(i) Build up Ireland’s manufacturing arm by protection—voluntary or legal—developing also Ireland’s mineral resources, especially her coal and iron.
The Sinn Fein Movement, as such, did not contemplate an appeal to arms, believing that its policy, with the majority of Ireland behind it, would be irresistible on a passive resistance basis. It was really composed of two sections—one, led by Mr. Griffith, wished to base the movement definitely on the Constitution of 1782 and the Renunciation Act of 1783, and the other composed of the Separatists was for independence pure and simple. As a compromise, the object of the movement was defined as “the re-establishment of the Independence of Ireland,” which satisfied the Separatists, with an addendum committing it, as a minimum, to the “King, Lords and Commons” solution, which satisfied the others. Both sections were agreed as to the general lines of policy.
Upon every Irish question, and every possible development in Ireland, Sinn Fein would operate on the same lines as those I have enumerated above. It would build up Ireland from within, strengthening everything Irish and attacking everything foreign, eliminating everything which would send Irish thoughts wandering in search of foreign aid and teaching the people by precept and example that a Nation’s salvation can only be worked out by itself and on its own soil. It would substitute for petitions and resolutions and manœuvres in a foreign Parliament work and more work and still more work in Ireland. To the Irish people it says in effect: “Turn your eyes and your thoughts away from London and concentrate them on your own concerns. You are of right a free people, and no bonds can affect that right, though they may hamper it. Assert it, not by empty words, but by deeds, so far as you can within the limits of your bonds. Suffer Anglicising and anti-national things only when you must. You send representatives to the English Parliament, testifying to the world an acceptance of your bonds. There is no power that can compel you to send them. Withdraw them, and your honour is once more clean and your case becomes an International one, as of right, not a provincial one, which your Parliamentary manœuvres have almost made it. Establish a National Assembly in Dublin and let it speak for you. You need not speak English, you have your own language; you need not base your education on English culture; you have your own culture. There is no law to compel you to have resource to English law courts, establish voluntary courts of arbitration; there is no law compelling you to buy English manufactures, buy your own; there is no law compelling you to carry on your trade in English ships, establish your own mercantile marine. Stand together, the whole people as one unit, stand up for everything native and reject everything foreign, and freedom is yours.”
The Sinn Fein policy is not a policy that could be made effective by a minority, though even a minority, determined and well led, could make it felt: but if adopted by the majority of the Irish people there is no doubt of its effectiveness. It would make government impossible: for it must always be remembered that in modern times a subject nation remains a subject nation only because it accepts, in some way or other, its government. A nation which will resolutely and unitedly, on the lines of the Sinn Fein policy, ignore its Government and proceed to the formation of a voluntary (so to speak) Government, would force the occupying power either to give in or to provide an armed guard for every unit of the subject nation.
And, as a matter of historical fact, it was the unconscious application of the Sinn Fein policy that originated all the remedial legislation of the nineteenth century. The Catholic Association of O’Connell, for instance, was practically a Sinn Fein Association, and the records and memoirs of that time show that it had made the ordinary government of Ireland a nullity, and that it forced the Emancipation Act. But when Ireland accepted the Emancipation Act and recognised the Act of Union the process of degeneration set in.
CHAPTER V
ARTHUR GRIFFITH—THE TRUTH
A small man, very sturdily built, nothing remarkable about his appearance except his eyes, which are impenetrable and steely, taciturn, deliberate, speaking when he does speak with the authority and the finality of genius, totally without rhetoric, under complete self-control, and the coolest and best brain in Ireland.