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+      The Irish Cause and “The Irish Convention” | Project Gutenberg
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78446 ***</div>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp46" style="max-width: 100.0em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Cover.">
+</figure>
+
+<hr class="tb x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<figure class="figcenter illowp46" style="max-width: 40.625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/title.jpg" alt="Title page.">
+</figure>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<h1>
+The Irish Cause and<br>
+“The Irish Convention”
+</h1>
+
+
+<p class="center xlargefont">By Wm. O’Brien, M.P.</p>
+
+<p class="center p2">Authorized Report of Speech<br>
+delivered on May 21, 1917,<br>
+in the House of Commons,<br>
+in the Debate on Mr. Lloyd<br>
+George’s Irish Proposals</p>
+
+<p class="center p1">THIRD EDITION</p>
+
+<p class="center p1">To which is added Correspondence<br>
+with the Prime Minister</p>
+
+<p class="center p2 largefont">MAUNSEL &amp; COMPANY, LIMITED<br>
+DUBLIN AND LONDON. 1917</p>
+
+<p class="center">Price One Penny</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p class="center">Printed by George Roberts, Dublin</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[3]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak">
+    THE IRISH CAUSE AND “THE<br>
+    IRISH CONVENTION”
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The Prime Minister’s proposals are contained in
+two apparently water-tight compartments: The
+first is the Bill which the Government offered to
+introduce based on the severance of six Irish
+counties from the body of Ireland, and that offer
+could only be met by an immediate and unchangeable
+negative on the part of the Irish people. You
+may abuse Longford as much as you like, but Longford
+has shot the fox—Longford has killed Partition
+so far as the Nationalists of Ireland are concerned.
+The alternative plan which now, after the Prime
+Minister’s speech, remains the only one—the plan
+of referring to Irishmen themselves the drafting of
+a Constitution for Ireland—is one which, if it had
+been adopted six or seven years ago by the Government,
+must to a certainty have led to a happy settlement
+so far as anything human is certain. That
+offer is one which, even now at the half-past eleventh
+hour, ought not to be dismissed by any man in this
+House, and especially by any Irishman, without grave
+and anxious deliberation.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately the speech of the Hon. Baronet
+(Sir John Lonsdale), the leader of the Unionist
+Party, makes it only too plain that the Partition
+proposals of the Government, as to which neither of
+<span class="pagenum">[4]</span>the previous speakers has said a single word, remain
+far the most formidable danger of the situation in
+Ulster. That being so, Mr. Speaker, unless we are
+again to yield to the easy optimism and child-like
+trustfulness which have been the ruin of the Home
+Rule cause, that fact has got to be grappled with,
+and if you are ever to understand the real forces you
+are dealing with in Ireland—as to which you are
+deplorably—I must in frankness say deplorably—ignorant,
+you must not really expect us to forget
+the elaborate system of Partition which the Government,
+or rather their predecessors, attempted last
+year to force upon the Irish people. Our British
+rulers actually imagined they were soothing the
+national pride of one of the most sensitive races
+upon earth, while they were all the time wounding to
+the quick the feelings of every Irish Nationalist, and
+indeed of every other Irishman as well, with a degree
+of stupidity that was scarcely exceeded by the worst
+wrongs of the old times. Because in those old days
+at all events England acted with her eyes open and
+with the deliberate purpose to insult and oppress.</p>
+
+<p>You persisted in that scheme of Partition notwithstanding
+the most earnest remonstrances which some
+of us could address to you. When the late Prime
+Minister went to Ireland after the Dublin rising—it
+was a pity he waited for the Dublin rising to go—the
+position of our own friends, at all events, was
+made absolutely clear to him, and it was this: Any
+amount of concession that would unite Ireland, but
+Partition, permanent or, as you call it, temporary,
+never! You persisted with your Partition scheme
+and you failed. The Government and those Irish
+representatives who thought fit to act with them
+were driven from the field by a storm of public fury
+and horror more universal, I think, than anything I
+<span class="pagenum">[5]</span>ever witnessed in Ireland; you had scarcely a man
+in the whole country with you north or south except
+the place-hunters, and the place-hunters very quickly
+took to their heels. That lively experience occurred
+only nine or ten months ago. Yet, here we have,
+or rather up to to-night had, the Prime Minister
+coming up again to offer us a Bill which in a slightly
+more gilded form is the self-same nostrum of Partition
+which was rejected last summer as a burning
+insult by almost every honest man of the Irish race.</p>
+
+<p>The only difference between the two schemes
+which is worth a moment’s discussion is the pretext
+that some shadow of national unity is preserved to
+Ireland by this so-called Council of Ireland. That
+device does some credit to the Prime Minister’s
+ingenuity, but, Sir, it is of no more real value as a
+preservative of the integrity of Ireland than if you
+were to put in a proviso that the Hon. Baronet and
+his Ulster men might still travel up to Dublin to
+attend the Punchestown races. The work assigned
+to this Council is too trivial for words. Indeed it
+could absolutely do no work at all without the leave
+of the Hon. Baronet and his Ulster Party in this
+House, who would command a majority of fifteen to
+six Nationalists in the Ulster delegation. The proposal
+is luckily too insignificant to be really irritating.
+Otherwise the only effect could be to add
+an additional complication by setting up a new and
+irresponsible dual control in Dublin to review and
+criticize every act of the unfortunate mutilated
+Dublin Parliament. I cannot suppose the Prime
+Minister really desired to add insult to the injury
+of the exclusion of the six counties by establishing
+the Ulster Party in this House in addition as a rival
+authority to snub the unfortunate Dublin Parliament
+at every turn. But the truth is, the whole thing is
+<span class="pagenum">[6]</span>so ridiculously unworkable that the only practical
+purpose of any kind it could serve would be to throw
+dust in the eyes of the American people and to keep
+President Wilson in good humour.</p>
+
+<p>Sir, the essence of the Government’s first proposal
+is Partition in a more insidious form. Its essence
+is a renewal of the intolerable insult that Ireland is
+not one nation but two. Whether our country is to
+be mutilated county by county, or by what, in the
+language of the butchers, is called the clean cut, the
+result would be to split Ireland asunder as surely as
+if what the Prime Minister proposed to us was to
+fight another battle of the Boyne.</p>
+
+<p>Sir, we had no difficulty in telling you four years
+ago, as we are telling you now, that the Irish Nation
+will never submit to any such scheme as long as
+grass grows and water runs. What would be your
+own feelings if the Germans proposed to you as a
+condition of peace that you should cede to them—I
+won’t say six of the richest counties on your southern
+coast, but that you should cede to them even temporarily
+as you say—even for five years—the smallest
+parcel of the sacred soil of England—say Westminster
+Abbey. Mr. Speaker, Westminster Abbey
+does not contain an ounce of dust more sacred for
+you than do for us the shrines and graves and battlefields
+which we are asked to surrender to an Orange
+Free State as a visible symbol that the integrity of
+Ireland as a nation has ceased to exist. No, sir—better,
+as Cardinal Logue said, better let us wait for
+fifty years longer, and I tell you you will have to
+wait for fifty centuries longer before you will ever
+get the Irish nation to cut up the land of their fathers
+either by the clean cut or county by county, under
+some preposterous system of a majority of two or
+three hundred jerrymandered or corrupted votes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[7]</span></p>
+
+<p>I do not at all say that if the Irish people were to
+treat you as unscrupulously as they have been treated
+themselves, they would not close with the offer of
+the Government, such as it is, but they could only
+do so with the determination to work it in a spirit of
+sleepless hostility to England and to those Irishmen
+who might attempt to organize that abominable
+caricature of an Irish Parliament. Sir, the Irish
+people are not sufficiently good hypocrites to play a
+Machiavellian game of that kind, and it is just because
+we desire peace, and genuine peace, between the two
+countries that I tell you straight that for the few
+hundred placemen you might content, you would be
+making enemies of millions of the best men and
+women of the Irish race.</p>
+
+<p>I know all your difficulties. Unhappily after the
+speech we have listened to from the Hon. Baronet
+they may seem at this stage all but insurmountable.
+But these difficulties are mainly due to your own
+feebleness and double-dealing—to the feebleness and
+double-dealing of the late Home Rule Government
+and their Irish allies. They could never make up
+their minds either to conciliate Ulster while there
+was yet time to do it, nor to enforce their own law
+under the Parliament Act. We shall hear plenty of
+complaints now of the speech of the Hon. Baronet,
+the leader of the Ulster Party, but where is the use
+of complaining if he and his Ulster men take their
+stand on the six counties, and take advantage of
+their knowledge that they never will be compelled to
+obey the law like other people? Yes, but whose fault
+is that? The Home Rule Government and, unfortunately,
+their Irish auxiliaries first offered them four
+counties, and then advanced their bid to six. They
+passed a so-called Home Rule Act with the public
+stipulation that it was never to be put in force without
+<span class="pagenum">[8]</span>an Amending Act, which would repeal it in its
+most vital particular. They passed it further subject
+to the solemn assurance of the Home Rule Prime
+Minister that the notion of Ulster being ever compelled
+to obey that Statute was unthinkable—Sir, to
+my mind, a monstrously unconstitutional doctrine.
+It would be the death of the first principle of all
+democratic government. But that was then common
+ground all round in every Party in this House except
+in our own small camp, and the foullest insults were
+hurled at us in this House for daring to make even
+the most modest protest. Sir, how can you be surprised
+if the Ulster men have now taken you at your
+own solemn word? You never proffered a single
+concession to the Ulstermen while they were still
+unarmed, and while even in this House they were
+still amenable enough to reason and to conciliation.
+Neither did you attempt to dispute their right to
+arm in order to bid defiance to your Parliament Act
+with arms in their hands. If we clear our minds of
+cant we all know that nothing happened in Dublin
+in the rising of Easter week that would not have
+happened in Belfast on a much larger scale if you
+had attempted to enforce the law there. It is all
+your own doing, and, unfortunately, the doing of
+five-sixths of Ireland’s own representatives as well,
+and it is this miserable collapse of Parliamentarianism
+which is responsible for the Dublin rising—which
+is responsible for the Roscommon election and the
+Longford election, and which is responsible for the
+contempt and hatred of Parliamentary methods
+which has unquestionably taken possession of far the
+largest portion of the uncorrupted youth of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Sir, I turn with relief to the Prime Minister’s
+alternative plan which is now the only hope. No
+man in this House could like to think that the last
+<span class="pagenum">[9]</span>word has been spoken in this great matter of the
+reconciliation of the two countries which has been
+brought so marvellously far towards success. For
+my own part, a Home Rule Settlement, by the consent
+of all sections and persuasions of our countrymen,
+has been the one—I can truly say the one and only
+object of my political life for the past fifteen years.
+It is the only hope which could induce me to linger
+for twenty-four hours more in Irish public life, such
+as it has become. It would be affectation to deny
+that this alternative plan of the Government might
+well make the ears of some of us tingle with satisfaction
+because the Government have at long last
+begun to find out that the only real way out of the
+Irish difficulty lies through those principles of Conference,
+Conciliation and Consent which we have
+spent the last five years in preaching to deaf ears in
+this House. Our unforgivable sin was that we only
+counted seven against seventy in the Division
+Lobbies. But let that pass. Undoubtedly the
+declaration now made by the Government that to
+Irishmen themselves should be left the settlement of
+their country’s legislative and fiscal future is one of
+the most momentous announcements that ever was
+made in this House. It is the resumption and the
+completion of Mr. Wyndham’s historic declaration in
+the same sense in 1902, which put an end to the
+agrarian war. There are only one or two observations
+by which I should like to qualify my whole-hearted
+approval of the general principle. The first
+is only as to a matter of practical procedure, but it
+will be found to be one of vital importance if the
+Government really mean business—if, as I trust, this
+is an honest effort and is not mere playing to the
+American gallery for war purposes. The Prime
+Minister unfortunately has made it plain that by the
+<span class="pagenum">[10]</span>term Convention he means the assembling of a large
+body of men. Well, Sir, that will involve you at
+once in almost insuperable difficulties as to the selection
+or election of the members. However you
+manage it the cry is quite sure to arise from one side
+or the other that it is a packed Convention, a term of
+not very fragrant memory in Ireland. For instance,
+the hon. Member for Waterford has just thrown out
+the suggestion that you should call in the County
+Councils, Corporations, District Councils and so on.
+Well, sir, if there is one fact notorious in Ireland it
+is that these bodies were elected five years ago and
+have long exhausted their mandate, and do not in
+the least degree represent the present state of public
+opinion in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The selection of this Convention would in point
+of fact give you as much trouble as a general election,
+without satisfying anybody. Then even if you had
+this big Convention assembled, you would have no
+end of hot-headed partisans rushing in with their
+own particular plans and fads, and you would find it
+impossible within any reasonable time to reach what
+you require, which is a prompt, succinct, consistent
+and practicable agreement. This morning’s <cite>Times</cite>
+wisely warned you that the analogy from the case of
+the more phlegmatic people of South Africa on which
+the Prime Minister dwelt is a wholly illusory one—not
+much wiser than the English bull which has
+suggested General Smuts as the principal personage
+in a purely Irish assembly. From my experience of
+Irish affairs, which is at all events one of considerable
+length, you will I believe find that the only
+possibility of a prompt agreement is among a small
+number of men, and that its success must depend
+not upon the personality of the men, but upon their
+agreement being of such a character as to commend
+<span class="pagenum">[11]</span>itself to the overwhelming sense of the community.
+The other observation I should like to make is that
+I hope we may take it for granted from the Prime
+Minister’s speech to-night that the mandate of this
+Convention, or whatever you may call, will be entirely
+separate from the views of Partition that were to be
+embodied in the proposed Government Bill—in other
+words, that the alternative plan must be read independently
+of the views enunciated in the first part
+of the Prime Minister’s letter. Otherwise, any
+Convention, such as you contemplate, if it ever
+assembles at all, will either break up on the question
+of Partition, or if it be packed with place-hunters
+will end in some Partition compromise, which will
+be repudiated with fury by the country.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the last moment my friends and myself
+urged in the competent quarters as we have done
+for the past five years that it is not in this House
+but in Ireland the foundations of any real settlement
+must be laid. But we warned them that all our
+suggestions were based upon the principle that
+although a conference would of course, in courtesy,
+listen to any discussion, be the cost what it may,
+for your sakes as well as for our own, Partition in
+any shape is inadmissible and impossible. What
+we suggested was that the Government should begin
+by inviting a small Conference of Irishmen in
+Ireland, not necessarily composed of the leaders of
+any existing party or section. In this I am glad
+to be in entire agreement with the hon. member for
+Waterford, although he probably would not go so
+far as myself when I say the less the Conference
+would have of party leaders the better, because I am
+afraid it is not the Irish people but the leaders of all
+existing parties and sections who are mainly responsible
+for the whole mischief. I do not, of course,
+<span class="pagenum">[12]</span>make any exception whatever. I admit that the
+present situation in Ireland is one of mere chaos,
+and that nobody—literally no politician—is at the
+present moment in a position to answer for the
+action of the Irish people.</p>
+
+<p>But it would be still not at all difficult to hit upon
+the names of a dozen eminent Irishmen—men of
+broadmindedness and imagination and toleration
+wide enough to embrace all political sects of our
+countrymen from the most moderate to the most
+extreme. If you could assemble a dozen such men
+around a friendly council table, they could be
+depended upon not to separate in such a crisis for
+our country without some great and memorable
+national agreement upon some such non-partitionist
+and Federationist lines as I have again and again
+indicated in this House and outside it. Let me add
+that the chances of an agreement would be all the
+better among all classes of Irishmen north and
+south the further the Conference would travel
+away from the existing Act upon the Statute-book,
+which has really become a bitter laughing-stock
+throughout the country.</p>
+
+<p>Well, suppose you had an Irish agreement. We
+suggested as the second stage that it should be
+submitted to the Imperial Cabinet, including the
+Premiers of the Over Seas Dominions. For that
+tribunal there might now be substituted the hybrid
+committee of an Imperial character which the
+Prime Minister contemplated in case his Bill
+received a second reading under the presidency
+of some man of the type of Mr. Speaker, if indeed a
+second such man is to be found. Once you had
+secured an Irish agreement thus splendidly fortified,
+the democratic thing would be to submit it frankly
+by Referendum to the whole Irish people, and then
+<span class="pagenum">[13]</span>by all means place on the Irish people the responsibility
+for its acceptance or rejection, for under a
+Referendum the masses of the Irish people would
+have a voice such as they can never have under your
+nominated or selected Convention. If, as I am very
+sure, the response to a Referendum should be an all
+but universal chorus of acceptance and relief from
+every substantial element in the country, including
+the bulk of the great Protestant and Dissenting communities—well,
+then, let the Government do what
+the Home Rule Government ought to have done
+five or six years ago, let them adopt the agreement
+as their own, and let them publicly announce that
+they will if necessary go to the country and appeal
+for the sovereign authority of the electorate if any
+small section of merely irrational irreconciliables at
+either extreme should still attempt to block the way.
+I am speaking of a small and irrational minority.
+I do not, of course, speak of the Unionist body in
+bulk, and of course if you were to attempt Partition
+in any shape you would be dealing not with an irrational
+minority but with practically the entire Irish
+race, fifteen or twenty millions of them, and you
+would find yourself up against that rock of Irish
+nationality against which all the force of England
+has spent itself in vain for the past eight hundred
+years.</p>
+
+<p>What I want the House to mark is that you have
+never yet tried any of the things I mention. You
+have never called the Irish people into consultation.
+You have never called the electorate into consultation.
+You have never offered any concession to Ulster
+except one which would call upon us with our own
+hand to take the very life of our motherland as a
+nation. You have abdicated the first function of
+democratic government in favour of the right of
+<span class="pagenum">[14]</span>rebellion, whether in Belfast or in Dublin, and if
+the Prime Minister’s first proposal could pass you
+would be simply extending the area of the next
+insurrection to Derry and Tyrone and Enniskillen.</p>
+
+<p>I don’t deny—Mark Tapley himself could scarcely
+deny—that at this time of day you may fail to produce
+any general Irish agreement even through such
+a Conference as we propose. You have let one golden
+opportunity after another slip through your fingers.
+It is tragic to think that if the Government had only
+made their alternative proposal six or seven years
+ago, and if the Irish bishops, Catholic and Protestant,
+had only then issued their recent manifesto, all
+these troubles might have been long ago blessedly
+composed, and the whole course of the war might
+have been very considerably altered. It may quite
+possibly be now too late. But the point is, you have
+never yet tried it. That is the astounding fact, but
+fact it is. The Prime Minister’s own letter confesses
+it, and fail how you might, you could never
+at the worst reach a more humiliating position than
+you occupy to-day before the nations of the world,
+confessing that you have incurred obligations to
+Ireland which you are in honour bound to discharge
+and that you cannot do it.</p>
+
+<p>I am still not altogether without hope that a
+Government which had the grit to tackle all the
+might of Germany unflinchingly may no longer
+stand shivering before two opposite sets of extremists
+in the Irish seas. Unfortunately the Prime Minister’s
+speech which, I am afraid, lacked a good deal of
+his usual magnetic attraction, did not afford very
+much evidence of the fearlessness and high purpose
+which alone can pluck a successful Irish settlement
+out of the dangers in which the miserable bungling
+of the politicians has entangled us. If you break
+<span class="pagenum">[15]</span>down now—I pray you not to delude yourself on
+this point—if you break down now, you will not kill
+the Irish cause, but you will kill any reasonable
+chance for our time of reconstructing the Constitutional
+Movement upon an honest basis. You will
+kill all Irish belief in this House or in any Party in
+it. You will set up the right of Rebellion, whether
+for the Covenanters or the Sinn Feiners, as the only
+arbiter left in Irish affairs. You will justly make
+Parliamentary methods even more despised and
+detested than they are at the present moment by
+the young men of Ireland. You will force the
+Irish people, sorely against their will, to turn their
+eyes altogether away from this Parliament to the
+International Peace Congress. I daresay it will
+turn out to be an equally hopeless mirage, but at all
+events, you will have left the Irish people no alternative
+except to haunt your path at that Congress and
+to join all the other small nations of Europe in a
+final appeal for freedom to that supreme tribunal of
+European and American democracy and humanity.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[17]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak">
+    CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE<br>
+    PRIME MINISTER
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The following correspondence has taken place:—</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">10 Downing Street,<br>
+<span style="padding-left:5em">Whitehall, s.w.</span></span>,</p>
+
+<p class="ir2"><em>13th June, 1917</em>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Mr. O’Brien</span>—Pursuant to my statement
+in the House of Commons on the 11th instant, I
+now have the satisfaction of requesting you to nominate
+two representatives of the Party under your
+leadership who may be invited to serve as members
+of the Convention.</p>
+
+<p>With the terms of reference you are familiar. I
+stated them in my letter to you of the 16th May in
+these words:—</p>
+
+<p>“Would it be too much to hope that Irishmen of
+all creeds and parties might meet together in a Convention
+for the purpose of drafting a Constitution
+for their country which should secure a just balance
+of all the opposing interests, and finally compose the
+unhappy discords which have so long distracted
+Ireland and impeded its harmonious development.”</p>
+
+<p>I further referred to them in the House of Commons
+as follows:—</p>
+
+<p>“The Government, therefore, propose to summon
+immediately, on behalf of the Crown, a Convention
+<span class="pagenum">[18]</span>of representative Irishmen in Ireland, to submit to
+the British Government a Constitution for the future
+government of Ireland within the Empire.”</p>
+
+<p>I shall be glad to learn as soon as may be convenient
+to you the names of the gentlemen to whom
+invitations should now be sent.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Yours very truly,</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="padding-left:10em">D. LLOYD GEORGE.</p>
+
+<p class="il2"><span class="smcap">William O’Brien, esq., m.p.</span>,<br>
+<span style="padding-left:5em"><em>House of Commons, S.W.</em></span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="ir2"><span class="smcap" style="padding-right:5em">Mallow,</span><br>
+<em>June 18th, 1917</em>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Lloyd George</span>—To my deep disappointment,
+the details of how “The Irish Convention”
+is to be composed confirm the apprehensions
+which I endeavoured to express in the House of
+Commons. The rejoicing excited by the courageous
+Amnesty for the Insurrection of last year cannot be
+allowed to blind the country to the danger.</p>
+
+<p>1. While the Government have nominally adopted
+the principle of allowing the future Constitution of
+Ireland to be settled by agreement among Irishmen
+themselves, they have done so under conditions which
+render that principle a nullity. There can be little
+or no hope that a Convention constituted as the
+Government have directed can arrive at any decision
+except some hateful bargain for the partition of the
+country under a plausible disguise. To attribute the
+<span class="pagenum">[19]</span>blame for such a decision or for the failure to arrive
+at any better one to the Irish people would be little
+short of an outrage upon Ireland, and would be a
+gross imposition on the credulity of friendly nations
+abroad.</p>
+
+<p>2. The proposed Convention would both be too
+large to make a prompt and carefully-considered
+agreement practicable, and too small for a National
+Assembly purporting to represent all the great
+interests concerned. The fact that the scheme
+excludes from any direct representation whatever
+the 400,000 Ulster Nationalists whom any Partition
+proposal hitherto contemplated would cut off from
+their country; the agricultural and urban labourers,
+comprising one-third of the Irish population; the
+great farming interest in the area of the Rural
+District Councils, and the Universities and other
+teaching professions—must surely make it unnecessary
+to emphasise the latter point.</p>
+
+<p>3. While the politicians’ organizations are in
+appearance restricted to a delegation of five apiece,
+the pretence is, to the knowledge of everybody in
+Ireland, a misleading one. The twin organizations
+of the Irish Parliamentary Party—the most powerful
+of the two being of a secret and rigidly sectarian
+character—would command a majority of the Convention
+as disciplined as if directly delegated by
+these organizations, and, in the event of “a deal”
+with the Ulster Unionist body of at least twenty-five
+delegates, would represent an overwhelming vote for
+some scheme of Partition, such as the two Nationalist
+organizations referred to strove hard last year to
+force upon the Nationalists of Ireland, and have
+never since categorically pledged themselves to
+renounce. Their leaders have, on the contrary,
+on more than one recent occasion expressed their
+<span class="pagenum">[20]</span>regret that the Partition bargain of last year did not
+succeed.</p>
+
+<p>I do not impugn the sincerity of those who may
+believe any compromise would be better than failure
+to secure an agreement, but am absolutely convinced,
+for my own part, that Partition under any disguise
+would mean the destruction of the ideal of Ireland a
+Nation, and could not, indeed, be enforced at all
+without bloodshed and disorder.</p>
+
+<p>4. The solid majority—apart even from the aid of
+the direct nominees of the Government—which the
+Irish Parliamentary Party would thus be able to cast
+in favour of any such Partitionist compromise—would
+consist principally of Mayors and Chairmen
+of County Councils, all of whom were the choice of
+the Board of Erin wing of the Ancient Order of
+Hibernians and of the United Irish League, and could
+not have been elected without the imprimatur of
+these organisations. This fact might not be material
+if the Board of Erin Hibernians and the United
+Irish League could still pretend to enjoy the confidence
+of the country; but their leaders have owned
+that the contrary is the truth, and, as a matter of
+fact, have not attempted to hold a free public meeting
+anywhere throughout the country for more than
+a year past. The local governing bodies, like the
+Irish Parliamentary Party themselves, have outstayed
+their mandate from the country by several years.
+The greater number of those whom the Government
+arrangements will constitute a majority of the Convention
+would quite certainly be defeated if they
+were obliged to face their constituents at the polls.
+The will of the people is, therefore, rendered powerless
+to control the secret deliberations of the Convention,
+and would be forced to find other and
+regrettable means of resisting any such Partitionist
+<span class="pagenum">[21]</span>compromise, as there is only too substantial reason
+to apprehend.</p>
+
+<p>5. On the other hand, while my friends and myself
+would welcome the most generous representation of
+the unofficial Unionist population of Ireland, the
+Government scheme ensures to the official Ulster
+Unionist Council a full third of the voting power
+of the Convention—under the direction, moreover,
+of a Committee not present at the Convention, but
+specially nominated by the Council to supervise its
+proceedings from outside. The terms of the Resolution
+under which the Ulster Unionist Council consented
+to enter the Convention make it clear that
+they have only done so as a War measure, and,
+relying upon the assurances of the Government that
+they need fear no Parliamentary pressure if they
+should adhere to their demand for the exclusion of
+the six counties as a minimum—a demand, indeed,
+which was conceded to them last year by the Irish
+Parliamentary Party. It is consequently obvious
+that the chances of any agreement by the Ulster
+Unionist Council other than one based on the
+separation of the six counties are all but hopelessly
+handicapped from the start, and the temptation
+dangerously increased to those Nationalist politicians
+who have already committed themselves to
+dismemberment.</p>
+
+<p>6. As you are aware, my friends and myself have
+long since urged upon the Cabinet a constructive
+proposal, by which alone, in our judgment, any
+agreement involving a genuine settlement of the
+Irish difficulty can now be obtained, viz., a small
+Conference of responsible Irishmen, on the Land
+Conference model, to draft the headings of a project
+of Self-government for Ireland such as would
+guarantee a future of the fullest security and power
+<span class="pagenum">[22]</span>to the Unionists of Ulster and of the South as well
+in the government of our common native land; such
+agreement, if arrived at, to be submitted to a vote
+of the people of Ireland by way of Referendum.</p>
+
+<p>Recent experience has convinced me more deeply
+than ever that it is to a small Round Table Conference
+of thoughtful and competent Irishmen, and not
+to a heterogeneous assembly, mostly composed of
+pre-committed partisan politicians, we must look for
+the materials on which the country might with confidence
+be called upon for a judgment, and that a
+Referendum, giving the whole mass of the population
+a direct and influential voice, would be the only
+means of eliciting a decision so overpowering as to
+put an end to all further controversy among rational
+men.</p>
+
+<p>It is because I am driven to the conclusion that
+the Government scheme, while making a specious
+appearance of adopting the Conference method, in
+reality adopts it only to destroy its efficacy—because
+it forbids all reasonable hope of any agreement
+other than one which could only inflame and
+intensify Irish discontent, and because it would
+most unjustly cast upon the Irish people the
+blame for a failure of the Government’s own producing—that
+I have made up my mind, with
+reluctance, and, indeed, with poignant personal
+sorrow, that I must decline to undertake any responsibility
+in connection with a Convention so
+constituted.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Yours very truly,<br>
+<span style="padding-left:8em">WILLIAM O’BRIEN.</span></p>
+
+<p class="il2"><span class="smcap">Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, m.p.</span>,<br>
+<span style="padding-left:5em"><em>Prime Minister</em>.</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<div class="transnote">
+<h2 style="margin-top: 0em">Transcriber’s Notes:</h2>
+
+<p>New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.</p>
+
+<p>Punctuation has been made consistent.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78446 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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author	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-04-14 13:27:52 -0700
committer	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-04-14 13:27:52 -0700
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