This forms part of a correspondence between James Connolly and Patrick MacManus. This article is responding to a Connolly article, and Connolly later wrote a response to this article.
From The Shan Van Vocht, September 6th, 1897.
My purpose is not to defend the ideas of Mr. Connolly regarding the formation of a Republican party, nor yet to oppose, but merely to call attention to what I believe would be the result.
As all Irishmen are at heart, with very few exceptions, republicans, the formation of a Republican Party in the foreign House of Commons would simply amount to the changing of the nomenclature of the present Triangular (or Quadruple?) Party. Surely Ireland could not expect very radical benefits from such a superficial reform. In fact, while many Irishmen, or nearly all, would welcome the change in name, we could not congratulate ourselves on having made any advance towards independence – or should I simply say, towards repelling the invasion?
The habit of looking towards a foreign assembly for amelioration of our lot has degraded our nation so completely in the eyes of other peoples, as to cause us, Irishmen abroad, to be treated as English, and our country as an English province. We have now had nearly a hundred years of “constitutional” agitation, and what have we for our pains? The categorical reply of the English, that we cannot even have a miserable autonomy under the foreign domination, and the express declaration by a Minister of the present English Government that you must “take what you get, like whipped hounds”!
And can the whipped hounds only howl in their master’s hall?
PATRICK MACMANUS.
Paris, 9th August, 1897.