NEW IRELAND PAMPHLETS · NUMBER THREE
PRICE TWOPENCE

THE
ISSUE

The Case for Sinn Fein

BY
LECTOR

AS PASSED BY CENSOR.

NEW IRELAND PUBLISHING COMPANY, Limited
13 FLEET STREET, DUBLIN
1918

THE ISSUE

INDEPENDENCE.

Does Ireland wish to be free? Do we alone among the ancient Nations of Europe desire to remain slaves? That, and that alone, is the question which every Irish elector has now to answer. Let us put everything else out of our minds as irrelevant claptrap. Let nothing distract us from this single issue of Liberty. We must turn a deaf ear to sentimental whining about what this or that man did, his length of service, his “fighting on the floor of the House,” and so on. Whatever may have been done in the way of small doles, petty grants, and big talk, the fact is that we are not Free and the issue is, Do we want to be Free?

Why should we be afraid of Freedom? Would any sane adult voluntarily prefer to be a slave, to be completely in the control and power of another? Men do not willingly walk into jail; why, then, should a whole people? The men who are afraid of national liberty are unworthy even of personal liberty; they are the victims of that slave mentality which English coercion and corruption have striven to create in Ireland. When Mr. John Dillon, grown tremulous and garrulous and feeble, asked for a national convention this autumn “to definitely forswear an Irish Republic,” he was asking Ireland to commit an act of national apostasy and suicide. Would you definitely forswear your personal freedom? Will Mr. John Dillon hand his cheque-book and property over to some stranger and indenture himself as a serf or an idiot? When he does, but not till then, we shall believe that the Irish Nation is capable of sentencing itself cheerfully to penal servitude for all eternity.

It was not always thus. “I say deliberately,” said Mr. John Dillon at Moville in 1904, “that I should never have dedicated my life as I have done to this great struggle, if I did not see at the end of it the crowning and consummation of our work—A FREE AND INDEPENDENT IRELAND.” It is sad that, fourteen years later, when the end is in sight, Mr. Dillon should be found a recreant and a traitor to his past creed. The degeneration of such a man is a damning indictment of Westminsterism.

Parnell, too save for one short moment when he tried by compromise to fool English Liberalism but was foiled, proclaimed his belief in Irish Independence.

This is what Parnell said at Cincinatti on 23rd February, 1880:—

“When we have undermined English misgovernment, we have paved the way for Ireland to take her place among the nations of the earth. And let us not forget that that is the ultimate goal at which all we Irishmen aim. None of us, whether we be in America or in Ireland, or wherever we may be, will be satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which keeps Ireland bound to England.”

Were he alive to-day, when the last link is snapping, on what side would Parnell be? Would he forswear an Irish Republic or would he proclaim once more, as he said in Cork (21st Jan., 1885): “No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a Nation. No man has a right to say: Thus far shalt thou go and no farther. And we have never attempted to fix the ne plus ultra to the progress of Ireland’s nationhood and we never shall.”

IRELAND AND SMALL NATIONS.

At New York 31st August, 1904, John Redmond declared:—

“If it were in my power to-morrow by any honourable means to absolutely emancipate Ireland, I would do it and feel it my duty to do it. (1904, not 1914!) I believe it would be just as possible for Ireland to have a prosperous and free separate existence as a nation as Holland, Belgium, or Switzerland, or other small nationalities. And if it were in the power of any man to bring that result about to-morrow by honourable and brave means, he would be indeed a coward and a traitor to the traditions of his race did he not do so.”

If Holland and Poland and all the other little lands, why not Ireland? Put that straight question to yourself and you must answer it as John Redmond did in 1904. Are we alone among the nations created to be slaves and helots? Are we so incompetent and incapable as not to be able to manage our own country? Is a people of four millions to be in perpetual bondage and tutelage to a solicitor and a soldier? Did God Almighty cast up this island as a sandbank for Englishmen to walk on? Is it the sole mission of Irish men and women to send beef and butter to John Bull?

Look at the other nations and ask yourself, Why not? Why is not Ireland free? Are we too small in area? We are double Switzerland or Denmark, nearly three times Holland or Belgium. Is our population too small—though it was once double? We are as numerous as Serbia, our population is as large as that of Switzerland and nearly double that of Denmark or Norway. Does the difficulty lie in our poverty? Are we too poor to exist as a free people? The revenue raised per head in Ireland is double that of any other small nation, seven times that of Switzerland! The total revenue of Ireland is ten times that of Switzerland, three times that of Norway, four times that of Denmark, Serbia or Finland. Yet all these countries have their own armies, consuls, etc.; they run themselves as free nations at far below the cost of servile Ireland. Why? Because there is no other country pocketing their cash.

Here are some figures:—