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.
While the United Irishman pursued its extensive and boisterous business, 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.