
rights." With this resolution Sinn Fein may be said to have been
inaugurated.
Though the policy of abstention from Parliament came to be known as "the
Hungarian Policy" it was a policy that had been advocated, and to a
certain extent practised, in Ireland long before the Hungarian Deputies
adopted it. In 1844, the "Parliamentary Committee of the Loyal National
Repeal Association on the Attendance of Irish Members in Parliament"
presented a report which contained the following: "The people of Ireland,
having in vain attempted to obtain from the Imperial Parliament detailed
measures of justice, and with equal failure sought the restoration of
their domestic Senate or even inquiry into the wisdom of that restoration,
have at length sought to obtain those rights by agitation out of
Parliament. They have to this end arrayed themselves into a Loyal and
National Association to obtain the Repeal of the Union. They try to obtain
strength by the reality and display of union and organization. They seek
converts by their speeches, their writings, and their peaceful virtues.
They are endeavouring to increase their knowledge and their power by
reading, thinking and discussing. And to carry out their projects of
organization, conversion and self-improvement, they subscribe large funds
to a common treasury. Their efforts in the Imperial Parliament having then
been so fruitless, and their undertaking at home being so vast, they, the
people of Ireland, have consented that such of their members as seek with
them domestic legislation, should secede from the Imperial Parliament and
control the agitation, instruction and organization of the people at
home." This report is signed by Thomas Davis. A correspondence between
Thomas Davis and the Earl of Wicklow, to whom certain resolutions of the
Repeal Association had been sent, debates the rival merits of the policies
of parliamentarianism and abstention. The Earl, who had no intention of
leaving Parliament, wrote: "I now believe that there exists amongst the
British people an anxious desire to do justice to our country and to atone
in every way in their power for the evils of former mismanagement." Lord
Wicklow had formed this conviction before 1844. The "Hungarian Policy" of
1902 was framed for the same situation and in face of the same conviction.
It is difficult to understand why the credit of the policy was not claimed
for Thomas Davis the Irishman instead of for the Hungarian Franz Deak:
unless it be that the policy had in the case of Ireland never been put
into actual effective practice and had remained fruitless of result, while
in Hungary it had seemed to have achieved its object. Be that as it may,
Mr. Arthur Griffith proceeded to contribute to the _United Irishman_ a
series of articles on "The Resurrection of Hungary," reprinted in book
form the same year and widely circulated. The preface represented the
policy as an alternative to that of armed resistance: the body of the book
gave a historical account of the struggle of the Hungarians under Deak for
the restoration of the constitution of 1848 and its success, due (it was
claimed) entirely to Deak's policy of abstention from the Austrian
Imperial Parliament: the concluding chapter drew the parallel between
Hungary and Ireland, claiming that by abstaining from sending members to
Westminster Ireland could secure the restoration of the constitution of
1782. The book was interesting and able: the narrative was presented with
vigour and spirit: but the accuracy of some of its statements and
conclusions was open to question and as a piece of popular propaganda it
was a failure. While many people read it, it produced no immediate or
widespread response. Exception was taken to the view that Ireland ought to
aim at the restoration of the constitution of 1782: exception was taken to
the substitution of a peaceful for a forcible policy. "If the Irish
members" (wrote a representative of the latter body of critics) "of the
English Parliament withdrew from Westminster to-morrow the government of
the country would be carried on just as it is to-day; and so it will and
must be as long as the people forget they are Irishmen with a country to
free from a foreign yoke. The protest would end in smoke unless armed men
were prepared to back it."
Mr. Griffith, nothing daunted, continued his fight against on the one hand
the traditional parliamentarianism and on the other hand the advocates of
physical force and revolution and the members of the Republican Party. His
claim to independence for Ireland was to be based not upon force but upon
law and the constitution of 1782: his claim was not a Republic but a
national constitution under an Irish Crown. He tried to show in a series
of articles on "The Working of the Policy"--which from now on begins to be
referred to as the Sinn Fein Policy--how his ideas might be put into
practice. But to carry on such a policy as he had outlined, some political
organization other than the Cumann na nGaedhael or the '98 Clubs was
required. This was inaugurated at a meeting held in Dublin on November
28th, 1905, under the chairmanship of Mr. Edward Martyn. The policy of the
new body, the National Council, was defined as "National self-development
through the recognition of the rights and duties of citizenship on the
part of the individual and by the aid and support of all movements
originating from within Ireland, instinct with national tradition and not
looking outside Ireland for the accomplishment of their aims." A public
meeting held afterwards in the Rotunda passed the following resolution:
"That the people of Ireland are a free people and that no law made without
their authority and consent is or can ever be binding on their conscience.
That the General Council of County Councils presents the nucleus of a
national authority, and we urge upon it to extend the scope of its
deliberation and action: to take within its purview every question of
national interest and to formulate lines of procedure for the nation." Mr.
Griffith, who was the main-spring and driving force of the movement,
speaking in favour of the resolution, proposed the formation of a council
of 300 to sit in Dublin and form a _de facto_ Irish Parliament, with whom
might be associated all those members of Parliament who refused to attend
at Westminster; its recommendations should be binding upon all County
Councils and Boards of Guardians, whose duty it would be to carry them
into effect as far as their powers extended.
With this meeting ends the preliminary stage, and Sinn Fein formally takes
its place as a duly constituted political party with its own policy and
aims. The _United Irishman_, the organ of its infancy, ceased to exist,
and its place was taken by _Sinn Fein_.
THE EARLY YEARS OF SINN FEIN.
In the year 1906 Sinn Fein emerged from the region of ideals and
abstractions, of academical discussion and preliminary propaganda, into
the arena of Irish party politics with a fully formulated practical
policy. Taking constitutional ground with the dictum that "the
constitution of 1782 is still the constitution of Ireland," it proposed to
show how the people of Ireland, keeping within the letter of a law which
they could not otherwise break, might render nugatory the effort to hold
the country in dependence upon England in pursuance of the Act of Union.
It proposed to arrest the anglicization of Ireland by recovering for the
Irish people the management of those departments of public administration
in which the anglicizing process was working most markedly to the
detriment of Irish interests and which might be remodelled without any
actual breach of the existing law. In the first place it seemed necessary
to take education in hand, and by the introduction of a system more in
accordance with Irish needs and capabilities and characteristics,
endeavour to train up a generation of young Irish men and women, imbued
with a national spirit and national pride, capable of taking their part in
the agricultural, industrial and administrative life of the country.
County Councils might do much in this direction through their intimate
connection with the administration and policy of the Department of
Agriculture and Technical Instruction; a wise use of the means placed by
the Department at their disposal might in a few years revolutionize to the
advantage of Ireland the entire education of the country. The young men
and women thus trained might form the nucleus of an Irish Civil Service,
if the County Councils could be induced to abandon their "patronage" in
the positions at their disposal and throw them open to competitive
examination; others of these trained Irishmen might be employed in an
unofficial Irish Consular Service to the great advantage of Irish
commerce, handicapped in foreign markets by English consuls in the
interests of the English commercial houses. Pressure could be brought to
bear upon the Irish banks to adopt a policy more in sympathy with Irish
trade and industry. There was deposited in Irish banks a sum of
L50,000,000, the savings of the people of Ireland; yet these banks
invested this money in English securities (the Bank of Ireland during the
South African War even lent money to the English Government without
interest) while Irish industries were starving for lack of the capital
which the banks refused to lend. The Stock Exchange, controlled by the
Government, neglected to quote shares in Irish companies that might be
formed for the furtherance of particular industries in particular
districts, discouraging investors who were thus left unable to dispose of
their shares in the ordinary way. It was hoped that public bodies as well
as private persons could be induced to bring pressure to bear on the banks
by withdrawing or withholding accounts until they should adopt a more
patriotic policy, though it was more difficult to see how the Stock
Exchange could be dealt with. The difficulties put by railways and their
heavy freights on the exchange of commodities could be obviated by a
development of the Irish waterways under the control of popularly elected
bodies: the County Councils should see to this and to questions such as
afforestation and the encouragement of home manufactures by specifying
their use in the giving of contracts for institutions under their control.
The Poor Law system should be remodelled in accordance with Irish
sentiment and the money expended upon it spent in Ireland upon Irish
goods. To ensure the advantage of foreign markets without English
interference an Irish Mercantile Marine should be established, what could
be done even by a poor country in this way being shown by the example of
Norway, where nearly everyone was at least part owner of a ship.
But to stimulate and foster native industry and native manufacture was to
Mr. Griffith (whose writings on economic matters formed a kind of gospel
for Sinn Fein) an urgent and supreme duty. He was convinced that until
Ireland became an industrial as well as an agricultural country her
economic position was insecure. Thinking always in terms of national
independence, which he interpreted to mean national ability to dispense
with outside assistance, he looked forward to a time when Ireland should
be able not merely to feed her population from her own resources, but to
supply them with nearly all the other necessaries of modern life. Irish
coal and iron existed in abundance to supply the necessary fuel and raw
material; there was plenty of native marble and other stones for building;
Irish wool and hides were once famous over Europe for their abundance and
excellence. All that was required to make Ireland once more a prosperous
manufacturing country was at her disposal within her own boundaries, and
only waited for the policy that would call out her latent powers. In an
independent State the encouragement required would be forthcoming in
protective legislation, pursued until the protected industry became
established and able to compete on favourable terms with similar
industries in other countries, the work of protection being limited
strictly to the task of building up a temporary screen to shelter a
budding national industry from the wind of competition until its strength
was established. The Irish Parliament in the days of its independence had
adopted this policy, which had enabled it during its short life to secure
to Irish manufactures an unprecedented prosperity. But Ireland, deprived
of legislative powers, might fall back upon a less secure but still
efficacious method of protection. Irish consumers might refuse to purchase
English goods while Irish goods of the same quality were to be had, and
be content to pay in an enhanced price their share of what under other
circumstances the State might have expended in bounties to the industry;
public bodies might insist upon the use of goods of Irish manufacture;
port authorities should arrange port dues so that they should fall most
heavily on manufactured goods brought into the country, and should publish
periodical returns of the imports of manufactured goods at every port in
Ireland; Irish capital should be invited and encouraged to undertake the
development of the country on industrial and commercial lines, being
assured, in the support of industrial and corporate public feeling, of
encouragement and success in its enterprise.
In expounding this theory of protection and of the vital necessity to a
country of developing its industrial life Mr. Griffith was confessedly
following the economic doctrines of the German economist Friedrich List,
"the man whom England caused to be persecuted by the Government of his
native country, and whom she hated and feared more than any man since
Napoleon--the man who saved Germany from falling a prey to English
economics, and whose brain conceived the great industrial and economic
Germany of to-day." A man with credentials like these might well be
listened to with profit. The commercial policy that made the New Germany
could not fail to make a New Ireland, and List made seductive promises. He
foretold an increase in population by a combination of agricultural and
industrial enterprise greater in proportion than by the development of
either industry or agriculture by itself: he denied the possibility of
intellectual progress to a country relying solely or mainly upon
agriculture: culture marched behind the mill and the factory. But the
chief merit of the policy undoubtedly was that it promised a
self-contained and independent economic existence, serving as the basis of
a distinctive national culture.
The merits of List's theories in the abstract it is for economists to
determine: but the concrete instance of the commercial expansion of
Germany seemed at the time a sufficient vindication of their merit. But
Germany was an independent State, competent to fix its own tariffs, give
State encouragement to its industries and determine its own destinies.
Ireland could do none of these things: the efforts of individuals,
societies and local bodies would have to supply the place of legislative
control, their efforts must be voluntary and would be difficult to control
and co-ordinate. To ensure the will to follow out the suggested policy if
it were even accepted, and to secure its acceptance, was a work of
argument and controversy, and to secure a sympathetic or even attentive
audience was not easy. Great claims were made upon the national
intelligence and the national conscience, and success could only be
ensured by practical unanimity. Unanimity was not to be had, and could
hardly be expected in the near future: the task of securing it was one to
tax the resources of a generation of apostles, in the absence of some
cataclysm which might involve a complete change in the general outlook and
ensure the acceptance of the policy by the mere force of circumstances.
Meanwhile something might be done to co-ordinate spasmodic and voluntary
effort. In the absence of a Parliament it might be possible to bring
together a representative assembly whose directions and decisions might
carry a moral sanction to the conscience of an awakened public and to this
end it was proposed to constitute a Council of Three Hundred, forming a
_de facto_ Irish Parliament. A similar council had been suggested by
O'Connell, prolific of expedients: but, sterile in execution, he had never
permitted it to meet and transact business. The expedient was now to be
revived: the Council was, upon report from special committees (such as
those that had been appointed by the Repeal Association) "to deliberate
and formulate workable schemes, which, once formulated, it would be the
duty of all County and Urban Councils, Rural Councils, Poor Law Boards,
and other bodies to give legal effect to so far as their powers permit,
and where these legal powers fell short, to give it the moral force of law
by instructing and inducing those whom they represent to honour and obey
the recommendations of the Council of Three Hundred, individually and
collectively." Finally, Arbitration Courts were to be instituted to
supersede the ordinary courts of law in civil cases, which "would deprive
the corrupt bar of Ireland of much of its incentive to corruption" and
foster a spirit of brotherhood.
Such was the new policy: and it was claimed that "not on recognition of
usurped authority, but on its denial--not on aid from our enemies but on
action for ourselves, the Sinn Fein policy is based. Its essence is
construction and its march to its ultimate political goal must be attended
at every step by the material progress of the nation." The work of
exposition and instruction was carried on partly in the columns of _Sinn
Fein_ partly by means of clubs and branches through the country. A branch
was formed in Belfast in the early autumn of 1906, and at the meeting of
the National Council a month later it was announced that there were
already twenty branches in existence. At that meeting resolutions were
passed in favour of boycotting articles of common consumption from which
the British Exchequer derives its chief revenue (a measure recommended
long before by the Young Ireland Party), in favour of new systems of
primary and secondary education, of competitive examinations for County
Council appointments and of a National Banking System.
The Appeal which the National Council issued for support was based on the
ground that the Council "denies the right of any foreign legislature to
make laws to bind the people of Ireland, denies the authority of any
foreign administration to exist in Ireland, and denies the wisdom of
countenancing the existence of an usurped authority in Irish affairs by
participating in the proceedings of the British Parliament."