Bishop of Limerick launches brutal attack on partition
Limerick, 24 July 1916 - The Bishop of Limerick has issued a brutal denunciation of the planned partition of Ireland.
The Most Rev Dr. O’Dwyer made his comments in a letter to the Anti-Partition Committee in Belfast.
Cartoon from the Irish Nation newspape blaming John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party for the theft of Ireland from the Irish people to appease the British government an the Ulster unionists. (Image: Irish Nation, 8 July 1916)
Bishop O'Dwyer wrote: ‘I can well understand your anxiety and indignation at the proposal of your own political leaders to cut you off from your own country, and hand you over to the Orangemen of the North.’
‘You have ceased to be men, and your leaders naturally think that they can sell you like chattel – but if they can they will.’
‘My sorrow in all of this disgraceful business is for our poor country, that is being made a thing of truck and barter in the Liberal clubs in London.’
‘I doubt very much that this partition scheme will become law. It is so absurd and so impracticable that I do not think that it is a sincere proposal.’
‘But of one thing I am certain, that in our devotion to our glorious British Empire we have piled a mountain of debt and taxation on Ireland that will make it a matter of very little difference as to whether we are in the 26 counties of the mere Irish, or the 6 counties of the Pale.’
[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
