Having established the General Post Office as the revolutionary headquarters, and raised Irish flags (tricolour and United Irishman: green with 'Irish Republic' in gold letters), Patrick Pearse read this proclamation of an Irish Republic to a crowd gathered outside. This symbolic act marked the beginning of the rising, explained the insurgents' motivations, defended their actions, and set out their objectives. Copies of the document were circulated throughout the country but primarily in Dublin during the following week.

IRB leaders who described themselves as a provisional government prepared the proclamation. It was addressed to the Irish people and declared a Republic in their name. The signatories claimed the right to act on behalf of the people until democratic elections were held. British government of Ireland was rejected as illegitimate because it was seen as being established by conquest and maintained by coercion and by duplicity (divide and rule). Providentialism, natural justice and a historic imperative (redress for past wrongs) were believed to provide a mandate for revolution. God, Ireland (represented as a mother figure and the spirit of the nation) and the 'dead generations' were invoked to explain and justify the rising. As well as history, ideology and symbolism, the signatories explained that current circumstances impelled them to act. Referring to the political and military situation (armed forces, allies abroad and the European war), the IRB claimed to be confident of victory. With idealistic rhetoric, characteristic of revolution, they pledged to uphold freedom of belief, equal rights and opportunities for men and for women. Concluding with this democratic agenda for reform, IRB leaders reiterated that their cause was just and demanded the allegiance of the population.

Irishmen and Irishwomen: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom. Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers, and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and, supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish republic as a sovereign independent state, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.

The Irish republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.

Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent national government, representative of the whole people of Ireland, and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the republic in trust for the people. We place the cause of the Irish republic under the protection of the Most High God, whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.

Signed on behalf of the provisional government,

THOMAS J CLARKE, SEAN MACDIARMADA, THOMAS MACDONAGH, P H PEARSE, EAMONN CEANNT, JAMES CONNOLLY, JOSEPH PLUNKETT.

The Times (1 May 1916)