Is this gentleman who says shame now, going out in the streets to misrepresent me in the damnable way that I was misrepresented on that occasion? Was it a shame to point out to young men how they would be misled? Is that Deputy who said "shame" the gentleman who came to me in 1914 and was the first to ask me, when I was a member of the Volunteers, would I join the physical force party, as he called it, and become a member of the secret organisation which was working inside the Volunteers—a dual Government—the one thing that Cathal Brugha tried to stop when the Dáil was founded and we wanted to get real acceptance of the will of the civil executive? We have the Minister for Local Government now coming along and having the audacity to tell us that he stands always for civil authority. What was he organising the I.R.B. for when he was a member of the Executive Council? He wanted to fool Seán MacEoin, he wanted to fool Mick Brennan and men like Tobin and Thornton and Cullen. These are the men he wanted to fool. He knew they were discovering that they were on the wrong track, that they were led to fight with their brothers on false pretences. He wanted to keep on fooling them when they got restless and found that they had fought their brothers not to get arms in order to make an Irish Republic, but to get arms that were going to be definitely used for the purpose for which the late Lord Birkenhead wished them to be used—to prevent all those who would ever dream again, as the Fenians and those who came after them dreamt, of achieving the full freedom of this country.
Having imbibed the gospel of force preached to them by Ernest Blythe and the rest of them, they believed it was by force and force alone that it could be secured. What about these men? What has been their history, the history of the I.R.A. and of the position since the civil war? They dumped their arms. Not a shot was fired. There was an emergency Government formed in October, 1922, for the sole purpose of trying to maintain some sort of control during the fight, which was there and which was inevitable in any case—to maintain control, to try to direct that fight so that if it were successful it might really lead to the re-establishment of the Republic, and if it failed that there might be some people with some understanding of the things that were involved, who would try to end it on terms not unsatisfactory for the nation as a whole.
These arms were dumped. Why were they kept? It is easy for people now—they forget the incidents of the intervening years—to say these were kept to be a definite menace to peace and order here. That was not the intention. I know it was not the intention. The intention of keeping the arms at that time was this: There had been no election. The 1922 election was "The Pact" election. The Treaty was not an issue and everyone of you know it. There was to be an election in 1923, and the Irish people would be given an opportunity of expressing their opinion in that election. The main idea operating in the minds of those who agreed to the dumping of the arms at that time was this—that if the Irish people did once more revert to the Republic they should have behind them to maintain that Republic some armed force. That was the reason. There were elections held in 1923. A very large number of people were in jail. Candidates were in jail. Those who talk about democracy cannot say, I think, that democracy in the 1923 election got very much of a chance.
After 1923 the arms still remained; the elected members of that Second Dáil which was suppressed met and one of the first things they did was to record the understanding that because they were not in a position effectively to function, they had no authority at that time to take life. Therefore, what were they? They were a kind of nucleus. The hope was that the Irish people would again revert to the Republican idea. The idea was the idea of continuity, in order that if at the next elections the Irish people turned back again and did stand by the Republic, that armed force would again be available to defend it. There was another idea. I am sure you all remember that miniature General Election in which there were some eight or nine bye-elections at the same time. When these elections were held there was some gentleman connected with the Executive who proclaimed it aloud that if the Irish people did turn over to the Republic, their elected representatives, although in a majority, would not be allowed to function, and because he said that these young men felt they might have another purpose, that when the majority here proclaimed themselves in favour of the Republic, there might be certain gentlemen who were determined that because they themselves did not want it, the Irish people were not going to have it. These young men said to themselves: "Very good. These people, our opponents, went out and in the name of democracy and in the name of the rights of the people decided to disestablish the Republican State over the bodies of our brothers, and if they proved themselves traitors to that—perhaps they now might—and we are prepared to risk our lives again to see that they will not be traitors to majority rule, as they were traitors to the Republican State." That was the position, and we have this Minister for Finance, this Vice-President of the Executive Council, coming along, and whilst his colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, talks about his democracy, this gentleman not very long ago in this semi-official or official organ of theirs, "The Star," writes in Irish to the Army. He speaks of a statement made by an officer addressing the Cadet Corps in Galway. This officer, addressing the men, said that they were the Army of the people, and that if Fianna Fáil got a majority they would obey a Fianna Fáil Government. But that is too much for the colleague of our democrat, the colleague of General Mulcahy, this little Cromwell, who thinks in terms of "nits may become lice"—who says if there is a rebellion we will have it in our time— this man whose attitude towards his brothers is this: When he was asked how it was he undertook a civil war and that he did not mind it, although this civil war was infinitely worse than the terrible war which was threatened by Lloyd George, and from which he shrank, he said: "This is a war we can win; the other we could not."
The trade which he had followed so completely blinded the man that he thought only in terms of the trade and success in his trade, success as a militarist, even though that success was over his brothers. That was the thing that allured him. He saw success and indeed it did not require a Napoleon to see success in the conditions that obtained here. It was a forlorn hope—I admit it now and always admitted it—when the Volunteers went out to try and save the Republic: for the majority of the Irish people had departed from it; to save it when the majority of the Irish people had got as their representatives men who had only to beckon their finger and they could get all the ammunition and all the guns and all the support that the British Empire could put behind them. It was a forlorn hope. It was only men who had been inspired with the principles which drove them to face the odds in 1916, and who made them a part of their faith, who would have attempted it. These are the men whom we want to crush now. These are the men who are represented as terrorists, those who never thought of themselves. They are simply the rats that are to be squelched. These are the people who were ready to give everything that they had for Ireland, and well we know it, and now they are being deserted by the majority of their people; they have been deserted by old comrades who can no longer see any hope of success in the line they are adopting, by people who were with them originally, but are so far away from them now that the road which they are following is leading diametrically in the opposite direction. These men are misguided, if you will, but they were brave men, anyhow; let us at least have for them the decent respect that we have for the brave. They have done terrible things recently I admit, if they are responsible for them, and I suppose they are. Let us appeal to them and ask them in God's name not to do them. You sneer at that. It would be more effective probably than all your coercion and all your threats, all the shame and slime that you tried to pour upon them to-day. These men may say that there is very little hope that their arms can be used to support the people who will revert to the Republic except through the institutions that are at present operating here, and because they cannot become part of these institutions no road or avenue of use is open to them. They say to themselves, having no other hope: "Well, perhaps, again England's difficulty will be Ireland's opportunity, and we will be of use." They are hugging that vain hope unfortunately to-day.
It is vain, because, as I told them in Thurles, the situation has changed. The Treaty has been put into operation here. There are people here to-day vested with whatever authority can be given to them by a majority vote of the people. Even though we may say that all is not right, as I said before, there must be some authority. Social order must be maintained, even if there were nothing but a de facto Government. In the present situation there has to be certain obedience given to that authority if ordinary peaceful, social conditions are to exist. They are hugging the hope, as I say, that these arms might be used against the only enemy of this country, that is the foreigner. Would it not be a good day's business if we gave these people an opportunity of becoming really valuable citizens here, gave them an opportunity of being effective by being able to co-operate with the majority?
I have pointed out time after time that if there is to be any progress in this country again, if freedom is to be again achieved it will not be through I.R.B. methods. It can only be through the leadership that will be given by the elected representatives of the majority of the people. Any further national advance reason tells us can only be made now under the present conditions through the leadership of the Government that will be elected here. There is no other way. Any other way means first of all that you will have to face civil conflict. I do not think anybody who passed through the anguish of that last conflict wants to see another civil war in Ireland. Certainly my associations with them up to 1925, and I was fairly closely associated with them up to the time they withdrew their allegiance and reverted to the original Volunteer constitution, made me believe that there was not a single one of them who was contemplating the idea of using his arms against this Assembly here or against the authority of this Assembly. They had, as I told you, the idea of using those dumped arms. They thought an occasion might arise in which there would be a conflict between this State and the State that is imposing its will, to a certain extent anyhow, upon it, and then they would have a chance to throw in their lot and fight again for a free Ireland.
That was their idea then and, as I said, there was also this idea, this very affecting idea, that, perhaps, the gentlemen who had brought off the coup d'etat back in 1922, who at that particular time usurped power and denied the people's representatives an opportunity of meeting in the same assembled Parliament, would do the same again. When the courts that were established, the courts of the Republic, brought in a habeas corpus decision, the answer of these gentlemen, who pretend they respect the civil law, was to suppress the courts. Knowing that is the mentality of some of these gentlemen and fearing the possibility that when the Irish people had given a majority vote for a policy other than the policy which is adopted by the present Government, these gentlemen might stand in the way and prove traitors again as they were deemed to have been traitors before, these young men said "We will hold our arms for that occasion, too, and stand by the right of the Irish people." They stood in the past by the established Constitution. They were the Constitutionalists on that occasion. They were trying to maintain the State and the Constitution which had been established by the democratic vote of the Irish people. They saw the gentlemen, the gentlemen who went out to fight the civil war in order that majority rule might prevail, coming along and finding fault with this unequivocal statement made by an officer in the Army, when he said that if the Fianna Fáil Government came into power that the Army would be behind the Government. This gentleman then said: "That is only partially true. I will not accept that. No, the Army are to be the final arbiters. The Army are the judges as to whether the people's representatives are acting in accordance with the will of the people or not." He reveals the mentality that he had, the principles that he had, and that were operative when they brought off the coup d'etat in 1922. He reveals that same mentality now and in fact he tells that man who has blood in his veins and who is determined that the will of the Irish people, if it does express itself clearly and unequivocally in favour of a new policy, that that will must not prevail. Let us in God's name not sit down here in Parties. Let us sit down as Irishmen who know the history of our country. Let everyone of us who sit on these benches remember the principles that animated the people whom we took as our models, remember the principles that drove ourselves into action, action which was condemned. I will say this now about secret societies, that since the Volunteers were founded they were never necessary—that if it was required to get examples to prove that the Catholic doctrine with respect to them is right, I could give examples, because every evil that was said to flow from these societies has flown to my knowledge from them. They brought us success for a certain time, but then they bred division and they made brothers shoot down brothers.
The people who were taken out and shot on 8th December, 1922, were people who were high in the I.R.B., but they did not follow the dictation of the chiefs. They knew too much. As one man said to me a month before his death: "I, at any rate, am not going to live through this. If I am caught I know what is meant for me. I know too much." On one occasion when it was suggested that a secret organisation was necessary in the Army in 1925, I went to the meeting where it was proposed to establish it and told them to look back and consider what had been their own experiences in connection with it, to remember that it was the principal cause of the Treaty being accepted originally, and that it led to murder because of the bitter division that occurred afterwards. And I asked them:"Are you going to have the same sort of thing started again?" And they decided not to start it. That is why I said the other day when talking that in my belief the I.R.A. as it stands to-day is not in its constitution a revolutionary secret organisation. I do not believe they have any oath or secret oath. They may have some general pledge to the original constitution of the Volunteers. We have pledges in parties. We all know it. I do not know that the pledge involves anything that could be characterised as a secret oath. They preserve themselves at least from the dangers of a secret organisation. But they had to operate in secret, and because they are operating secretly, the old dangers of secret organisations appear again. The agents provocateurs are going around in their midst, and you had terrible retribution of the kind that used to come to those who were unfaithful to the promises or to the pledges of secrecy. That is what is happening. Are you as Irishmen who know your own history not going to learn from it a lesson—are you not going to do something which would give the country a chance of getting on stable foundations? I say that if the present conditions continue, the moment that the period of the operation of this proposed Act is over, it will be no more final than any one of the Coercion Acts of the British was final.
We remember numbers of them. We remember that each one of them used to be regarded as final and we found that though they were effective in suppressing those things which they aimed at for the time, the moment there was the slightest relaxation the movement they sought to suppress marched forward again with renewed strength, with increased strength. And that is the position to-day. Right enough your Safety Act did have a momentary and temporary effect. But during all that time there was a secret knitting together, there was secret organising, and there was a secret understanding, and all this was accumulating for the first opportunity to give it expression when the pressure was removed. Is it the aim of the Executive to have a perpetual abrogation of the rights of the citizen? That is what it means. Is it your aim that anybody who suspects anybody else, that any informer who has a spite against anybody, that anybody who desires to do another harm, that any member of the Guards who has ill-will against somebody else, can bring him before that secret Tribunal and swear away his life? And what about these lives? These lives are important to the nation too. We have the duty to protect those innocent lives that might be sacrificed. I am against this proposal because in all reason it leads to the wrong road. I am not trying to withhold from any authority any influence that I can bring to bear to make that authority respected. I am trying to get that authority to look around and see what it may do itself so that its authority may be respected. I have admitted that authority, because there is no other as far as I can see. In fact I know that there is no other. I admit the authority. But then if I may paraphrase what was said about the use of money and of private property: every person has a right to the use of money or of private property, but he has not the right to use it as he wills. So also the Executive Council has a right to authority, but not the right to use it as whim may wantonly suggest.
These men may be unreasonable according to our standards, or they may be dense or they may be dangerous. But I am not going to stigmatise them as being vicious in themselves. Vicious methods are coming in amongst them, and I want to warn them against them. And if I had my way to do honestly what my will prompts me to do, I would get all these arms throughout the country in. I would say that there is no further use for them at the present time, because if there is to be a declaration of Irish independence, if there is to be a fight for Irish independence which is to be effective it can only be effective under the leadership of the Government that shall be elected by the majority. I am certain of that. Every reasonable man must now take up that position.
What do they hope to do? Are they foolish enough to think that they can overthrow the armed forces that will be backed by the opinion of the people of this country? They cannot do it, no matter what doctrines they may imbibe, however mad these doctrines may be. They cannot do it. It is futile for them to hope for it. And even if they did achieve their object they could only do it at the expense of weakening the nation. Supposing that they were to be successful they could only be successful after a bitter Civil War between brothers in different camps. Such a Civil War would weaken them and weaken the nation as a whole, and in this weak condition England would have to be faced. They cannot be successful in a Civil War except they are acting as an Army, behind the organised will of the majority of the people. That was the secret of our success from 1919 to 1921. It was not preaching on the vapourings of Ernest Blythe. It was not such was the cause of our success. The real cause of our success was that we finally got into the position in which the leadership was given to the elected representatives of the majority of the people; and because the people of the country supported that Government; because the plain people of the country supported them.
I was not one of those who supported the soldier cult. It was the gentlemen on the opposite benches who were out for that during the period of the fight from 1919 to 1921. It was the citizens of the country, the plain people who when an ambush took place had to face unarmed and alone the Black and Tans, these were the most courageous section of our people. I know it, not the man with the gun in his hand. I admit it. I never felt so safe or free from danger in my life as when I had a gun in my hand.
