Anglo-Irish Treaty
Each side in the 1921 negotiations used sufficiently elastic language to enable the Republic's delegates to suggest that was taking place was inter-state negotiations, while allowing the British Government to suggest that it was an internal United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland matter. The Anglo-Irish Treaty, when signed on 6 December, was similarly put through three processes to satisfy both sides. It was:
- passed by Dáil Éireann, to satisfy the belief in the Republic's supporters that it was a state and its parliament was sovereign;
- passed by the United Kingdom, to satisfy British constitutional theory that a treaty had been negotiated between His Majesty's Government and His Majesty's subjects in Ireland;
- passed by the House of Commons of Southern Ireland, to reflect the belief in British constitutional law that Ireland already possessed a home rule parliament. In reality the House of Commons had the same membership (bar four) as the Dáil, though anti-Treaty members of the House stayed away.
Finally, the two structures of government (the British government's administration in Dublin Castle) and the Republic's began a process of convergence, to cover the year until the coming into force of the new Irish Free State.
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Famous quotes containing the word treaty:
“There is between sleep and us something like a pact, a treaty with no secret clauses, and according to this convention it is agreed that, far from being a dangerous, bewitching force, sleep will become domesticated and serve as an instrument of our power to act. We surrender to sleep, but in the way that the master entrusts himself to the slave who serves him.”
—Maurice Blanchot (b. 1907)