The Evolution of Sinn Fein

It is almost a commonplace of the political moralists that every failure on the part of England to satisfy the moderate and constitutional demands of the Irish people for reform has been followed invariably by a deplorable outbreak of "extremist" activities in Ireland. Unfortunately for the moral, that constitutional demands should therefore be promptly and fully conceded, the statement is almost exactly the reverse of the truth, if Irish history as a whole be taken as the field for induction. The Irish Nation cannot be said to have at any period abandoned its claim to independence. Of the meaning of that claim there was no question from the Conquest to the fall of Limerick. The whole of that period is occupied by a long struggle between the English and the Irish peoples for the effective possession of the island. On neither side was there any misapprehension of the meaning and object of the contest. The English Government, whether it employed naked force, intrigue or legal fiction, aimed (and was understood to aim) at the moral, material and political subjugation of the Irish: the Irish, whether they fought in the field or intrigued in the cabinets of Europe, whether allied with France or with Spain or English royalists, had but one object, the assertion of their national independence. It was a struggle not merely between two nations but between two civilizations. Men of English blood who were absorbed by the Irish nation and who accepted the Irish civilization fought as stoutly for the independence of their adopted (and adopting) country as did the descendants of the Milesians. England could never count on the fidelity to her ideals and policy in Ireland of the second generation of her own settlers. History cannot produce another instance of a struggle so prolonged and so pertinacious. Whole counties, stripped by fire and sword of their aboriginal owners were repeopled within two or three generations and renewed the struggle. But superior numbers and organization, a more fortunate star and (it seemed) the designs of Providence, prevailed in the end; and with the fall of Limerick England might have regarded her task as at last accomplished. The Irish Nation was prostrate, and chains were forged for it which, heavier and more galling than any forged for any nation before, seemed to offer a perpetual guarantee of slavery, misery and degradation. Ireland was henceforth to be administered as a kind of convict settlement. The law, in the words of a famous judgment, did not presume the existence of such a person as a Catholic Irishman; that is to say, two-thirds of the inhabitants of the country had no legal existence. Legal existence was the privilege of Protestant Englishmen living in Ireland and of such Protestant Irishmen as claimed it. But legal existence in Ireland during the eighteenth century was no prize to be grasped at. The mere fact of residence in Ireland entailed practical disabilities for which no mere local ascendancy was an adequate compensation. The manufactures and trade of Ireland were systematically and ruthlessly suppressed. Englishmen who settled there found that while they were at liberty to oppress "the mere Irish" they were subject themselves to a similar oppression by the English who remained at home. No one might enter that prison house and remain wholly a man. The "garrison" grumbled, protested and threatened, but in vain. Constitutionalists appealed to the policy of the Conquest in support of the independence of the country. It was argued that the Parliament of Ireland, established by the conquerors as a symbol of annexation, was and ought to be independent of the Parliament of England. The claim was held to be baseless and treasonable; so far from being abandoned or weakened, it was enforced and asserted by the arms of the Volunteers, and in less than a century after the fall of Limerick the Renunciation Act of 1783 enacted that the people of Ireland should be "bound only by laws enacted by his Majesty and the parliament of that kingdom in all cases whatever."

But while this was independence, it was independence in the sense of Molyneux, Swift and Grattan, not in the sense in which it had been understood by Hugh O'Neill. The American colonies went farther and fared better, and the descendants of the race of Hugh O'Neill had to be reckoned with still. Their position under the settlement of 1783 was what it had been since the Treaty of Limerick was broken by the Penal Laws, and all that they gained at first was an indirect share in the prosperity which began for the country with the assertion of its legislative independence. The population increased; trade, commerce and manufactures flourished and multiplied; the flag of Ireland began once more to creep forth upon the seas; but the ancient race was still proscribed in the land of its birth. But while it was in human nature to invent, it was not in human nature to continue to administer, a code so diabolical as that of the Penal Laws. The Volunteers who claimed legislative independence of England asserted the rights of conscience for their fellow-countrymen. Under the free Parliament a gradual alleviation took place in the lot of Catholics in Ireland; in 1793 they were admitted to the franchise and there is a presumption that had the Irish Parliament really been independent the Penal Laws would have in time been abolished entirely. But the vigilance of English policy and English Ministers never ceased; their meddling in the affairs of Ireland was perpetual and mischievous: the rights of the Irish Parliament were constantly in danger from the interference of English Ministers who advised their common Monarch and moulded his Irish policy through the Viceroy and the Executive. It was but a step from the admission of Catholics to the franchise to their admission to the House of Commons, but that step was never taken by the Irish Parliament. The measures of Parliamentary reform pressed upon them by the popular party both inside and outside Parliament were constantly rejected, partly through the mere conservatism of privilege partly through the influence of the English Cabinet. The United Irishmen, whose aim was to establish a free and equal representation of all Irishmen irrespective of creed, despaired of obtaining their object by open agitation and, subjected to repressive enactments, transformed themselves into a secret association for the overthrow of the existing government and for complete separation from England as the only method of securing and maintaining the rights of Ireland. They were the first Irish Republican Party. They appealed for assistance to the French Directory, but so jealous were they of their independence that they seem to have jeopardized the prospect of help by their insistence that the force sent must not be large enough to threaten the subjugation of the country. The Government, becoming aware of the conspiracy, took steps at once to foster it and to crush it. Their agents went through the country, forming United Irish lodges and then denouncing the members to the authorities. Under pretence of helping the Irish Government in its difficulties. English regiments were poured into the country and, when a sufficient force was assembled, open rebellion was provoked and crushed with a systematic barbarity which is even now hardly credible.

To understand the Rebellion and the policy of the Union which followed it, one must go farther back than the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The fall of Limerick ended (or seemed to end) the struggle for the military domination of Ireland. Once it was in the effective possession of England the period of its commercial subjugation began. Every kind of manufacture which competed with that of England was suppressed: every branch of commerce which threatened rivalry with that of England was forbidden. To ensure at once that military resistance might not be renewed and that commercial subjugation might be endured the policy was adopted first (to quote Archbishop Boulter) of "filling the great places with natives of England" and secondly of perpetuating the animosity between Protestants and Catholics. It was hoped in this way to form "two nations" out of one and render the task of government and exploitation easier in consequence. The remarkable power of absorbing foreign settlers shown by the Irish Nation since before the Conquest was thus to be nullified and religion pressed into service against humanity. So clearly was this policy conceived that Archbishop Boulter could write "The worst of this is that it tends to unite Protestant with Papist and, whenever that happens, good-bye to the English interests in Ireland forever." But the agents of the policy overreached themselves. Irish Protestants turned against a policy which counted the merit of being a Protestant as less than the demerit of being Irish. Dean Swift won the favour alike of Irish Protestant and Irish Catholic by his mordant pamphlets against the English policy in Ireland and may justly be reckoned as on the whole the most powerful champion of Irish independence in the sense of the eighteenth century. The Irish agents of the policy of Protestant Ascendancy overreached themselves too. Official Irish Protestantism bore almost as hardly upon Presbyterians as upon Papists, and the United Irishmen at the end of the century found no support in Ireland warmer than that accorded them by the best of the Ulster Presbyterians. There is little doubt that the reversal of the commercial ascendancy by the legislation of 1782 was regarded by the English Ministry as a merely temporary setback, to be repaired at the earliest convenient opportunity. In any case the valuable asset of Protestant Ascendancy, with its possibilities of perpetual friction and disunion among Irishmen, was still in their hands. When the rise of the United Irishmen threatened even this, the necessity of recovering the lost ground and the opportunity of doing so were immediately recognised. The obstinacy with which the Irish Parliament opposed Parliamentary reform (an obstinacy directly fostered by the policy of the English Ministry) drove the United Irish movement into hostility at once to the English connection and to the existing constitution of Ireland. They could thus be represented as at once a menace to England and a menace to Ireland, and it was held to be the duty of both Governments to combine to crush them. They were crushed by English troops, but the Irish Parliament was crushed with them. Pitt decided that direct control by the English Ministry must take the place of indirect control through an Irish Executive, and the Legislative Union was enacted. There seemed to be no other permanent or ultimate alternative to the complete independence and separation of England and Ireland.