Galway In Days Gone By

1922

Sovereign rights

The right of opinion, especially in politics, is one conceded in all nations, but that right depends entirely on an unwritten code of honesty and honour that in forming his opinion every citizen makes use of honest intelligence and reason in guiding his judgement and is because a citizen is above lies and misrepresentation in matters affecting the national wellbeing and prosperity of his country.

On this date, January 15, 1922, every man in the West is (if not alien on Ireland’s soil or temporarily in residence) a Citizen of the Irish Free State, under the authority of the Provisional Government of Ireland. This Provisional Government consists of men chosen by the Irish people to represent them and by none others, and is to be in a few months replaced by one composed of those chosen by the Irish people.

Let us now, in endeavouring to point out certain dangers, bring home to the plain people the ordinary meanings of ordinary words.

Sovereign means supreme in power.

Supreme means highest and greatest.

Sovereign rights of the people mean the highest and greatest powers of the people. Now the highest powers are those born in, given to, inherited, owned by the people, to control fully the Government of the country, or in other words, Government of the people by the people.

These God-given rights of the people had been for ages denied the people not alone of Ireland, but of other countries, so the word republic came to signify these rights, and hence we turn up a dictionary printed and published in the U.S. and we read: “Republic – A nation or state governed by representatives elected by the citizens.”

Let me here point out that the Irish Free State now comes wholly and completely into that class, and no other, and that she has once again become, even unwelcomed by her own.

A thatcher at work on the roof of a house close to the Bishop’s Gate at Lower Salthill on March 4, 1966.

Restoring order

Now that the government of the country is passing into the hands of Irishmen, who will have control of all matters affecting the welfare of the old land, it is the duty of all classes and creeds to unite in their efforts to see that law and order will be efficiently enforced, and that there will not be any repetition of the recent looting of shops, which, owing to the frequency with which it occurred, could be regarded as nothing less than a scandal.

In conjunction with the R.I.C., the I.R. police of Galway have taken strong measures to cope with the “epidemic”, and in other ways are leaving noting undone to restore order.

In view of these circumstances, it is to be hoped that all right-meaning citizens and men of good-will, interested in the country’s welfare, will give every possible assistance in the preservation of order, which will reflect the fact that the nation is governed and controlled as a Christian community should be.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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