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  NEW IRELAND PAMPHLETS. NUMBER THREE
  PRICE TWOPENCE


  THE ISSUE
  The Case for Sinn Fein


  BY LECTOR

  AS PASSED BY CENSOR.


  NEW IRELAND PUBLISHING COMPANY, Limited
  13 FLEET STREET, DUBLIN
  1918




THE ISSUE


=INDEPENDENCE.=

Does Ireland wish to be free? Do we alone among the ancient Nations of
Europe desire to remain slaves? That, and that alone, is the question
which every Irish elector has now to answer. Let us put everything else
out of our minds as irrelevant claptrap. Let nothing distract us from this
single issue of Liberty. We must turn a deaf ear to sentimental whining
about what this or that man did, his length of service, his "fighting on
the floor of the House," and so on. Whatever may have been done in the way
of small doles, petty grants, and big talk, the =fact= is that we are not
Free and the =issue= is, Do we want to be Free?

Why should we be afraid of Freedom? Would any sane adult voluntarily
prefer to be a slave, to be completely in the control and power of
another? Men do not willingly walk into jail; why, then, should a whole
people? The men who are =afraid= of national liberty are unworthy even of
personal liberty; they are the victims of that slave mentality which
English coercion and corruption have striven to create in Ireland. When
Mr. John Dillon, grown tremulous and garrulous and feeble, asked for a
national convention this autumn "to definitely forswear an Irish
Republic," he was asking Ireland to commit an act of national apostasy and
suicide. Would =you= definitely forswear your personal freedom? Will Mr.
John Dillon hand his cheque-book and property over to some stranger and
indenture himself as a serf or an idiot? When he does, but not till then,
we shall believe that the Irish Nation is capable of sentencing itself
cheerfully to penal servitude for all eternity.

It was not always thus. "I say deliberately," said Mr. John Dillon at
Moville in 1904, "that I should never have dedicated my life as I have
done to this great struggle, if I did not see at the end of it the
crowning and consummation of our work--A FREE AND INDEPENDENT IRELAND." It
is sad that, fourteen years later, when the end is in sight, Mr. Dillon
should be found a recreant and a traitor to his past creed. The
degeneration of such a man is a damning indictment of Westminsterism.

Parnell, too save for one short moment when he tried by compromise to fool
English Liberalism but was foiled, proclaimed his belief in Irish
Independence.

This is what Parnell said at Cincinatti on 23rd February, 1880:--

    "When we have undermined English misgovernment, we have paved the way
    for Ireland to take her place among the nations of the earth. And let
    us not forget that that is the ultimate goal at which all we Irishmen
    aim. None of us, whether we be in America or in Ireland, or wherever
    we may be, will be satisfied =until we have destroyed the last link
    which keeps Ireland bound to England=."

Were he alive to-day, when the last link is snapping, on what side would
Parnell be? Would he forswear an Irish Republic or would he proclaim once
more, as he said in Cork (21st Jan., 1885): "No man has a right to fix the
boundary of the march of a Nation. No man has a right to say: Thus far
shalt thou go and no farther. And we have never attempted to fix the _ne
plus ultra_ to the progress of Ireland's nationhood and we never shall."


=IRELAND AND SMALL NATIONS.=

At New York 31st August, 1904, John Redmond declared:--

    "If it were in my power to-morrow by any honourable means to
    absolutely emancipate Ireland, I would do it and feel it my duty to do
    it. (1904, not 1914!) I believe it would be just as possible for
    Ireland to have a prosperous and free separate existence as a nation
    as Holland, Belgium, or Switzerland, or other small nationalities. And
    if it were in the power of any man to bring that result about
    to-morrow by honourable and brave means, he would be indeed a coward
    and a traitor to the traditions of his race did he not do so."

If Holland and Poland and all the other little lands, why not Ireland? Put
that straight question to yourself and you must answer it as John Redmond
did in 1904. Are we alone among the nations created to be slaves and
helots? Are we so incompetent and incapable as not to be able to manage
our own country? Is a people of four millions to be in perpetual bondage
and tutelage to a solicitor and a soldier? Did God Almighty cast up this
island as a sandbank for Englishmen to walk on? Is it the sole mission of
Irish men and women to send beef and butter to John Bull?

Look at the other nations and ask yourself, Why not? Why is not Ireland
free? Are we too small in area? We are double Switzerland or Denmark,
nearly three times Holland or Belgium. Is our population too small--though
it was once double? We are as numerous as Serbia, our population is as
large as that of Switzerland and nearly double that of Denmark or Norway.
Does the difficulty lie in our poverty? Are we too poor to exist as a free
people? The revenue raised =per head= in Ireland is double that of any
other small nation, seven times that of Switzerland! The total revenue of
Ireland is ten times that of Switzerland, three times that of Norway, four
times that of Denmark, Serbia or Finland. Yet all these countries have
their own armies, consuls, etc.; they run themselves as free nations at
far below the cost of servile Ireland. Why? Because there is no other
country pocketing their cash.

Here are some figures:--

                  Area       Population     Revenue
              (thousands of  (Millions)   (Millions L)
                sq. miles)
  Ireland         32-1/2        4-1/3         30
  Belgium         11-1/2        7-1/2         32
  Holland         12-1/2        6-1/2         18-3/4
  Denmark         15-1/2        2-3/4          7-1/2
  Norway         125            2-1/2         10
  Switzerland     16            4              3
  Rumania         53-1/2        7-1/2         24
  Serbia          34            4-1/2          8-1/2
  Finland        126            3-1/4          8-1/2

These figures would suggest that Ireland is a strong military and naval
power among the small nations. And so we are--only the army and navy we
support are not our own; they exist to keep us in slavery, not in freedom.
It is about time we started business on our own.


=DEPENDENT ON ENGLAND?=

The most significant instance of English policy in Ireland is the creation
of the widespread delusion that we are economically dependent on England.
An elaborate network of fraud and deceit has been built up to hide the
truth from our eyes. We are secretly and systematically robbed and we
hardly notice it. The ordinary Irish worker pays at least four shillings a
week to England, he is hardly aware of the fact, so nicely is it done
whenever he buys tobacco or his wife gets tea and sugar, and so on. Though
the average income in England is three times what it is in Ireland, the
notoriously underfed Irish workers have to pay more than twice the English
proportion of indirect taxes on food, etc. We pay England 1/- on every
pound of tea, 1-1/2d. on every pound of sugar, 7d. on every oz. of
tobacco. There is no fuss about it: it is accepted as part of the laws of
nature that tea should be a shilling a pound dearer than it need be. As
for direct taxation--well, even the farmers know what the English
income-tax is. Where does it all go? To England as taxes, profits, rents,
imperial contributions, and trade. As a going concern Ireland is now worth
thirty million a year to its owner, John Bull. There are certain expenses
of administration--police, Castle, secret service, prisons, tax
collectors--and there are, of course, several items of hush-money, dodges
necessary to fool the people, such as "education." But the fact is that a
bigger and bigger profit is being made every year out of this island. More
agricultural materials and products are shipped to England, more Irish
brains are selected for running India, etc., more Irishmen are utilised
for gun-fodder. Sometimes, after much beseeching by resolutions and
deputations, we are graciously presented with a minute fraction of our own
goods. Is it not about time that we recognised in English "grants" our own
country's transmuted plunder? We are as dependent on England as a factory
is on an absentee society lady who is shareholder.

In 1663 began the long series of English laws against Irish trade. Charles
II. closed the English markets to Irish cattle, meat, leather, butter,
etc. Ireland built ships and opened direct trade with Flanders, France,
Spain, the American Colonies. The Navigation Act and the Jacobite War once
more destroyed our mercantile marine and ruined our industries. Ireland
was practically confined by law to the English market. In 1782, 60,000
Volunteers, with arms in their hands, won Free Trade--i.e., the liberty of
Ireland to trade direct with the world. In a few years, bad as our own
Parliament was, the country