A Path to Freedom by Michael Collins

Author:Michael Collins [Collins, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781617430275
Google: 9nVRcAAACAAJ
Publisher: Greenbook Publications, LLC
Published: 2010-07-14T23:00:00+00:00

COLLAPSE OF THE TERROR

British Rule's Last Stages

What the Elections Meant

We have seen how in ancient Ireland the people were themselves the guardians of their land, doing all for themselves according to their own laws and customs, as interpreted by the Brehons, which gave them security, prosperity, and national greatness, and how this was upset by the English determination to blot out Irish ways, when came poverty, demoralisation and a false respect for English standards and habits.

The English power to do this rested on military occupation and on economic control. It had the added advantage of social influence operating upon a people weakened and demoralised by the state of dependence into which the English occupation had brought them.

Military resistance was attempted. Parliamentary strategy was tried. The attempts did not succeed. They failed because they did not go to the root of the question.

The real cure had to be started—-that the people should recover belief in their own ways and ideas and put them into practice. Secret societies were formed and organised. The Land League came into existence. The Gaelic League came. Sinn Féin grew and developed. All these societies did much. But the effort had to be broadened into a national movement to become irresistible. It became irresistible in the Republican movement when it was backed by sufficient military force to prevent the English forces from suppressing the national revival.

The challenge of Easter Week and its sacrifices increased the growing national self-belief. All these things made a resistance against which the English, with their superior forces, pitted themselves in vain.

Ireland's story from 1918 to 1921 may be summed up as the story of a struggle between our determination to govern ourselves and to get rid of British government and the British determination to prevent us from doing either. It was a struggle between two rival Governments, the one an Irish Government resting on the will of the people and the other an alien Government depending for its existence upon military force—-the one gathering more and more authority, the other steadily losing ground and growing ever more desperate and unscrupulous.

All the history of the three years must be read in the light of that fact.

Ireland had never acquiesced in government by England. Gone for ever were policies which were a tacit admission that a foreign Government could bestow freedom, or a measure of freedom, upon a nation which had never surrendered its national claim.

We could take our freedom. We would set up a Government of our own and defend it. We would take the government out of the hands of the foreigner, who had no right to it, and who could exercise it only by force.

A war was being waged by England and her Allies in defence, it was said, of the freedom of small nationalities, to establish in such nations 'the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed'. We, too, proposed to establish in Ireland 'the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed'.

At the General

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.