PHOBLACHT NA HEIREANN
THE
PROVISIONAL 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
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 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 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
Diarmuida Thomas
Mac Donagh
P. H. Pearse
Eamonn Ceannt
James
Connolly
Joseph Plunkett
.
