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 the 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 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 of its exhaltation 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 the Provisional Government
Thomas J.Clarke
Sean Mac Diarmada Thomas MacDonagh
P.H.Pearse
Eamonn Ceannt
James Connolly Joseph Plunkett
