Area Population Revenue
(thousands of (Millions) (Millions L)
sq. miles)
Ireland 32-1/2 4-1/3 30
Belgium 11-1/2 7-1/2 32
Holland 12-1/2 6-1/2 18-3/4
Denmark 15-1/2 2-3/4 7-1/2
Norway 125 2-1/2 10
Switzerland 16 4 3
Rumania 53-1/2 7-1/2 24
Serbia 34 4-1/2 8-1/2
Finland 126 3-1/4 8-1/2
These figures would suggest that Ireland is a strong military and naval
power among the small nations. And so we are--only the army and navy we
support are not our own; they exist to keep us in slavery, not in freedom.
It is about time we started business on our own.
=DEPENDENT ON ENGLAND?=
The most significant instance of English policy in Ireland is the creation
of the widespread delusion that we are economically dependent on England.
An elaborate network of fraud and deceit has been built up to hide the
truth from our eyes. We are secretly and systematically robbed and we
hardly notice it. The ordinary Irish worker pays at least four shillings a
week to England, he is hardly aware of the fact, so nicely is it done
whenever he buys tobacco or his wife gets tea and sugar, and so on. Though
the average income in England is three times what it is in Ireland, the
notoriously underfed Irish workers have to pay more than twice the English
proportion of indirect taxes on food, etc. We pay England 1/- on every
pound of tea, 1-1/2d. on every pound of sugar, 7d. on every oz. of
tobacco. There is no fuss about it: it is accepted as part of the laws of
nature that tea should be a shilling a pound dearer than it need be. As
for direct taxation--well, even the farmers know what the English
income-tax is. Where does it all go? To England as taxes, profits, rents,
imperial contributions, and trade. As a going concern Ireland is now worth
thirty million a year to its owner, John Bull. There are certain expenses
of administration--police, Castle, secret service, prisons, tax
collectors--and there are, of course, several items of hush-money, dodges
necessary to fool the people, such as "education." But the fact is that a
bigger and bigger profit is being made every year out of this island. More
agricultural materials and products are shipped to England, more Irish
brains are selected for running India, etc., more Irishmen are utilised
for gun-fodder. Sometimes, after much beseeching by resolutions and
deputations, we are graciously presented with a minute fraction of our own
goods. Is it not about time that we recognised in English "grants" our own
country's transmuted plunder? We are as dependent on England as a factory
is on an absentee society lady who is shareholder.
In 1663 began the long series of English laws against Irish trade. Charles
II. closed the English markets to Irish cattle, meat, leather, butter,
etc. Ireland built ships and opened direct trade with Flanders, France,
Spain, the American Colonies. The Navigation Act and the Jacobite War once
more destroyed our mercantile marine and ruined our industries. Ireland
was practically confined by law to the English market. In 1782, 60,000
Volunteers, with arms in their hands, won Free Trade--i.e., the liberty of
Ireland to trade direct with the world. In a few years, bad as our own
Parliament was, the country prospered exceedingly. The Union once more
destroyed our industries and even our tillage and turned Ireland into a
cattle-ranch; our mercantile marine was destroyed. All our trade is in the
hands of English middlemen and we have to sell and buy at England's price.
We are dependent on England, not in the sense that we get anything out of
her, but in the sense that we have allowed her to capture our trade and
cut us off from the world. We have allowed England to become a parasitic
bloodsucker. And because we have done so, we fancy that England is our
sole customer. As if the whole world is not clamouring for meat and butter
and other foodstuffs! In 1912, when England placed her cattle embargo on
Ireland, the prices in the markets of Hamburg and Genoa--after deducting
import duty and the extra cost of transit--were more than 11/- per cwt.
higher than the price paid in England. Had Irishmen then had enough Sinn
Fein spirit, they would soon have discovered who was dependent on whom!
There is no possible argument, moral or economic, against Irish freedom.
"Is Ireland fit to be an independent sovereign nation?" asks Dr. Cohalan,
Bishop of Cork. "Why should it not be, if Belgium is fit to be a sovereign
nation, if Serbia is so fit, if Montenegro--whose King is not much more
than a strong farmer in this country--is fit, all fit to be independent
nations? Then, when putting the question as to Ireland, I would really ask
everyone, men and women, in this country to cease speaking slightingly of
their own race and their own country. I would like every Irishman and
woman, Catholic and Protestant, to answer that question in the
affirmative." We are fit to be free, we have a God-given right to be free,
we mean to be free. But how are we going to get our freedom?
=HOW TO GET THINGS.=
Let us see how we ever got anything from England. Parnell is much quoted
just now. What was his view? This is what he said at Manchester, 15th
July, 1877:--
"For my part I must tell you that I do not believe in a policy of
conciliation of English feeling or English prejudices. I believe that
you may go on trying to conciliate English prejudice until the day of
judgment, and that you will not get the breadth of my nail from them.
What did we ever get in the past by trying to conciliate them? Did we
get the abolition of tithes by the conciliation of our English
taskmasters? No; it was because we adopted different measures. Did
O'Connell in his time gain emancipation for Ireland by conciliation? I
rather think that O'Connell in his time was not of a very conciliatory
disposition, and that at least during a part of his career he was
about the best-abused Irishman living."
There is no mistaking the view of Charles Stewart Parnell. Two years later
he repeated his assertion (Tipperary, 21st Sept., 1879):--
"=It is no use relying upon the Government, it is no use relying upon
the Irish members, it is no use relying upon the House of Commons.=
You must rely upon your own determination, that determination which
has enabled you to survive the famine years and to be present here
to-day; and, if you are determined, I tell you, you have the game in
your own hands."