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the 1916 proclamation
Reproduced from
Step Together – From
Pillar to Spire – A Proposal for citizens Day
A political pamphlet by
Seamus Cashman
Have You Read this
Document ?
At
12.45 pm on 24 April 1916, Easter Monday, on the steps of the General Post
Office (the GPO) on Sackville
Street, now O’Connell Street, Dublin,
Patrick Pearse read the following Proclamation:
POBLACHT NA h-ÉIREANN
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
OF THE IRISH
REPUBLIC
TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND
IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of
the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of
nationhood, Ireland,
through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.
Having organized her manhood through her secret
revolutionary organization, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through
her open military organizations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen
Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited
for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and
supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in
Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full
confidence of victory.
We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and
to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and
indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and
government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished
except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the
Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty;
six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in
arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in
the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign
Independent State and we pledge our lives and the lives of our
comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its
exaltation among the nations.
The Irish
Republic is entitled
to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The
Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty; equal rights and equal
opportunities of all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the
happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts,
cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences
carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority
from the majority in the past.
Until our arms have brought the opportune moment
for the establish- ment of a permanent National Government, representative
of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men
and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer
the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.
We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the
protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms,
and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by
cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation
must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to
sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august
destiny to which it is called.
*
[Signed
on behalf of the Provisional Government by Thomas Clarke; Sean Mac
Diarmada; Thomas Mac Donagh; P.H.Pearse; Eamonn Ceannt; James Connolly;
Joseph Plunkett]
When Pearse finished reading The
Proclamation, James Connolly shook his hand and there was some
scattered cheering. The rebels handed out copies of The Proclamation among
the crowd. One copy was put at the foot of Nelson’s Pillar. The poet,
Stephen McKenna, who was there, later wrote that he felt sad for Pearse
because the response from the crowd was chilling. No wild hurrahs, no
scenes of excitement as when the French stormed the Bastille.
Some people stood awhile
watching flags fly on the roof of the GPO — a green flag at the Princes
Street corner and a tricolor at the Henry Street corner. Most were
indifferent and went on their way, unaware of the significance of what was
about to begin …
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