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 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 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 to all its
citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness
and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts,
cherishing all of 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 establishment 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,
THOMAS J. CLARKE
SEAN Mac DIARMADA
THOMAS MacDONAGH
P. H. PEARSE
EAMONN CEANNT
JAMES CONNOLLY
JOSEPH PLUNKETT
Published by Cain Web Service - Page Compiled
by Martin Melaugh and Fionnuala McKenna.
