As I have before pointed out to the Deputy, for the greater part of his life Wolfe Tone was not a republican. If I had his works here, I could read the Deputy passages in which he expressed the most emphatic loyalty towards the Crown. His republicanism started only when he was banished from this country. He was not regarded as a genuine republican by the extremists in the North. Why, I remember when even Patrick Ford of the Irish World declared that his aim was to see Ireland a contented portion of the British Empire. You have a perfect right to differ from me as to whether we ought to remain in the Commonwealth or not on the merits, but what you have not a right to do is to throw the election of 1918 at my head and tell me that that ends the question. In truth the verdict of 1918 has no application to the problem of to-day. The choice before us and the circumstances surrounding it in no way resemble those of 1918.
And for that matter the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party is hardly recognisable as being the policy of 1918. The President was querulous about my applying such a phrase as "the profession of Republicanism" to himself and his Party. As a matter of fact, "profession" is a neutral word neither implying sincerity nor insincerity. I am not accusing them of conscious insincerity, but, as I said before, I do accuse them of having an insincere policy — a policy by which they are deceiving themselves and deceiving the country. What is that policy? Nominally a 32-county republic. I ask them, as I have asked them before, to show how they have advanced one inch in that direction since they came into office, or how they propose to advance one inch towards it before they leave office. The maintenance of that formula of a 32-county republic merely serves to justify sedition in the South and to supply material for bigotry and intolerance in the North. It creates a fatal barrier to reunion and to the integration and development of our nationality. It holds out no promise of any sort of appeasement or spiritual progress. My belief is that the President has no intention of declaring this republic and that, if pressed about it in private as to when it might be expected, he would say: "Not for 15 or 20 years to come." Meanwhile the turmoil and uncertainty caused by his policy are to continue and he is to have the gratification of putting himself on a superior plane of patriotism to those of us who are less skilled in deceiving ourselves. Nor at the end of the period shall we be the least bit nearer to a 32-county republic. We may disregard the Treaty or abrogate the Treaty; we may have a new Constitution or a succession of new Constitutions; we may search out with a microscope everything that is suggestive of the British connection and banish it from the Irish Free State as St. Patrick did the serpents; we may remove the Lions and Unicorns from Dublin Castle, but at the end of it all we shall be no nearer to a 32-county republic. All we shall have done is to exasperate still more the people in the North whom we ought to reconcile. No Party in England, no matter how anxious it may be to make concessions, could obtain, or even look for, authority from the British electorate for overriding the desire of the majority in Northern Ireland to remain within the British Commonwealth.
What then is to be gained by this policy of pretence, this policy of delay? What reason is given for not setting up whatever sort of republic is within reach? "Oh," says the President, "the country is not economically strong enough to endure the deprivations that would follow from the setting up of a republic." Were the people told anything of that in 1918? If the same economic difficulties existed then, the people should have been told by Mr. de Valera, as he then was, that the sacrifices involved were too great and in that case their verdict might have been very different. If the same economic difficulties did not exist, I inquire again what relevance has the verdict to present circumstances? Looking into the future in the optimistic spirit which causes the President to say that we can provide occupation for four times the present inhabitants of the Irish Free State, we may of course convince ourselves that in 15 or 20 years we shall be able to dispense with the trade advantages, the labour advantages, and the individual openings and opportunities which go with membership of the Commonwealth; but what about the North? Is there the faintest reason for supposing that the North will cease to require a market in Great Britain, not only for its agricultural produce, but for its shipbuilding and linen trades? And can we contemplate with any sort of equanimity a condemnation of the Northern Nationalists to prolonged revolt, to prolonged estrangement from the Government under which they have to live, to continual feuds and hatreds between them and the Unionist majority? These are the things to which they are condemned by the continuance of so-called republicanism.
I can sincerely say, speaking for myself, that I would prefer an immediate twenty-six county republic outside the Commonwealth to the Government's present policy, but I am not asking the House to say so by this motion. I should feel that we were making some progress, that we were starting on a road — even though a very roundabout road — which would lead us in the end to our proper destination. I should feel that the maintenance of law and order would be made somewhat easier, that the more fanatical republicans would have the ground cut from under their feet and that another and less respectable kind of republicanism, which is used merely as a cloak for selfish violence, would be shown up for what it is. I do not believe that economic disadvantages now would be any greater than 15 or 20 years hence. I think the Irish people would have a chance to learn from experience whether complete separation from the British Commonwealth and the realisation of a republic were indeed so gratifying and so glorious as they have been led to expect. The result of "getting down to bedrock," as the President puts it, would be, I think, to cause us to revise and revalue our ideals or to cause the Northerners to revise or revalue theirs. As the President says, there is no finality in any solution. That you cannot set bounds to the march of a nation is a truism, a somewhat bombastic truism. The experience of a twenty-six county republic might lead us on to something better.
What is that "something"— that something to which I wish I could persuade the Government to take a direct road and not a roundabout one? If we had no racial question in this country, and no Northern question, I would honestly think it a matter of quite minor importance whether we were in the British Commonwealth or outside it, although I would still regard it as of fundamental importance that we should be on friendly terms with the British Commonwealth. But we have a racial problem and a Northern problem, and I have no patience with those who would dwarf our country by excluding the Anglo-Irish element from our national make-up, just as they would exclude from our national records all the achievements of our people on the field of battle or in the richer victories of peace and constructive activity, except where such achievements have been in conflict and not in co-operation with our British neighbours. It is, I suggest, an entirely new thing and an entirely bad thing in Irish nationalism that the contribution of a large section of our people towards our civilisation should be despised and rejected, and that no sacrifices should be thought worth while for the purpose of conquering their prejudices or even of satisfying their natural and praiseworthy ideals. I, for one, refuse to consider as invaders and intruders people whose ancestors were here in many cases before the first white men set foot in what is now the United States of America.
The proper aim of Irish statesmanship is to make a harmony out of ancient discords. At bottom, I believe that that is what all decent Irishmen have wanted throughout the centuries, even when they were most fiercely contending with one another. The trouble in this country above all countries, I think, is that we have fallen into the common human frailty of judging ourselves by our highest ideals and judging our opponents by their worst acts. In this country, men's acts have unhappily often been very far from giving a true impression of the ideals behind them.
A purely Gaelic Ireland, even if attainable, would be a non-Irish Ireland. To take all the tragic and glorious memories of the past — those cherished by opponents as well as those cherished by ourselves — and to fuse them into one national tradition which would be the heritage of all of us; to make it possible for us all to look back on the bitter old conflicts as we might on our childhood quarrels in the nursery; to make it possible for us all to look forward to a free, happy and prosperous future which we shall build up by our joint efforts, without the sacrifice either of our liberty to shape our own destinies or of the special loyalties and the considerations of convenience and common sense which invite us into a full partnership with the nations of the Commonwealth — that is the vision which seems to me worthy of our devotion, and that is the task to which I suggest we should dedicate all that we have of strength and patience. And it is because the policy, or lack of policy, of the Government — the stale claptrap and the weary fallacies of Fianna Fáil propaganda — keep us grovelling in a slough of despond when we might be treading firmly the upward path, that I ask the House to accept this motion.
I venture in conclusion to draw a moral from a recent event which has a more than superficial connection with the matters we are considering. I mean the death of Lord Carson. Lord Carson was not only the chief architect of partition; he was also the father of modern Irish republicanism. I believe he loved Ireland and also loved the British Empire; but the effect of his whole career was to inflict immense damage upon both. In private life he was a kindly, sympathetic, lovable person, but his politics were of the kind that refuse to understand or to do justice to opponents. Having once become a popular idol with a substantial section of our people, he could not bring himself to admit, even to himself, that the interests of his country required him to do anything that would deprive him of the least little bit of the halo with which fanatical admirers had surrounded his head. That tenacity must conquer in the end was his guiding principle and he forgot that such a conquest as he might thereby achieve could be worse than a defeat and that his desperate fidelity, in a changing and a growing world, to one narrow idea might commit him to larger disloyalties. I think, if I may say so, that just as there is a great similarity in character and mental equipment between the late Lord Carson and the President of the Executive Council, so there is a similarity in the moral dangers to which each has been exposed, and that while the President may succeed in retaining his halo intact by persevering in the path he now follows, he may also be ensuring that his career, like that of Lord Carson, will be one that will have brought almost unrelieved disaster to Ireland.