Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.) _MODERN IRELAND IN THE MAKING_ THE EVOLUTION OF SINN FEIN BY ROBERT MITCHELL HENRY DUBLIN LONDON THE TALBOT PRESS T. FISHER UNWIN (LIMITED) (LIMITED) 89 TALBOT STREET 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 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