MODERN IRELAND IN THE MAKING
THE EVOLUTION OF
SINN FEIN
BY
ROBERT MITCHELL HENRY
| DUBLIN THE TALBOT PRESS (LIMITED) 89 TALBOT STREET | LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN (LIMITED) 1 ADELPHI TERRACE |
1920
CONTENTS
| Page | |
| INTRODUCTORY | 1 |
| IRISH NATIONALISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY | 16 |
| SINN FEIN | 39 |
| THE EARLY YEARS OF SINN FEIN | 71 |
| SINN FEIN AND THE REPUBLICANS | 88 |
| THE VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT | 106 |
| ULSTER AND NATIONALIST IRELAND | 128 |
| SINN FEIN, 1914-1916 | 158 |
| AFTER THE RISING | 213 |
| CONCLUSION | 279 |
THE EVOLUTION OF SINN FEIN
INTRODUCTORY.
It is almost a commonplace of the political moralists that every failureon the part of England to satisfy the moderate and constitutional demandsof the Irish people for reform has been followed invariably by adeplorable outbreak of “extremist” activities in Ireland. Unfortunatelyfor the moral, that constitutional demands should therefore be promptlyand fully conceded, the statement is almost exactly the reverse of thetruth, 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 claimto independence. Of the meaning of that claim there was no question fromthe Conquest to the fall of Limerick. The whole of that period is occupiedby a long struggle between the English and the Irish peoples for theeffective possession of the island. On neither side was there anymisapprehension of the meaning and object of the contest. The EnglishGovernment, whether it employed naked force, intrigue or legal fiction,aimed (and was understood to aim) at the moral, material and[Pg 2] politicalsubjugation of the Irish: the Irish, whether they fought in the field orintrigued in the cabinets of Europe, whether allied with France or withSpain or English royalists, had but one object, the assertion of theirnational independence. It was a struggle not merely between two nationsbut between two civilizations. Men of English blood who were absorbed bythe Irish nation and who accepted the Irish civilization fought as stoutlyfor the independence of their adopted (and adopting)