The Situation In Ireland :: European Europe History

The Situation In IrelandBut who are we that we should hesitate to proceed for Ireland. Are not the claims of Ireland greater on us than any face-to-face ones? Is it fear that deters us from such an enterprise? Away with such fears. Cowards collapse many a(prenominal) times, the brave only die once. Padraic Pearse (rebellion leader), 1916 (The New Republic, 34) Pearses words, spoken just before the east wind rebellion, summarizes many Irish feelings toward rebellion for independence. In say to gain freedom from the British, revolutionaries were willing to sacrifice anything, even their lives. For centuries, the Irish had been breach of the vast British empire and for most of that time, they struggled to obtain their sovereignty. Numerous events sparked this dissatisfy in Ireland in the early 20th century. At the top of their number of grievances was the political treatment of the Irish. The Irish parliament was highly inadequate and incompetent with no real power to represen t the people (The Outlook, pg 116). Additionally, Britain governed Ireland in the like manner that it governed all of its territories it ruled according to what would best serve groovy Britain, not the territory. For example, Irelands commerce was discouraged and their manufacturing was paralyzed by British statute (The Outlook, pg 116). Religious treatment of Roman Catholics also angered the Irish. A hulking number of Irish were (and still are) Catholic and were repressed in many ways by English legislature. They were expected to pay taxes to support the schematic Church of England, which gave Catholics no services. Furthermore, Britain forbade Catholics from providing education for their own children. Catholics could not be teachers and parents could not send their children abroad for education without forfeiture of their property and citizenship (The Outlook, pg 117). Although these actions by the British government infuriated the Irish, the new wave of rebellion actually be gan once more in 1914 with the British governments repeal of the recently enacted Home Rule Bill, which gave the Irish some measure of political autonomy. These feelings came to a peak on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916 in the Irish capital of Dublin when approximately 1500 men, led by Pearse, seized the post office and other strategic points. These men were members of the Citizen Army, an illegal draw in of Dublin citizens organized by labor leader Jim Larkin and socialist crowd Connolly. From here, they established themselves in military fashion by erecting barricades of sandbags and resolution off the streets with barbed wire.