Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

38 NATIONAL IDENTITY, HOME RULE AND ULSTER
McCartan claimed that Griffith had never been hostile to a republic
or republicanism, but favoured the restoration of the Kingdom of
Ireland because he had realised that a republic did not appeal to
the Irish masses because they thought its attainment
impossible. 107 Republicans took their model of an Irish state from
Wolfe Tone who, in 1798, had advocated the creation of an Irish
republic. Patrick Pearse summarised Tone’s republican teachings
as:
1 The Irish Nation is One.
2 The Irish Nation, like all Nations, has an indefeasible right to
Freedom.
3 Freedom denotes Separation and Sovereignty.
4 The right to National Freedom rests upon the right to Personal
Freedom, and true National Freedom guarantees true Personal
Freedom.
5 The object of Freedom is the pursuit of the happiness of the
Nation and of the individuals that compose the Nation.
6 Freedom is necessary to the happiness and prosperity of the
Nation. In the particular case of Ireland, separation from
England is necessary not only to the happiness and prosperity
but almost to the continued history of Ireland, inasmuch as the
interests of Ireland and England are fundamentally at variance,
and while the two nations are connected England must
necessarily predominate.
7 The National Sovereignty implied in National Freedom holds
good both externally and internally, i.e., the sovereign rights
of the Nation are good as against all other nations and good as
against all parts of the Nation. Hence—
8 The Nation has jurisdiction over lives and property within the
Nation.
9 The People are the Nation. 108
Tone had taught that there could be no half-way house between
Ireland and England as a permanent solution, for there were only
two alternatives facing Ireland—enslavement or freedom. In
Pearse’s view Dual Monarchy was only a ‘temporary expedient’. 109
Dual Monarchy was deemed to be a proposition which would
place Ireland in the position formally held by the English garrison,
of a ‘Colonial Nationality’, deriving its nationhood from England,
binding its national claim to the limits of that constitution, and
claiming nationhood, not as a right, but on England’s recognition
of that right. 110 Republicans concluded that any connection with
Britain held inherent dangers because Irish self-government would