mocratic principles which have won universal approval from decent persons, Irish and foreign, was threshed out in detail and then submitted to a plebiscite of as much of the nation as was free to vote. The people themselves enacted it, and thus crowned it with the Sovereign authority of the nation. By virtue of the plebiscite, the continuity with the Sovereign State of 1922 was established, and the flaw in the Free State’s title was avoided. No trace of foreign authority remains in the State thus constituted. By an enabling clause, the Act of Association was taken over as the principle by which we are freely associated with the British Commonwealth.
Thus, in six years of power, Eamon de Valera so conducted national affairs as to accomplish without effective resistance, and peacefully that which the Second Dáil strove for, and what Lloyd George threatened “immediate and terrible war” to prevent. Step by step he recovered all the ground lost since the Government of the Republic opened the negotiations of 1921. He brought the nation back to its Sovereignty.
IX.—WHERE WE STAND
Not yet, however, was the nation’s task completed. Two things remained to be achieved. The first was to secure from Britain a formal recognition of the fait accompli. Her forces still occupied the ports of the Twenty-Six Counties, and she had not signified in any way that she regarded the Treaty clause, giving her control of Irish waters in war time, as lapsed. We have seen that this recognition of the new State’s sovereignty was won from England in the late agreement. She formally declared that the clauses were now no longer of effect, and she undertook to evacuate the ports by the end of this year. So far as the Twenty-Six Counties stand, therefore, we have arrived without qualification at the full Republican objective.
The second task is still to be achieved. It is the bringing of the Six Counties into the Sovereign State in fact as well as in right. When this is done, a completely free Ireland will stand erect, in proud dignity. It will be associated with the British Commonwealth by a free act and it will be able to cooperate fruitfully with Britain in matters of true common concern. A first-fruit of co-operation is exemplified as we have seen in the trade agreement. How unification will be achieved we not know, but we hope and pray that it will be the privilege of Eamon de Valera, Liberator and Peacemaker, to accomplish it; for this a reward that will fill that generous heart with such joy and thankfulness as no other Irish leader ever has enjoyed—and Eamon de Valera deserves it.
We are soberly hopeful that this consummation will come in the relatively near future; and we believe that the Taoiseach was justified when he declared himself confident that “it is only a matter of time.”
Here we must insert a brief note on how partition came about, and how it was fastened on our land. Passing over the Ulster revolt which a Dublin lawyer headed and English politicians provoked and financed, we come to 1920, when a Home Rule Bill was carried which proposed to erect two legislatures in Ireland. No Irish Member voted for this measure. The English Government of the day was solely responsible and it was this alien authority which decreed the segregation of the Six Counties, an area more than half of which is Nationalist, to be held by the Unionist bloc in Belfast. In the Treaty negotiations, the Irish delegates were asked by Lloyd George’s men what safeguards they would give the Unionists if a united Ireland was recognised. They answered that they would assent to the continuance of the local Northern Parliament, under the supreme Irish Government, but the autonomous area must be delimited in accord with the wishes of the people. At one stage, Lloyd George pledged himself to resign if Sir James Craig (as the Northern Premier was then) blocked this reasonable plan. It has been shown that Lloyd George was playing a double-hand and giving contrary encouragement to Craig. Years previously Craig was prompted to stand firm for exclusion from the Irish State, and did