The Irish Volunteer - Volume 2 - Number 59

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ED·I TED BY EOIN MAC NEILL. · ..

Vol. 2.

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No. 59

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In the a.rt of subtracting millions, the British Treasu-ry can always give me points. Last week I stated at £8,830,000 the additional taxation of Ireland according to the Treasury figures supplied · to Mr. Ginnell by the Chan:Cellor of the Exphequer. The correct a.mount is £7,830,000 . That, however, is not the whole bill . . There are more War Budgets still to come.

There are signs that the people .are beginning to understand what it means to be taxed with an · increase of two pounds a nose, man,. w9mari and c'hild. Ireland is not a consenting party to this taxation . We are nominally represented in the Imperial Parliament, but when :lt comes to any critical question like this our representation is annulled. Irish Members of Parliament have no mandate or authority, express or implied, from their el~ctors to cons~nt to this ruinous taxation. The electorate has never been consi:1lted about it. This taxation has no · ~ore claim to respect than the taxation that caused the American people to assert their independence and to win it. Th.e Bt'i.tish Government does not impose a war-tax ·of two pounds a head on the people of Canada or Australia or South Africa, because · it <la.r e not.

PRICE ONE .PENNY.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 22nd, 1916 .

Series).

Mr. Birrell, Chief Secretary £or England, took in on himself to lecture Irish people about loyalty. He handed over the government of Ireland to a ·foreigner, an ex-military satrap _from the Gold Coast. Now he is lepturing us about patriotism. In the presence of Ireland's "representatives" he told the Imperial House of Commons that "Patriotism in Ireland was much too local an a:fiair . We all ·wan1t ,to adopt the wisest course to oon1vert and to extend that local patriotism into a wider patriotism. (~o dissent from Mr. Redmond.) Without that the Empire becomes nothing more than an enlarged Hanseatic League .of gre~dy commercial comm uni ties (cheers). We want more than that- we want to introduce into it a real Empire patriotism." Yes. Mr. Birrell and those who

W ar has its good poi~ts ' a.He; all. cheer him want to steal the· name and insignia of patriotism to glorify a league When war i~ in, truth is out. Only £or of commercial greed. "And yet patriot- this war we .should not have heard from ism begins at home. "In dealing with · a British Minister this cynical avowal of a country like Ireland they must consider the purpose of British . Home · R~lers - in how best they could help, and not hinder, their "dealing" with Irish Nationalism. the slow but gradual pro-gression that What have Mr. Redmond, Mr. Dillon was noticeable in Ireland, whereby its and Mr. Devlin' to say about the doctrine . somewhat narrow patr'io1tism was gradu- openly uttered in their presence by their ally extending into a wider one." "You Liberal Home- Rule confederate? - Will object to our way of dealing with the they venture to. repeat this doctrine to Irish question,'' said a member of the any audience in Ireland? We may thank defunct "Home Rule" Government to the war £or it that the n~t is now spread a. critic. "No,'' said the c~tic, ','it openly in our sight. We are to disli.vow is not to your dealing I object, it is to our Nation a.nd all its , sacrifices in the past, and the -" delicate" . inducement is your shu:filipg ." , the privilege, among ,others, of paying a • • * fresh war' tax of two . poun;ds year in.Mr. Birrell shuffied along with his lecfuture from every man and ~boy, from ture on the· New J?atriotism . "Patriot~very woman and girl and baby. ism is the most potent mixture the world • has ever seen. -But it is a mixture . It Mr. Birrell's ''Empire patriotism,'' to is the oddest compound. . It is made up which he wants, "they . all want," to of prejudices, of passions, of memories, " convert" Ireland, is not patriotism of little scraps of history, imperfectly even in England. No Empire ever did or taught £or the most part, but partly reever can. fake the place of a Nation in membered and frequently completely misthe love and reverence, the passionate understood (loud laughter). It is fa.r truer of patriotism than it is of ambition, a:ffection and self-denying devotion of a that it is 'like· a -circle in the water.' It Nation's children. • widens and widens, beginning at home, . • . A.11 the time, the d'elicate and difficult until it contains within its glorious ambit far distant -lands and populations long opera,tion is going -on here in Ireland. since emigrated from their ·own shores, The war tax is being extracted . Alastair but still retaining much of the old feel- MacCabe has been in jail for four rrionths ing (cheers). Mr. Birrell forgot to com- without trial. Ultimately, per:\iaps; h~e will be brought before a suitable tribunal plete his quotation from Shakespeare: to be tried · for · a: crime of · which · no Glory is like a circle in the water, Irishman, N a.tionalist or Unionist, is Which never ceases to enlarge · itself · ashamed, the crime of being in possesTill by broad spreading i,Ldisperse sion of "munitions of war." Terence fo nought. MacSwiney, Irish Volunteer captain and . organiser, was seized in his bed the other' This is what Mr. Birrell, a political day by Mr . Birrell's police an<l. thrown souper without the soup, wants to do into , Cork jail without any charge what. with Irish patriotism, and what, in the ,'ioever ;·as was .also Thomas Kent, Irish face of Mr. Redmond and his followers, Volunteer, of Castlelyons. The- "evihe cl_aimed to have succeeded in doing for dence '' will be laid before the Castle them, if not for the peopie who elected lawyers, and the crime formulated when them. "But," he continued, "it is a they have found out the most suitable most delicate affair-a most gifficult course to adopt. "A delicate and diffioperation. We might easily injure it and cult operation." The Irish ·people will· thrust it back for half a century by hasty, want to know whether those who hold ill:conside.r~d, and unsympathetic treattheir commission ~re secret partners in. nien t (hear hear) . It is a plant which this operation or remain true to the trust requires to •be nurtured _and watered and confided to them . The war has unmasked watered, and never, never, to be pulled· Mr. Birrell. We now know what he is ' up rashly by the roots." here for. We want to know what the lrish

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