What is wrong with physical force republicanism?
By James Connolly Ireland occupies a position among the nations of the earth unique in a great variety of its aspects, but in no one particular is this singularity more marked than in the possession of what is known as a “physical force party” — a party, that is to say, whose members are united upon no one point, and agree upon no single principle, except upon the use of physical force as the sole means of settling the dispute between the people of this country and the governing power of Great Britain. Other countries and other peoples have, from time to time, appealed to what the first French Revolutionists picturesquely described as the “sacred right of insurrection”, but in so appealing they acted under the inspiration of, and combatted for, some great governing principle of political and social life upon which they, to a man, were in absolute agreement. The latter-day high falutin’ “hillside” man, on the other hand, exalts into a principle that which the revolutionists of other cou
