In the year 1906 Sinn Fein emerged from the region of ideals and abstractions, of academical discussion and preliminary propaganda, into the arena of Irish party politics with a fully formulated practical policy. Taking constitutional ground with the dictum that “the constitution of 1782 is still the constitution of Ireland,” it proposed to show how the people of Ireland, keeping within the letter of a law which they could not otherwise break, might render nugatory the effort to hold the country in dependence upon England in pursuance of the Act of Union. It proposed to arrest the anglicization of Ireland by recovering for the Irish people the management of those departments of public administration in which the anglicizing process was working most markedly to the detriment of Irish interests and which might be remodelled without any actual breach of the existing law. In the first place it seemed necessary to take education in hand, and by the introduction of a system more in accordance with Irish needs and capabilities and characteristics, endeavour to train up a generation of young Irish men and women, imbued with a national spirit and national pride, capable of taking their part in the agricultural, industrial and administrative life of the country. County Councils might do much in this direction through their intimate connection with the administration and policy of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction; a wise use of the means placed by the Department at their disposal might in a few years revolutionize to the advantage of Ireland the entire education of the country. The young men and women thus trained might form the nucleus of an Irish Civil Service, if the County Councils could be induced to abandon their “patronage” in the positions at their disposal and throw them open to competitive examination; others of these trained Irishmen might be employed in an unofficial Irish Consular Service to the great advantage of Irish commerce, handicapped in foreign markets by English consuls in the interests of the English commercial houses. Pressure could be brought to bear upon the Irish banks to adopt a policy more in sympathy with Irish trade and industry. There was deposited in Irish banks a sum of £50,000,000, the savings of the people of Ireland; yet these banks invested this money in English securities (the Bank of Ireland during the South African War even lent money to the English Government without interest) while Irish industries were starving for lack of the capital which the banks refused to lend. The Stock Exchange, controlled by the Government, neglected to quote shares in Irish companies that might be formed for the furtherance of particular industries in particular districts, discouraging investors who were thus left unable to dispose of their shares in the ordinary way. It was hoped that public bodies as well as private persons could be induced to bring pressure to bear on the banks by withdrawing or withholding accounts until they should adopt a more patriotic policy, though it was more difficult to see how the Stock Exchange could be dealt with. The difficulties put by railways and their heavy freights on the exchange of commodities could be obviated by a development of the Irish waterways under the control of popularly elected bodies: the County Councils should see to this and to questions such as afforestation and the encouragement of home manufactures by specifying their use in the giving of contracts for institutions under their control. The Poor Law system should be remodelled in accordance with Irish sentiment and the money expended upon it spent in Ireland upon Irish goods. To ensure the advantage of foreign markets without English interference an Irish Mercantile Marine should be established, what could be done even by a poor country in this way being shown by the example of Norway, where nearly everyone was at least part owner of a ship.

But to stimulate and foster native industry and native manufacture was to Mr. Griffith (whose writings on economic matters formed a kind of gospel for Sinn Fein) an urgent and supreme duty. He was convinced that until Ireland became an industrial as well as an agricultural country her economic position was insecure. Thinking always in terms of national independence, which he interpreted to mean national ability to dispense with outside assistance, he looked forward to a time when Ireland should be able not merely to feed her population from her own resources, but to supply them with nearly all the other necessaries of modern life. Irish coal and iron existed in abundance to supply the necessary fuel and raw material; there was plenty of native marble and other stones for building; Irish wool and hides were once famous over Europe for their abundance and excellence. All that was required to make Ireland once more a prosperous manufacturing country was at her disposal within her own boundaries, and only waited for the policy that would call out her latent powers. In an independent State the encouragement required would be forthcoming in protective legislation, pursued until the protected industry became established and able to compete on favourable terms with similar industries in other countries, the work of protection being limited strictly to the task of building up a temporary screen to shelter a budding national industry from the wind of competition until its strength was established. The Irish Parliament in the days of its independence had adopted this policy, which had enabled it during its short life to secure to Irish manufactures an unprecedented prosperity. But Ireland, deprived of legislative powers, might fall back upon a less secure but still efficacious method of protection. Irish consumers might refuse to purchase English goods while Irish goods of the same quality were to be had, and be content to pay in an enhanced price their share of what under other circumstances the State might have expended in bounties to the industry; public bodies might insist upon the use of goods of Irish manufacture; port authorities should arrange port dues so that they should fall most heavily on manufactured goods brought into the country, and should publish periodical returns of the imports of manufactured goods at every port in Ireland; Irish capital should be invited and encouraged to undertake the development of the country on industrial and commercial lines, being assured, in the support of industrial and corporate public feeling, of encouragement and success in its enterprise.

In expounding this theory of protection and of the vital necessity to a country of developing its industrial life Mr. Griffith was confessedly following the economic doctrines of the German economist Friedrich List, “the man whom England caused to be persecuted by the Government of his native country, and whom she hated and feared more than any man since Napoleon—the man who saved Germany from falling a prey to English economics, and whose brain conceived the great industrial and economic Germany of to-day.” A man with credentials like these might well be listened to with profit. The commercial policy that made the New Germany could not fail to make a New Ireland, and List made seductive promises. He foretold an increase in population by a combination of agricultural and industrial enterprise greater in proportion than by the development of either industry or agriculture by itself: he denied the possibility of intellectual progress to a country relying solely or mainly upon agriculture: culture marched behind the mill and the factory. But the chief merit of the policy undoubtedly was that it promised a self-contained and independent economic existence, serving as the basis of a distinctive national culture.

The merits of List’s theories in the abstract it is for economists to determine: but the concrete instance of the commercial expansion of Germany seemed at the time a sufficient vindication of their merit. But Germany was an independent State, competent to fix its own tariffs, give State encouragement to its industries and determine its own destinies. Ireland could do none of these things: the efforts of individuals, societies and local bodies would have to supply the place of legislative control, their efforts must be voluntary and would be difficult to control and co-ordinate. To ensure the will to follow out the suggested policy if it were even accepted, and to secure its acceptance, was a work of argument and controversy, and to secure a sympathetic or even attentive audience was not easy. Great claims were made upon the national intelligence and the national conscience, and success could only be ensured by practical unanimity. Unanimity was not to be had, and could hardly be expected in the near future: the task of securing it was one to tax the resources of a generation of apostles, in the absence of some cataclysm which might involve a complete change in the general outlook and ensure the acceptance of the policy by the mere force of circumstances. Meanwhile something might be done to co-ordinate spasmodic and voluntary effort. In the absence of a Parliament it might be possible to bring together a representative assembly whose directions and decisions might carry a moral sanction to the conscience of an awakened public and to this end it was proposed to constitute a Council of Three Hundred, forming a de facto Irish Parliament. A similar council had been suggested by O’Connell, prolific of expedients: but, sterile in execution, he had never permitted it to meet and transact business. The expedient was now to be revived: the Council was, upon report from special committees (such as those that had been appointed by the Repeal Association) “to deliberate and formulate workable schemes, which, once formulated, it would be the duty of all County and Urban Councils, Rural Councils, Poor Law Boards, and other bodies to give legal effect to so far as their powers permit, and where these legal powers fell short, to give it the moral force of law by instructing and inducing those whom they represent to honour and obey the recommendations of the Council of Three Hundred, individually and collectively.” Finally, Arbitration Courts were to be instituted to supersede the ordinary courts of law in civil cases, which “would deprive the corrupt bar of Ireland of much of its incentive to corruption” and foster a spirit of brotherhood.Such was the new policy: and it was claimed that “not on recognition of usurped authority, but on its denial—not on aid from our enemies but on action for ourselves, the Sinn Fein policy is based. Its essence is construction and its march to its ultimate political goal must be attended at every step by the material progress of the nation.” The work of exposition and instruction was carried on partly in the columns of Sinn Fein partly by means of clubs and branches through the country. A branch was formed in Belfast in the early autumn of 1906, and at the meeting of the National Council a month later it was announced that there were already twenty branches in existence. At that meeting resolutions were passed in favour of boycotting articles of common consumption from which the British Exchequer derives its chief revenue (a measure recommended long before by the Young Ireland Party), in favour of new systems of primary and secondary education, of competitive examinations for County Council appointments and of a National Banking System.

The Appeal which the National Council issued for support was based on the ground that the Council “denies the right of any foreign legislature to make laws to bind the people of Ireland, denies the authority of any foreign administration to exist in Ireland, and denies the wisdom of countenancing the existence of an usurped authority in Irish affairs by participating in the proceedings of the British Parliament.”The two years following 1906 saw a great advance in the spread of Sinn Fein principles. Debates were organized with members of the other Nationalist organizations, reading rooms were established and lectures given. In Belfast, the Dungannon Club, a separatist organization which had for some time published a small and ably conducted paper called the Republic, as well as a series of pamphlets, now amalgamated with the West Belfast Branch of the National Council. Every care was taken to prevent the movement assuming a sectional as distinct from a national tendency. Every instance of intolerance towards a fellow-Irishman committed by members of any political party was faithfully pilloried in the columns of Sinn Fein. When the Westport Guardians (for example) demanded the dismissal of Canon Hannay from his chaplaincy for being the author of The Seething Pot, which offended the political sensibilities of the worthy Guardians, he found no more strenuous advocate, and the Guardians no more unsparing critic, than Sinn Fein. In Dublin the movement was particularly strong, and even succeeded in securing the return of some of its candidates at the elections to the City Council. When the Liberal Government in 1906 offered Mr. Redmond, in place of a Home Rule Bill, what was known as the Devolution Bill, the sincerity of English parties in their dealings with Ireland began to be widely questioned and Sinn Fein received an additional impetus. An official Sinn Fein handbook, “Leabhar na hEireann the Irish Year Book,” was published containing, in addition to articles on the Sinn Fein policy, a number of valuable statistics with reference to Irish resources, enterprises, movements and parties, both political and religious. At last in 1908 the time seemed to have come for contesting a parliamentary election. Mr. C. J. Dolan, the sitting member for North Leitrim, declared himself a convert to the new movement. He resigned his seat and offered himself for re-election as a Sinn Fein candidate. He polled less than a third of the votes, and Sinn Fein received a serious setback. In fact the ground had not been sufficiently prepared. A weekly paper, supplemented by a few pamphlets, with no great circulation outside Dublin, was an insufficient instrument with which to achieve the success of a new policy within two years. It was proposed and attempted to repair the error by the establishment of a daily edition of Sinn Fein. But the movement had made no progress among the more prosperous classes. The paper was in difficulties from the start and an attempt to make it more popular by increasing it from four pages to eight committed it beyond recall to failure. Meanwhile a Sinn Fein Co-operative Bank had been established, and, pushing ahead, the party issued a programme to which candidates for election to all elected bodies in Ireland were to be asked to subscribe. They were asked to pledge themselves to support the independence of Ireland, a system of protection for Irish industries, the establishment of an Irish Consular Service and an Irish Mercantile Marine, a general survey and development of the mineral resources of Ireland, an Irish National Bank, National Stock Exchange and National Civil Service, National Courts of Arbitration, a National System of Insurance, National Control of Transit and Fisheries, a reform of the educational system, the abolition of the poorhouses, the gradual introduction of the Irish language as the official language of public boards. In addition they were to agree to refuse to recognize the British Parliament, and to discourage the consumption of articles paying duty to the British Treasury and the enlistment of Irishmen in the British Army.

This ambitious programme met with little or no response, and with the collapse of the daily paper the apathy of the general public became more marked. On the mass of Unionist Ireland, especially in Ulster, Sinn Fein had practically no influence. The movement for the reform of the financial relations between England and Ireland which had followed the publication of the Report of the Financial Relations Committee in 1896 had been the last All-Ireland movement in which Unionist Ulster had taken part. But after a brief period of enthusiasm the movement had come to nothing. Though the Report showed that Ireland had been since the Union, and partly in contravention of the express terms of that Act, the victim of grave financial injustice, being over-taxed to the amount of two-and-three-quarter millions of pounds per annum, nothing was done to remedy the grievance. The English Government was obdurate: the landlords gradually ceased to take any prominent part in the movement for fear of prejudicing their class interests. Unionist Ireland, especially in Ulster, allowed its morbid suspicion of everything in which the rest of the country was interested to overbear (as usual) its patriotism and its common sense, and Nationalist Ireland lost interest in the matter in pursuit of other objects. The Financial Reform Association had been dissolved in 1899 and the country settled down again to the old political struggle. The Nationalist Party fought shy of the raising of all fundamental questions. Its policy was to “wrest from whatever Government was in power the full measure of a nation’s rights,” that is to say, to gain as full a measure of Home Rule from either Liberals or Conservatives as the exigencies of English politics and the opinion of the English public might make possible. Their aim was not to educate Irish public opinion or to convince Irish opposition. It was taken for granted that the Liberal Party would some day bring in a Home Rule Bill and carry it against the Conservative Party, and that that would end the matter: that the Conservatives (according to the English party system of government) would accept “the verdict of the people,” yielding to the inevitable, and that the Irish Unionists would have to follow suit. To discuss the fundamentals of the problem, to endeavour to unite Irishmen (so far as argument and a generally understood common interest could unite them) was tiresome, irrelevant and tending to the subversion of party discipline. For the policy now adopted by the Parliamentarians “a united party” was above all things essential; and the unity desired meant not merely a common aim but an agreement upon all details: the great offence was “faction,” and under faction was comprised all independent criticism either of policy or of principle. A party thus constituted was, if things went well and it was wisely led, an invaluable instrument of parliamentary warfare at Westminster; but if things went wrong or a mistake was made, or if Westminster should cease at any time to be the centre of interest, disaster was sure to follow. And this conception of the duty of an Irish National Party overlooked the possibilities latent in Ulster Unionism. To an extent, not at the time fully grasped by anyone in Ireland, it stood not for the Unionist Party, as that party was understood in England, but for itself alone. The exigencies of party warfare required that it, like the Nationalist Party, should attach itself to an English party; that it should adopt the parlance of English parties; that it should declare its unbending loyalty to Imperial interests and the British Constitution. But it was not inclined to admit in practice that the British Constitution could override its own particular interests. It could not be ignored or flouted with impunity; it was the rock upon which all schemes based upon the peaceful possibilities of English parliamentary situations were destined in the end to make shipwreck.

But the rock was not yet in sight and its existence was unsuspected. It was common ground to the two Irish parties that the arena was Parliament and that the prize should go to the party which won the game according to Westminster rules. It is easy now for those who kept their eyes shut to say that they would have opened them if everybody else had not been born blind, and it would be more dignified to say nothing. But the fact remains that the mistake was made.

During the lean years for its policy that followed 1908, Sinn Fein continued persistently to preach its doctrines: that to obtain “the full measure of a nation’s rights” Ireland must rely not upon outside aid but upon her own efforts: that all Irishmen had a common interest, and that interest not the interest of England: that all Irishmen, whether called Nationalist or Unionist, were brothers in a common country impoverished and weakened by the loss of independence resulting from the Act of Union, and that to recognize their common interests and understand one another was their immediate object. It published articles on the destruction of Irish industries in the interests of those of England, a destruction arrested by the Constitution of 1782, and acting without restraint since the loss of that Constitution by the Act of Union. It welcomed literary contributions by the most eminent Irish men of letters, without distinction of politics or religion: it preached unceasingly the doctrines of toleration and goodwill amongst Irishmen. But as the prospect of the triumph of parliamentarianism through its alliance with the Liberal Party grew brighter, interest centred more and more upon the doings of Parliament and the vicissitudes of parliamentary fortunes. Now at last the dream of a century was to take shape in something resembling a substance, and the time for discussion, arrangement and accommodation was over. In April, 1910, Sinn Fein announced on behalf of its party that Mr. John Redmond, having now the chance of a lifetime to obtain Home Rule, will be given a free hand, without a word said to embarrass him. But it was difficult not to speak sometimes. When the Liberal Budget left the House of Commons that month, before the veto of the House of Lords had been abolished, Mr. Redmond’s acquiescence in these tactics was freely censured. When in the autumn of the same year Mr. Redmond committed himself to the declaration: “We do not want to discontinue our representation in the House of Commons when Home Rule comes; we desire to have Irish members sitting at Westminster not only to form a nucleus of the ultimate Federal Parliament of the Empire, but also to assist in legislation concerning Great Britain and Ireland collectively,” the declaration was quoted with disgust. The Home Rule of the Liberal Party was indeed far removed from the Constitution of 1782.

Sinn Fein took no official part in the elections of 1910, preferring, as it said in its official organ, to remain “wholly free from any moral responsibility” for the legislation offered by the Liberals to the Parliamentary Party, while retaining the right to examine, criticise and warn. This was not purely an act of self-sacrifice. In fact Sinn Fein was never at so low an ebb. While the country was drifting farther and farther in the direction of Home Rule, Sinn Fein was insisting more and more upon first principles. Its official attitude of warm approval of the work of the Gaelic League was exchanged for one of insistence upon the urgency of making Irish the national language. “We must begin again,” said Sinn Fein, “to be an Irish-speaking people, or there can be no future of national independence before us.” With England on the one hand and America on the other, 120,000,000 people speaking English, the danger to the language was imminent. “We freely admit,” it proceeded, “that this conclusion is not one we sought nor one we desired. The conviction has forced itself upon us and has been with some reluctance accepted by us.” And it continued to speak plain language about the Home Rule which now seemed inevitable: “No scheme which the English Parliament may pass in the near future will satisfy Sinn Fein—no legislature created in Ireland which is not supreme and absolute will offer a basis for concluding a final settlement with the foreigners who usurp the government of this country. But any measure which gives genuine, if even partial, control of their own affairs to Irishmen shall meet with no opposition from us and should meet with no opposition from any section of Irishmen.” So far was Sinn Fein at this time from any desire to do more than infuse a new spirit into Irishmen, favourable to the eventual future development of the policy outlined by the National Council, that it expressly disclaimed the title of a party. “It is not our business,” was the conclusion of a pamphlet issued by the Belfast Branch of Sinn Fein, “to make one more party among the political parties of Ireland, nor to carry on a party propaganda nor to waste time quarrelling with any political party. Above the cries of contending parties we raise the cry of Ireland and Irish independence—an independence in the gaining of which Catholic and Protestant will be shoulder comrades as they were a century ago, and in the advantages of which they will be equal sharers. Not an Ireland for a class or a creed, but an Ireland for the Irish, and the whole of the Irish, not an Ireland fettered and trammelled by England, but mistress of her own destinies, evolving her own national life and building for herself an ever-increasing prosperity. We can leave the past with its bitter memories, its bigotries and its feuds to those whose property it is, the reactionaries who here, as in every country, would stem the tide of national advancement. We have to recognise the nation, rather than parties within the nation; for it is greater than any party, and in the service of the nation all men have an equal right as well as an equal duty.”