In 1877, O’Connor Power spoke in the House of Commons in a debate on Sunday Closing, ‘In the proportion in which the people were addicted to this vice, the arm of popular freedom was paralysed; and if they were to have a free Irish people they must have a sober Irish people – and if they could not have them sober by suasion, he was prepared to remove the drink from them.’
Hansard, 27 June 1877.