Radicalisation
By the early twentieth century he had become more radical. In 1905, speaking at the annual conference of the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland in response to a paper suggesting the replanting of the waste lands of Ireland as a remedy to emigration, he displayed considerable hostility to the "English" government. The Times reported that he said "it was not for that society to call upon its greatest enemy, the English government, to plant forests. The English government hated the Irish nation as that of Egypt hated the Jewish nation, and they must fight the Government with all the weapons that God had given them, just as Moses had fought the Egyptians. Unfortunately they had not the power to call down the ten plagues of Egypt upon the English Government, but they could boycott England's manufactures and her Navy and Army".
He was one of the founders of Sinn Féin in 1905. He became the party's second president in 1908, succeeding Edward Martyn, and retained the presidency until 1911 when he stepped down, to be succeeded by Arthur Griffith.
He was briefly arrested and detained after the 1916 Easter Rising. He turned down a Sinn Féin nomination for the 1918 general election on the grounds that he was too old; his cousin Roger Sweetman was Teachta Dála (TD) for North Wexford from 1918 to 1921.
Sweetman supported the Pro-Treaty faction in the Civil War period but later denounced the government of W. T. Cosgrave for its abandonment of Griffith's protectionist economic policies, and supported Fianna Fáil after 1927. Throughout his life he wrote many letters to Irish newspapers, and in the late 1920s and early 1930s he was a contributor to The Leader edited by D. P. Moran.
Sweetman was fiercely opposed to the Blueshirts, comparing Eoin O'Duffy to Hitler. He also opposed plans to build a Catholic Cathedral in Merrion Square, where he himself lived, on the grounds that this would cause great trouble and inconvenience to the residents.
He died in Dublin in 1936.
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