Michael Collins Irish leader: Encyclopedia II - Michael Collins Irish leader - The Treaty

Michael Collins Irish leader - The Treaty

The negotiations ultimately resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which provided for a new Irish state, named the "Irish Free State" (a literal translation from the Irish language term Saorstát Éireann, which appeared on the letter-head de Valera had used, though de Valera had translated it less literally as the Irish Republic²). It provided for a possible all-Ireland state, subject to the right of a six-county region in the northeast to opt out of the Free State (which it immediately did). If this happened, an Irish Boundary Commission was to be established to redraw the Irish border, which Collins expected would so reduce the size of Northern Ireland as to make it economically unviable, thus enabling unity, as most of the unionist population was concentrated in a relatively small area in eastern Ulster.

The new Irish Free State was to be a Dominion, with a bicameral parliament, executive authority vested in the king but exercised by an Irish government elected by a lower house called Dáil Éireann (translated this time as Chamber of Deputies), an independent courts system, and a form of independence that far exceeded anything sought by Charles Stewart Parnell or the subsequent Irish Parliamentary Party. Republican purists saw it as a sell-out, with the replacement of the republic by dominion status within the British Empire, and an Oath of Allegiance made (it was then claimed) directly to the King. (The actual wording shows that the oath was made to the Irish Free State, with a subsidiary oath of fidelity to the king as part of the Treaty settlement, not to the king unilaterally. See Oath of Allegiance (Ireland).)

Sinn Féin split over the treaty, with de Valera joining the anti-treatyites to oppose the 'sell-out'. His opponents charged that he knew that the crown would have to feature in whatever form of settlement was agreed. His bitterest opponents even accused "Dev" of in effect "chickening out" of leading the delegation, in the knowledge that a republic could not possibly result from the negotiations in the short-term. De Valera denied the charge, though most historians now accept the allegation as explaining his absence. Collins argued that while the treaty did not deliver the freedom that Irishmen had fought and died for, it gave "the freedom to achieve that freedom". De Valera was eventually to prove him right.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Treaty", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki