Page:EB1922 - Volume 31.djvu/612

574 Ireland is unhappily rent by contending forces, and the main body of Irish opinion has seldom been more inflamed or less dis- posed to compromise than at the present moment. So long as the Irish question remains unsettled, there can be no political peace either in the United Kingdom or in the Empire, and we regard it as a first object in British statesmanship to explore all practical paths towards the settlement of this grave and difficult question, on the basis of self-government. But there are two paths which are closed the one leading to a complete severance of Ireland from the British Empire, and the other the forcible submission of the six counties of Ulster to a Home Rule Parliament against their will.

Thus the Unionist party, after 30 years' resistance, surrendered to the principle of Home Rule. The surrender was perhaps justified, from the point of view of party tactics, by the political situation after the war. In Ireland, however, its effect was not reassuring. It did not reconcile the Nationalists, still less Sinn Fein, to what remained of the Union; among the Unionists of the South it strained the ties of sentiment connecting them with Great Britain almost to breaking point.

The general election under the new franchise, which practically amounted to universal suffrage, was held on Dec. 14 1918. Save in Ulster and in one or two constituencies in The Dublin, the struggle was wholly between the National-

eiectioa. ist party and Sinn Fein, 1 and in this contest Sinn Fein was bound to win. The Nationalist party was disorganized, and its funds all but exhausted. The Sinn Fein leaders, on the other hand, had had plenty of time to per- fect their organization after their release in 1917, and the easy conditions of their internment had made it possible to direct it even after their rearrest. Irish-America, too, having taken up their cause, supplied them with plentiful funds. All the conditions, therefore, favoured them. Owing to the state of the country, no police were available for maintaining order. Personation was rife the dead voted in large numbers, while known opponents of Sinn Fein were warned not to vote if they did not wish to be dead; and since the polling clerks were almost exclusively Sinn Fein, the electors believed, rightly or wrongly, that their voting-papers would be examined and they them- selves marked. The result was that there was a vast number of abstentions. 2 All this, in addition to the undoubted swing- round of opinion in the direction of Sinn Fein, secured for the Republicans a sweeping victory. John Dillon himself was rejected, and the Nationalist party, which had crumbled under his leadership, was all but wiped out, retaining only six seats out of 68 ; 3 the Independent Nationalists (O'Brienites) vanished altogether; Sinn Fein captured 73 out of a total of 105 seats. The Unionists improved their position; before the election they had returned 18 members, they now returned 26, and the 400,000 Protestants of the South were actually represented in the new Parliament by three members two for Trinity College and one for S. Dublin.

The victorious group assumed the title of the Irish Republican party, and styled themselves not M.P., but F.D.E. (Feisire Bail Eireann, i.e. members of the Assembly of Ire- land). On Jan. 8 1910 they held their first meeting in the Dublin Mansion House, under the presidency of Count Plunkett, and on the zist the first formal meeting of Dail Eireann 4 was held in the same place. The proceedings were opened with prayer by Father O'Flanagan. Mr. Cathal Brugha (Charles Burgess) was then elected speaker, and a solemn Declaration of Independence was read in English, Gaelic and French, the 29 members present rising and subscribing to it in a body. The proceedings closed with the nomination of Count Plunkett, Mr. Arthur Griffith and Mr. De Valera as

1 At the suggestion of Cardinal Logue, who pointed out the danger of losing seats to " the enemy," the Sinn Feiners and Nationalists agreed not to stand against each other in certain Ulster con- stituencies, the Cardinal acting as arbitrator in their apportionment.

2 " The only totals that can be estimated are those of the seats where a contest took place, and where Sinn Fein was admittedly polled to the last man. Yet in those seats, with a total electorate of over 1,452,000 voters, Sinn Fein polled only 480,000 votes less than one-third " (The Times, Jan. 17 1919).

3 Mr. Joseph Devlin held his seat in East Belfast, and Major Redmond his father's constituency in Waterford.

4 Pronounced dahl eerahn.

Dall Eireann.

"delegates to the Peace Conference." This meeting was pub- lic. On the following day a private session was held at which Mr. De Valera was elected " President of the Irish Republic, 1 ' and a ministry was established, with departments for finance, home affairs, foreign affairs, and defence. Among the "min- isters " was the redoubtable Michael Collins, 5 who as head of the " War Office " was later to organize the reign of terror.

That an opposition Parliament should have been allowed to debate openly, and to set up an opposition Government, in a country under " martial law," may well surprise those who judge events in Ireland by the universal experience of other countries, and the spectacle of erameat. the metropolitan police guarding the peace of a rebel assembly would have yet more surprised them. In order to account for this singular phenomenon, and much else that hap- pened during the time of troubles to come, it is necessary to explain the powers possessed by the Irish Government and the principles on which these powers were exercised. Ireland had not been put under martial law in the sense in which the South was after the Civil War in the United States. 6 The Defence of the Realm Act, which gave large powers to the Government to deal more or less summarily with persons dangerous to the State, was a temporary war measure common to the whole United Kingdom, and its operation was very jealously safeguarded. In addition to this, however, the Government had a reserve weapon in the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act of 1887, but nearly all the clauses of this Act required a proclamation of the lord lieutenant in council before they came into force. The principle followed was to use these powers only in cases of grave necessity, so as to interfere as little as possible with the ordinary life of the country, and to apply them only temporarily and to certain disturbed areas. Meetings were only interfered with when, in the opinion of the police, they were likely to lead to grave breaches of the peace, and the ban at times fell on Orange demonstrations as well as on those of Sinn Fein. Thus the murder on Jan. 21 1919 of Constable MacDonnell the first indication of a cam- paign which was to reach terrible proportions was followed on the 28th by the proclamation under the Defence of the Realm Act of S. Tipperary as a " military area "; the murder of Mr. J. C. Milling, a resident magistrate, on March 31, led to West- port being proclaimed; the murder of Constable O'Brien and the wounding of several others, during the rescue of a Sinn Fein prisoner from Limerick workhouse infirmary on April 6, led to the proclamation of the district of Limerick. 7

The same policy was pursued, during the greater part of the year, towards the various revolutionary associations. They were allowed to carry on their propaganda, but whenever and wherever this led, or threatened to lead, to serious breaches of the peace they were* proclaimed. Thus after a series of outrages, including a bomb attack on a police hut (July 21), the ambushing and murder of a constable (Aug. 6), and the murder of a boy of 15 (Aug. 15), Sinn Fein" and kindred bodies " were proclaimed in county Clare. On Sept. 10 they were suppressed in the county and borough of Cork, and on the same date Tipperary, Limerick, Clare and the county and borough of Dublin were proclaimed under sec. i of the Crimes Act (1887). All these proclamations were the result of definite outrages, which showed an alarming tendency to increase as

6 He had been a junior clerk in the Post Office.

6 When on May I, in the debate on the Budget, Mr. Joseph Devlin denied the moral right of the Government to tax Ireland, on the ground that martial law had been substituted for the Constitu- tion, he was merely indulging in the usual wild exaggeration.

7 The prisoner, R. J. Byrne, condemned to a year's imprisonment, had gone on hunger strike and been removed to the infirmary. During visiting hours 30 armed men, who had mixed with the visitors, suddenly fell with bludgeons and revolvers on the five policemen guarding the prisoner; Byrne himself seized Constable Spillane from behind round the waist, while others shot and blud- geoned him. The constable, however, succeeded in drawing his revolver and shooting Byrne under his arm. The Sinn Feiners got away with the prisoner, but he was mortally wounded. Some of the rescuers were traced to county Clare and arrested.