Page:The issue; the case for Sinn Fein.djvu/11

9 "'I have for four years tried to appeal to the sense of justice in this House of Commons on behalf of Ireland. I leave, convinced that no just cause, no cause of right, will ever find support from this House of Commons unless it is backed up by force.'"

THE FUTILITY OF TALK.

Let us consider the whole policy in a sane, business-like way. John Bull runs his Other Island purely as a lucrative investment; he makes a good profit by the concern. Ireland is simply an Area for supplying beef and mutton, oats and butter, timber and men. We, Irish men and women, exist merely to be exploited. Well, we know it; what have we done? .How have we striven to oust this big profiteer who sweats and coerces us? We were once an independent concern, we managed our own affairs. Then John Bull annexed us; by means of bribes and promises and threats he turned but the Irish directors. Arrangements were made by which 100 Irishmen were admitted to the English Employers' Federation 600 strong. And for 118 years these Irishmen have been talking there, making speeches and petitions and harangues. And we? What have we been doing? Oh, yes, now and then the Irish.—that is, John Bull's workingmen—got restive and made things unpleasant. So they got some concessions: Emancipation, Land Acts, etc. But still the- always turned again to talk; with 80 Irishmen talking to 600 Englishmen they were told that they would be quite safe. Weren't we "represented" at Westminster? Whenever these, our representatives, definitely proposed anything, they were, of course, beaten; but if the majority against them was less than 200, they always raised a deafening, cheer. It is so nice to be beaten by only 150, whereas if we were not "represented" we should be beaten by 230—which would be dreadful. Then we were told that what was said in Parliament reached the world—as if Mr. King had not told more truth about us in Parliament than the whole Irish Party, as if Hansard is not censored, as if Dr. McCartan, Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington and others have not said more in America than twenty Westminsters could convey—not to mention T. P. O'Connor's performances! To what depths are we reduced, when Westminsterism is excused only as a means of getting into Hansard!

Do we really think that a handful of Irishmen by merely talking can persuade eight times their number of Englishmen to take their grip off this country, to cease exploiting us, to give up their fat profits? Is it not, to say the least, more likely that the English majority, far cleverer and more powerful, will succeed in cajoling, bribing and fooling the few Irish flies who walk into the spiders' parlour? In fact, was not the Act of Union specially designed for this very purpose? To swallow a powerless Irish minority in an English Parliament, to give them facilities for talking and letting off steam that thereby the Irish people might be beguiled into, doing nothing else. By providing a sham outlet for our energies, by diverting our attention into wordy warfare, the English Parliament has succeeded for 118 years in preventing us from seeing the obvious truth that the English Government can only be made unworkable in Ireland.

The very genius of Parnell has done us harm by intensifying the illusion. He succeeded for a while, where Butt failed, because he adopted unparliamentary methods in Parliament. For a time, by persistent obstruction. Parnell made Government unworkable, even in England. . He was beaten in the end; obstruction is no longer possible: we have reverted to the mock debates of Isaac Butt. Things are even much worse; for the whole Party system has made Parliament a fraud and a farce. The House of Commons has lost its independence to a caucus which controls the jobs and the party funds. The latest development, whereby Messrs. Lloyd George and Bonar Law have arranged to wipe out the Opposition, makes the further presence of a few Irish Nationalists a jocose anachronism.