From Sinn Féin, October 10, 1908.
The cramped space at our disposal to-day for dealing with current affairs will soon be a thing of the past if the response to the call for a Sinn Féin daily journal continues as nobly as it has begun. The share list opened on Monday morning, and we hope to have the response of all the guarantors by Monday next. This will considerably facilitate us. Doubt seems to exist in the minds of some readers as to the price at which the daily SINN FÉIN will be published. The price will be one halfpenny. It will be a perfectly equipped evening journal, circulating to all the towns and centres of Ireland each evening, and containing the best news supply of any journal published in the country. Our idea of news, however, does not include verbatim reports of English divorce cases, English police court cases, and the betting on English racecourses. All who pine for that kind of intelligence must stick to the ‘Mail,’ ‘Telegraph,’ and Herald.’ There are bigger interests in the life of Ireland and the life of the world than the immoralities of England, and SINN FÉIN as a daily will be no conduit pipe for discharging English sewage on the Irish shore.
It now rests with those who believe that a daily journal in the Irish Press which regards and treats every question from the Irish standpoint is a vital necessity to bring that journal into being within the next four months. Once established we are confident of its future and assured of its ability to bring about agreement and common action on three-fourths of the questions which now distract the country between all sections of Irishmen, for experience has shown us that outside the mere political adventurer nine-tenths of the men of all parties are anxious to promote the material interests of Ireland. Why, indeed, we should squabble about the land question, the housing question, the transit question, the taxation question, and a dozen other questions which it is all our interests to settle, because some of us call ourselves Unionists and some of us call ourselves Nationalists is a puzzle. The principles which underlie Unionism and Nationalism are not concerned with these questions, and it has been the folly of Irish politics to mingle them with its fortunes. We who are Nationalists not because our country is badly governed by the English Parliament, but because an English Parliament governs us, have no use for perpetuating grievances. We reject with contempt the idea that a prosperous Ireland would cease to be a national Ireland. We believe if Irish Nationalism be so poor a plant that it cannot thrive except on grievances it deserves to perish. Those who proclaim themselves Nationalists because England legislates badly for our country necessarily imply that they would be Unionists if England legislated well. Now, if England legislated for us with the wisdom of Colbert it would leave us exactly where we stand—unalterably opposed to the government of this country by any but its own people. It is not English misgovernment, but English government in Ireland, to which Sinn Féin stands irrevocably opposed.
We are, therefore, not in need of grievances, and we desire their removal. To our Unionist fellow-countrymen—the bulk of whom we believe to be honest Irishmen—we send a challenge, not in enmity, but in comradeship—You allege that Irish nationalism thrives only on the exploitation of Irish grievances: well, unite with us to remove these grievances, and having removed them fight out the issue between us on the principle that underlies them—free from all entangling sub-issues. This will be the policy of the Sinn Féin daily. If it had been as it should have been, the policy of the Irish Press in the past, a brotherhood of Irishmen would have been long since achieved.