Chief Secretary Birrell: ‘Ireland will always be a nation’

The Chief Secretary of Ireland, Augustine Birrell, told a meeting of his constituents in Bristol that Ireland was and always must remain a nation.

Mr. Birrell continued: ‘There were those who questioned that statement and said there were two nations but, after all, the difference was not so great as might appear. No Englishman who held the office he did could ever find himself in any part of Ireland and think he was in England.’

Augustine Birrell, number 7 in a series of caricatures entitled 'In the Dublin Zoo, drawn by Frank Reynolds and first published in 1913. (Photo: National Library of Ireland, PD 2159 TX (39) 2a)

To great applause, Mr. Birrell said that, when in Ireland, he felt himself not in a foreign land, but in a country with a nationality of her own, and that to labour to promote the happiness of such a country was its own reward.