1916 - Declaration of the Republic, Ireland

The following document was taken from The IRA: A History, by Tim Pat Coogan

Poblacht na h-Éireann

The Provincial 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 nationahood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.

Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently prefected 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 her 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 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, not 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 fundemental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independant State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause if 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 righrts and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to persue the happiness and propserity of the whole nation and all of 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 establishing of a permanent national Government, respective 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 dishonor it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valor 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,

Thomas J. Clark
Sean MacDiarmada
P.H. Pearse
James Connelly
Thomas MacDonagh
Eamon Ceannt
Joseph Plunkett

Sources:

Oxford History of Ireland, ed. R.F. Foster, Oxford University Press, (c)1989, ISBN 0-19-285271-X

The IRA: A History, Tim Pat Coogan, Roberts Rheinhart Publishers, (c)1993, ISBN1-879373-67-X

prepared by Kathleen NíBhriain

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