The words of the Proclamation were put together by P.H. Pearse and revised by James Connolly and Thomas MacDonagh. The document is short and exhortatory. Nonetheless, teased out, it unfolds patterns of thought and, perhaps more revealingly, assumptions worth examining. It is an essay in a genre. The genre is exemplified in the American Declaration of Independence, of 1776, which for that reason is also discussed here. Providing the most thorough analysis of the Proclamation, the book's paragraph-by-paragraph commentary is sympathetic but, at times, sharply critical. Originally published in 1997 (as On the Easter Proclamation and other declarations), this reissue includes a new introduction by W.J. McCormack.