The political creed of the _United Irishman_ was the absolute independence of Ireland; and though it did not advocate the methods of armed revolution it opened its columns to those Nationalists who did: though its policy was the re-establishment of the Constitution of 1782, not the establishment of an Irish Republic, it contained articles written by Republicans who made no secret of their views. But the object of this, confusing to the careless or intermittent reader, was gradually to build up a kind of national forum in which all "real" Nationalists might have their say, and to induce a general consensus of opinion in favour of the new policy. Its aim at first was strictly critical and educational. In writing of the '98 Clubs the editor says: "We look to them for the fostering of a national and tolerant public opinion, which will raise the _morale_ of the people, so grievously lowered by the squalid agitations of the past; we look to them for the inculcation of the doctrine of self-reliance, without which neither our land nor any other can hope for salvation; and we look to them anxiously for the teaching and training of youth, for our future depends largely on the young." Everything was made to turn upon the question of self-reliance and independence: what inculcated or enhanced these qualities was good, what hindered them was bad or (at best) indifferent. Political independence was regarded as the sequel and corollary of moral independence, and all political action that sacrificed this stood self-condemned. Under this condemnation fell in the first place the Irish Parliamentary Party: their policy was derided as one of "half-bluster and half-whine": when Mr. Redmond spoke, in an unguarded moment, of "wringing from whatever Government may be in power the full measure of a nation's rights" he was bluntly told that all this was "arrant humbug." "After one hundred years of the British Parliament we are poorer and fewer, and our taxation has been multiplied by ten. All the signs of the times point to the continuance of this policy of practically burning the candle at both ends; and our self-respect and our status before the nations of Europe would be infinitely raised by a manly refusal to lend the support of our presence to an assembly in which our interests are ignored whenever they clash, and sometimes when they do not clash, with the interests of England. If our 'Parliamentary representatives' had spirit, they would have retired from the British Parliament when the Home Rule Bill was defeated, and have told their constituents that they were wasting time in fighting Ireland's battle with British weapons and that further representation at Westminster was 'neither possible nor desirable.' That would have been a protest that would have roused the attention of the civilized world and even now it would be well that such a protest should be made; for it _is_ waste of time and money and a source of degradation