Ireland -- Politics and government; Political parties -- Ireland -- History; Sinn Fein
The title which Mr. Griffith chose for his paper is significant. The
adoption of the name of John Mitchel's paper was more than a hint that
John Mitchel's policy was to be revived. But it was to be the policy, not
of the abortive revolution of '48, but that expressed earlier in a
prescient passage. A plan (said Mitchel) for the repeal of the Union "must
develop not one sole plan followed out to the end, but three or four of
the possible and probable series of events which may evidently lead to the
result. It must show (for one way) how a parliamentary campaign, conducted
honestly and boldly, might bring the state of public business in
Parliament to such a position that repeal would be the only solution; for
another way, how systematic passive opposition to, and contempt of, _law_
might be carried out through a thousand details, so as to virtually
supersede English dominion here and to make the mere repealing statute an
immaterial formality (this, I may observe, is _my_ way); and for a third
way how, in the event of an European war, a strong national party in
Ireland could grasp the occasion to do the work instantly.... It should
also show how and to what extent all these methods of operation might be
combined." In this one passage Mitchel sketched successively the Parnell
policy, the Sinn Fein policy and the policy of the Easter Rising.
_The United Irishman_ ran as a weekly paper from March 4, 1899, to April
14, 1906. During this time twenty-three issues were seized and confiscated
in the Post Office and upon three occasions in the year 1900 the paper was
publicly suppressed. In 1905 the Secret Service threatened the printer
with prosecution unless the printing of the paper was discontinued; and in
1906 the increasing liabilities of the United Irishman Publishing Company
(who engaged Mr. Griffith as editor) led to the discontinuance of the
paper. But before it ceased publication the Sinn Fein Movement had been
successfully inaugurated. The paper was remarkable for the ability with
which it was edited, the literary excellence of its articles both
editorial and contributed, the range of its topics and the freedom which
it allowed to the discussion in its columns of different views. Its
contributors included many of the best-known Irish writers, though many of
them were not (or did not remain) in sympathy with its political
propaganda. It championed the cause of the Gaelic League, of native
industries, of native music and of native games. It spread information
upon the mineral resources of Ireland, its waterways, its railways, its
vital statistics, and the menace of emigration. It republished as serials
such standard works as John Mitchel's _Apology_ and an authorized
translation of D'Arbois de Jubainville's _Irish Mythological Cycle_. Mr.
Best contributed a series of articles on "The Old Irish Bardic Tales." It
published a drama by W. B. Yeats and its columns were always open to
literary and dramatic criticisms and discussions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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