Devoted to the cause of an independent Irish Republic and of the union of Irishmen without distinction of creed under one national banner, the cause of Wolfe Tone, the movement attracted idealists who had so far held aloof from the older, non-republican, form of Sinn Fein. Chief among these were P. H. Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh, both poets and men of fine literary gifts, both regarded with affection for their high and disinterested devotion to the cause of Ireland. And in accordance with Irish Republican tradition it took up an attitude with regard to armed revolution somewhat different from that of Sinn Fein. While the latter held that in the present state of Ireland an armed revolution was impracticable, the Republicans, though not directly advising it, held that it had a reasonable prospect of success if England should become involved in a European War. Some Irish revolutionists who had so far held aloof from all political parties were encouraged by this to join the republican branch of Sinn Fein and try to infuse into it a more determined revolutionary spirit.
The Labour Party, whose opinions were expressed by the The Irish Worker and People’s Advocate, adopted a similar attitude. Their motto was the phrase of Fintan Lalor: “The principle I state and mean to stand upon is this—that the entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and down to the centre, is vested in the people of Ireland.” Their own language was equally explicit: “By Freedom we mean that we Irishmen in Ireland shall be free to govern this land called Ireland by Irish people in the interest of all the Irish people; that no other people or peoples, no matter what they call themselves, or from whence they come, now or in the future, have any claim to interfere with the common right of the common people of this land of Ireland to work out their own destiny. We owe no allegiance to any other nation, nor the king, governors or representatives of any other nation.” In spite of the criticism that a purely Labour movement should confine itself to Labour questions, and leave the broader political issues to the one side, The Irish Worker declared for an independent Irish Republic: “We know,” it said, “that until the workers of Ireland obtain possession of the land of Ireland and make their own laws they can only hope for and obtain partial improvement of their conditions. We ask no more than our rights: we will be content with no less.” The desire for a “free independent nation, enjoying a true Republican freedom” linked the Labour Party to the republican branch of Sinn Fein, but on other questions there was much disagreement. The attitude of Arthur Griffith to the Wexford Strike in 1911 was the subject of bitter comment. The Young Republicans, who objected to English Trade Unions sending “English money” to finance the Irish strikers, were bluntly told to mind their own business: the Gaelic League, which encouraged Irish manufactures, was said to have failed in its duty by taking no account of the conditions under which they were manufactured, or of the wages paid to the workers who made them: “the revival of the Irish language is a desirable ambition and has our whole-hearted support; but the abolition of destitution, disease and the conditions that cause them are even more necessary and urgent. What is the use of bilingualism to a dead man?”
But however they might differ on minor points, both of these new parties, the Independent Labour Party of Ireland and the Young Republican Party, were at one with each other and with Sinn Fein in opposition to the Parliamentary Party. It was pointed out that in the twenty-one years which had elapsed since the death of Parnell his policy of “blocking the way to English legislation until Ireland was accorded self-government” had been abandoned without any other definite policy being substituted for it: that during ten of those years an English party, professing sympathy with Ireland, had been kept in office by the Irish vote: that Home Rule was still in the future and the principles governing the expected measure still undetermined. In March, 1912, the Executive of Sinn Fein resolved unanimously: “That this Executive earnestly hopes that the promised Home Rule Bill will be one that may be accepted as a genuine measure of reform by the people of Ireland and that it may speedily become law. Should the Bill, on the contrary, be rejected as unsatisfactory by the people of Ireland, or should it, though satisfactory, fail to become law—which we would deplore—the organization is prepared to lead the country by other and effective methods to the attainment of self-government.” In reporting this resolution Sinn Fein wrote, in words which at the time seemed to many supporters of the Party offensive, but which now seem charged with portent: “No new parliamentarian movement will be permitted unopposed to build upon the ruins of that which goes down with a sham Home Rule measure. To make this clear before the Home Rule measure be introduced is the last service we can render the Parliamentary Party. They have had the Government ‘in the hollow of their hands’ for years—they have removed the House of Lords from their path—there is nothing to prevent the Liberal Government introducing and passing a full measure of Home Rule save and except its enmity to Ireland. With a majority of over 100 and the Lords’ veto removed the fullest measure of Home Rule can be passed in two years. It is the business of the Parliamentary Party to have it passed or to leave the stage to those who are in earnest.”
The appearance of the text of the Bill was not reassuring even to those advocates of Irish independence who were willing to take a measure of Home Rule as an instalment. The financial provisions of the Bill met with severe and justified criticism. In spite of the fact that Ireland had been systematically over-taxed for a century, and that a Parliamentary Commission had so reported nearly twenty years earlier, the financial provision for the proposed Irish Parliament could only be described as beggarly. And almost everything that really mattered in the government of Ireland was withdrawn from the competence of the Irish Parliament. It was described in mockery as a “Gas and Water Bill,” and even convinced supporters of the Parliamentary Party had their qualms in declaring their acceptance of the measure. There was no dubiety about the verdict of the Nationalist organizations opposed to Mr. Redmond. The Worker’s Republic was outspoken in the extreme: it complained that the Bill had been extorted from the Liberals “by whining and apologizing”: in an Open Letter to the United Irish League of Great Britain, it said, “You are told that the people of Ireland accepted the Bill as a full and complete recognition of our claim as Irishmen. That is a lie ... a Bill, which is the rottenest bargain ever made by a victorious people with a mean, pettifogging, despised Government.” “A beggar,” it wrote again, “gets only crumbs and we, Irish workers, want a country.” The verdict of Irish Freedom was equally emphatic; it was summed up in the phrase, “Damn your concessions; we want our country.”
But whatever individual Irish Members of Parliament may have thought of the Bill, the Party was as a whole committed to it. No one in Ireland knew what negotiations, barterings, and bargains preceded the actual drafting of the measure: what the difficulties and objections were which had to be met by Mr. Redmond: in how far he had offered concessions, in how far they had been forced upon him. They only knew that he was prepared to support the resulting Bill and that the resulting Bill was less than they had been led to expect. There was little open discussion of principles, criticism was not relished or welcomed. The Party had done its best for the country and the country was now called upon to back the Party. A bargain had been made by the representatives of the Irish people and the Irish people were expected to stand by the consequences. Under other circumstances this appeal would have been accepted, but it was no answer to the complaint that the Irish representatives had not been empowered to abandon in express words every national claim that went beyond those satisfied by the provisions of the Home Rule Bill. This was the kernel of the dispute between the Party and the Nationalists who opposed them. It seemed as if by the deliberate renunciation of any desire or intention to claim for Ireland anything more than the status of a dependency of Great Britain, deprived forever (so far as an act of legislation could deprive her) of her immemorial claim to be an independent nation, the Party had betrayed the national demand and sold the national honour. But the Party did not see (or betrayed no sign of having seen) the relevance of the criticism; and certainly they miscalculated the strength of the opposition which was gathering in the country. In the face of Ulster’s attitude, they confidently expected the whole country to rally to their support. And, after all, what could, or would, the dissentients do about it? Sinn Fein continued loudly to proclaim its policy of opposition to the use of force. It was all very well to say “Sinn Fein is the policy of to-morrow. If Ireland be again deceived as to Home Rule, she has no other policy to fall back upon”; but the same article (December, 1912) contained the words: “The great offence of Sinn Fein indeed in the eyes of its opponents is that it does not urge an untrained and unequipped country to futile insurrection.” If Sinn Fein then would only talk, and the only place to talk to the purpose was the House of Commons, what was there to prevent Home Rule from being an accomplished fact “in the not far distant future?” Ulster supplied the answer, not for itself only, but for the rest of Ireland.
THE VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT.
The genius of Ulster (perhaps through some happy combination of primitive stocks) has always been practical and militant. It was the last Irish province to submit to English rule. The Celtic population which survived the clearances and the plantings has exercised upon planters and settlers the ancient charm of the Celtic stock and made them, in spite of themselves, ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores. The O’Neills were the most formidable antagonists whom the invaders encountered in Ireland. They made the last great stand for national independence. When Owen Roe O’Neill died the Irish nation was, in the words of Davis, “sheep without a shepherd when the snow shuts out the sky” and the flight of the Earls was the sign that the resistance of Ireland was over with the resistance of Ulster. In later times and under changed conditions Ulster retained the prerogative of leadership. The Volunteers who forced the Constitution of 1782 were largely Ulstermen; the leaders of the United Irishmen were to be found in Ulster and the compact of their Union was sealed on the mountain that rises above Belfast. John Mitchel, who led the Young Irelanders in action as Davis was their master in thought, was the son of an Ulster Presbyterian minister. Other Irishmen may have excelled in literature and the arts, have voiced more eloquently the aspirations of their country or sung with more pathos of its fall, but the bent of Ulster has been on the whole towards action and movement. The heart and brain of Ireland may beat and think elsewhere, but Ulster is its right arm. Ireland is proud of Ulster. Under an unnatural and vicious system of government they have quarrelled; but if Ulster were reconciled to Ireland Ulster might lead it where it chose.
On the question of the Home Rule Bill Ulster was almost equally divided. The majority of the Ulster Protestants were against it, though a minority, among whom traditions of Protestant Nationalism had survived the sordid bigotries fostered for a century, were strongly in its favour; the majority of the Catholic population were in favour of it. Among the Nationalists there was a minority who professed the creed of Sinn Fein and of Republicanism: late in 1913 a branch of the Young Republican Party in Belfast, composed of Gaelic Leaguers, members of Freedom Clubs and Trades Unionists unfurled its banner of an orange sunburst on a green ground with the motto in white, “Young Republican Party—Dia agus an Pobul,” and there had been branches of Sinn Fein established in Ulster some years earlier; but on the whole the Ulster Nationalists supported the Parliamentary Party. No geographical or ethnological line of political demarcation could be drawn. There was no district in Ulster which was not politically divided: there was no stock in Ulster which had not members in both political camps. Some of the most outspoken and vehement of the Unionist Party bore, and were proud of, purely Irish names; many of the Nationalists were the bearers of names introduced into Ireland with the planters sent by King James. The settled policy of the Act of the Union had done its work with almost complete success. The Protestant had learned to regard the connection with England as essential to the maintenance of his religious and civil freedom: he believed not only that the Roman Catholic Church was officially intolerant, but that all Roman Catholics were, as a matter of fact, intolerant in conduct and in practice, and incapable of being anything else. And Irish Catholics seemed to him to be peculiarly susceptible to the intolerant influences of their ecclesiastical leaders. When the views of the Catholic Hierarchy in Ireland and those of Irish Nationalists coincided he saw in their agreement the triumph of the “priest in politics”: when they differed he was either at a loss to account for an occurrence so far removed from the settled habits of nature or saw in it an obscure but interesting symptom of a fear of Home Rule on the part of the Hierarchy, a fear that Home Rule might jeopardise their own predominance. But not even the supposed hesitations of the Hierarchy could reconcile him to the prospect of a Home Rule under which the electoral majority would be “priest-ridden.” Unkind critics might have urged that people whose whole political outlook was hag-ridden by the phantoms of popes and priests were not in a position to call those “priest-ridden” who at any rate sometimes differed sharply from their clergy in political and civil affairs; but the Ulster Protestant was proof against mere logical quibbles and rhetorical retorts. He had done his thinking about politics with the Act of Union: he had taken his stand: he was careless of taunts, cajolery and threats: let those meddle with him who dared. He spurned the allegation of intolerance, but he was intolerant without knowing it and (to do him justice) for reasons which, had they corresponded with the facts, would have been sound. An Ireland under ecclesiastical despotism, whether Protestant or Catholic, would be no place for a man to live in, and to exchange the Legislative Union with England for a legislative union with Rome would indeed be a disastrous bargain. As a matter of fact, had the Ulster Protestant realized it, there was no fear of any such result. In the Irish Catholic mind there was clearly defined the limit of the sphere in which the Church was supreme. That sphere was much larger than the restricted area within which the Protestant allowed his Church to legislate at its ease: but it was subject to limitations all the same. And it was growing narrower and narrower. Individual ecclesiastics may have roamed at large (and did roam at large) over the whole sphere of human activities: individual priests made monstrous claims upon the submission of their flocks in matters with which they had no kind of concern. The intense devotion to their religion which marks Catholic Irishmen, the respect which they feel for the priesthood which stood by them in dark and evil days, had induced a spirit of patience in submission to claims which could not be substantiated. But with the revival of interest in political thought the position was changing. The battle for political freedom of thought and action which the Fenians had fought had its result. Ecclesiastical claims in civil matters were subject to a close scrutiny. The Gaelic League had more than once asserted with success its claim to be free in its own sphere from any kind of ecclesiastical dictation, and in every instance the people of Ireland has taken its side. The attempt of the Roman Curia to interfere with the subscription to the Parnell testimonial had been an ignominious failure; and the boast of an Irish leader that he would as soon take his politics from Constantinople as from Rome was generally acknowledged to be sound as a statement of theory. But there were still instances enough of impossible claims on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities to afford the Ulster Protestant a good prima facie brief against Home Rule.