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Updated: May 22, 2025
The All-for-Ireland League made memorable progress in a brief space of time. Mr O'Brien's return to public life was hailed even by the late W.T. Stead in The Westminster Gazette as nothing short of a great political resurrection. The noble appeal of the League's programme to the chivalrous instincts of the race attracted the young men to its side with an enthusiasm amounting to an inspiration.
Great play is being made by distinguished converts within the past few years of Dominion Rule as if they were the discoverers of this blessed panacea for Ireland's ills, but it is proper to recall that the All-for-Ireland Party specifically proposed Dominion Home Rule in a letter to Mr Asquith in 1911 as the wisest of all solutions.
Neither the All-for-Ireland Party nor Sinn Fein was represented at the Convention, although Mr Lloyd George made a second appeal to Mr O'Brien to assist in its deliberations. It says something for the wisdom of Mr O'Brien's proposal for a small Conference that after debating the matter for months the Convention decided to transmit their powers to a Committee of Nine to draw up terms of agreement.
As he founded the United Irish League when the country was sunk in the uttermost depths of despair and indifference, he now made a first gallant effort to establish a new national organisation to preach a nobler creed of brotherhood and reconciliation among all Irishmen, and to this he gave the appropriate title of the All-for-Ireland League.
He then proposed as an alternative that an Irish Convention, composed of representative Irishmen, should assemble to deliberate upon the best means of governing their own country. The All-for-Ireland Party were asked to nominate representatives to this Convention, as were also Sinn Fein.
Mr O'Brien and his friends of the All-for-Ireland League, of their own volition, effaced themselves at the General Election.
When the full history of this period is written, and when documents at present confidential are available, I believe it will be shown that if the concessions and safeguards suggested by the All-for-Ireland Party had been offered by the Government or the Irish Party in the earlier stages of the Home Rule controversy they would have been, in the main, acceptable to Ulster Unionist opinion.
It was decided to continue The Cork Accent in a permanent form as a daily journal under the title of The Cork Free Press, which was founded at a public meeting presided over by the Lord Mayor. The All-for-Ireland League was also established to advocate and expound the principles for which we stood in Irish life.
Its purposes are clearly stated in the resolution which gave it birth viz.: "That inasmuch as we regard self-Government in purely Irish affairs, the transfer of the soil to the cultivators upon just terms, and the relief of Ireland from intolerable over-taxation as essential conditions of happiness and prosperity for our country, and further inasmuch as we believe the surest means of effecting these objects to be a combination of all the elements of the Irish population in a spirit of mutual tolerance and patriotic good will, such as will guarantee to the Protestant minority of our fellow-countrymen inviolable security for all their rights and liberties and win the friendship of the entire people of Great Britain, this representative meeting of the City and County of Cork hereby establishes an Association to be called the All-for-Ireland League, whose primary object shall be the union and active co-operation in every department of our national life of all Irish men and women who believe in the principle of domestic self-government for Ireland."
The Party have not even this poor excuse to justify their betrayal, which was the culminating point in the steep declivity of their downfall. The All-for-Ireland Party resisted with all the strength at their command the violation of Ireland's national unity. We spoke against it, voted against it, did all we could to rouse the conscience of the people as to its unparalleled iniquity.
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