AN ULSTERMAN FOR IRELAND
APPENDIX.
Mitchel's Petition to the English Parliament.
Mitchel, in the last year of his life, was elected a member of the English Parliament by Tipperary—the first Sinn Fein election. For Mitchel pledged himself never to set his foot in the English Parliament, and by his example to lead the people of Ireland to see that the only safety they had in connection with that institution was in electing representatives who would refuse to attend it, and attend instead to Ireland's business at home. But Mitchel did once draw up a petition to the English Parliament— a petition which probably not a dozen of the present generation have ever read, and which forms a perfect model for all petitions to that Parliament from Irishmen. In 1848 the Young Irelanders determined on formally demanding from England, before they repudiated the connection altogether, Repeal of the Union. Mitchel and Meagher were asked to draw up the formal petitions. Meagher's was the petition agreed upon, We here reprint Mitchel's:—
43
