Pádraig Pearse - 'Ghosts' (Part Four)
(Ten minute read)
Today we republish the last part of ‘Ghosts’, an essay written by Pádraig Pearse in December 1915. ‘Ghosts’ is the first of a collection of four essays that Pearse wrote during the last six months of his life. The other three being, The Separatist Idea, The Spiritual Nation and The Sovereign People.
In this part, Pearse gives examples of various statements made by Tone, Davis, Lalor and Mitchel in which they call for the complete separation of Ireland and Britain and reject anything less such as a repeal of the Act of Union.
Pearse drew his inspiration from those separatists who paved the way before him.
Let us see what they have said.
First, Tone. Of 1790:
I made speedily what was to me a great discovery, though I might have found it in Swift and Molyneux, that the influence of England was the radical vice of our Government, and consequently that Ireland would never be either free, prosperous, or happy until she was independent, and that independence was unattainable whilst the connection with England lasted.
Of 1791:
It a communication from Russell immediately set me thinking more seriously than I had yet done upon the state of Ireland. I soon formed my theory, and on that theory I have invariably acted ever since.
To subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country – these were my objects.
To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in the place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter – these were my means.
I hold all Irish nationalism to be implicit in these words. Davis was to make explicit certain things here implicit, Lalor certain other things; Mitchel was to thunder the whole in words of apocalyptic wrath and splendour. But the Credo is here: ‘I believe in One Irish Nation and that Free.’
And before his judges Tone thus testified:
I mean not to give you the trouble of bringing judicial proof to convict me, legally, of having acted in hostility to the Government of his Britannic Majesty in Ireland. I admit the fact.
From my earliest youth I have regarded the connection between Ireland and Great Britain as the curse of the Irish nation, and felt convinced that, while it lasted, this country could never be free nor happy.
My mind has been confirmed in this opinion by the experience of every succeeding year, and the conclusions which I have drawn from every fact before my eyes.
In consequence, I determined to apply all the powers which my individual efforts could move in order to separate the two countries.
Next, Davis:
Will she England allow us, for good or ill, to govern ourselves, and see if we cannot redress our own griefs. ‘No, never, never,’ she says, ‘though all Ireland cried for it – never!
Her fields shall be manured with the shattered limbs of her sons, and her hearths quenched in their blood; but never, while England has a ship or a soldier, shall Ireland be free.’
And this is your answer? We shall see – we shall see!
And now, Englishmen, listen to us! Though you were to-morrow to give us the best tenures on earth – though you were to equalise Presbyterian, Catholic, and Episcopalian – though you were to give us the amplest representation in your Senate – though you were to restore our absentees, disencumber us of your debt, and redress every one of our fiscal wrongs – and though, in addition to all this, you plundered the treasuries of the world to lay gold at our feet, and exhausted the resources of your genius to do us worship and honour – still we tell you – we tell you, in the names of liberty and country – we tell you, in the name of enthusiastic hearts, thoughtful souls, and fearless spirits – we tell you, by the past, the present, and the future, we would spurn your gifts, if the condition were that Ireland should remain a province.
We tell you, and all whom it may concern, come what may – bribery or deceit, justice, policy, or war – we tell you, in the name of Ireland, that Ireland shall be a Nation!
Lest it may be pretended (as it has been pretended) that the nationhood thus claimed in the name of Ireland by this passionate nationalist was a mere statutory ‘nationhood’, federalism or something less, I quote a passage which makes it clear that Davis (loyally though he supported the official policy of the Nation, which at that stage did not go beyond Repeal) was thinking all the time of a sovereign independent Ireland. Urging the need of foreign alliances for Ireland, he writes (the italics are Davis’s):
When Ireland is a nation she will not, with her vast population [Footnote: Nearly 9,000,000 then.] and her military character, require such alliances as a security against an English re-conquest; but they will be useful in banishing any dreams of invasion which might otherwise haunt the brain of our old enemy.
Elsewhere Davis sums up the national position in a sentence worthy of Tone: ‘Ireland’s aspiration is for unbounded nationality.’
Next, Lalor:
Repeal, in its vulgar meaning, I look on as utterly impracticable by any mode of action whatever; and the constitution of ’82 was absurd, worthless, and worse than worthless.
The English Government will never concede or surrender to any species of moral force whatsoever; and the country-peasantry will never arm and fight for it – neither will I. If I am to stake life and fame it must assuredly be for something better and greater, more likely to last, more likely to succeed, and better worth success. And a stronger passion, a higher purpose, a nobler and more needful enterprise is fermenting in the hearts of the people.
A mightier question moves Ireland to-day than that of merely repealing the Act of Union. Not the constitution that Wolfe Tone died to abolish, but the constitution that Tone died to obtain – independence; full and absolute independence for this island, and for every man within this island.
Into no movement that would leave an enemy’s garrison in possession of all our lands, masters of our liberties, our lives, and all our means of life and happiness – into no such movement will a single man of the greycoats enter with an armed hand, whatever the town population may do.
On a wider fighting field, with stronger positions and greater resources than are afforded by the paltry question of Repeal, must we close for our final struggle with England, or sink and surrender.
Ireland her own – Ireland her own, and all therein, from the sod to the sky. The soil of Ireland for the people of Ireland, to have and hold from God alone who gave it – to have and to hold to them and to their heirs for ever, without suit or service, faith or fealty, rent or render, to any power under Heaven.
And again:
Not to repeal the Union, then, but the conquest – not to disturb or dismantle the Empire, but to abolish it utterly for ever – not to fall back on ’82, but to act up to ’48 – not to resume or restore an old constitution, but to found a new nation and raise up a free people, and strong as well as free, and secure as well as strong, based on a peasantry rooted like rocks in the soil of the land – this is my object, as I hope it is yours; and this, you may be assured, is the easier as it is the nobler and more pressing enterprise.
And yet again:
In the case of Ireland now there is but one fact to deal with, and one question to be considered. The fact is this – that there are at present in occupation of our country some 40,000 armed men, in the livery and service of England; and the question is – how best and soonest to kill and capture those 40,000 men.
Lastly Mitchel takes up his hymn of hate against the Empire:
The Ego.
– And do you read Ireland’s mind in the canting of O’Connell’s son? or in the sullen silence of a gagged and disarmed people? Tell me not of O’Connell’s son. His father begat him in moral force, and in patience and perseverance did his mother conceive him. I swear to you there are blood and brain in Ireland yet, as the world one day shall know. God! let me live to see it. On that great day of the Lord, when the kindreds and tongues and nations of the old earth shall give their banners to the wind, let this poor carcase have but breath and strength enough to stand under Ireland’s immortal Green!
Doppelganger.
– Do you allude to the battle of Armageddon? I know you have been reading the Old Testament of late.
The Ego.
Yes. ‘Who is this that cometh from Edom; with dyed garments from Bozrah? This that is glorious in his apparel travelling in the garments of his strength?
Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the wine vat? I have trodden the wine press alone, and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger and trample them in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. For the day of vengeance is in my heart.’
Also an aspiration of King David haunts my memory when I think on Ireland and her wrongs: ‘That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and that the tongue of thy dogs may be red through the same.’
Thus Tone, thus Davis, thus Lalor, thus Mitchel, thus Parnell. Methinks I have raised some ghosts that will take a little laying.
December 25th, 1915