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memory in monuments of stone, let us determine to erect to them an everlasting monument by establishing again the Irish Republic for which they died. And no amount of lip-service paid to them by reactionary demagogues must be allowed to obscure this fact—the United Irishmen of Antrim and Down and of Wexford and Killala visualized an Irish Republic as independent of Empire as the newly freed United States of America, and as truly devoted to liberty and democracy as the French Republicans of their day.
Our commemoration of '98 must see itself as a hosting of the forces that must carry through the unfulfilled task of separating the Ireland of the men of Antrim, Wexford, and Mayo from the British Empire. It must see itself, too, as one of the great armies of all submerged nations struggling to be free. With the United Irishmen we must declare as our highest aspirations:
"The greatest happiness of the Greatest Number—On the rock of this principle let society rest; by this let it judge and determine every political question."
We must pledge ourselves anew to the Irish Republic. We must pledge ourselves anew to resist the whittling down of Ireland’s claim to anything less than that. And we must pledge ourselves to maintain those liberties of organisation that have been won by us and by our fathers, and to resist all attempts, from no matter what quarters they may come, to hamper our advance to freedom.
We declare that the will of the overwhelming majority of the Irish people is loyal to the principle of an Irish Republic, and just as the United Irishmen called to English democracy we call on friends of liberty in Britain to demand the withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland and the termination of subsidies to the Craigavon junta in Belfast.
We declare that the principle of civil and religious liberty which inspired the rising of 1798 is not merely the sentiment of the Irish people but a sacred trust to which the Republic of Ireland is inseparably attached.
The Irish nation which this summer salutes the memory of the pioneers of Irish Republicanism, must not read their story as an inscription on a tombstone, but as the text-book of this generation in carrying through their task.
"Then here’s their memory—may it be.
For us a guiding light,
To cheer our strife for liberty,
To teach us to unite !"
