HOME RULE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1380, 5 March 1912, Page 5

HOME RULE.

IF IRELAND IS DISAPPOINTED. By Telegraph-PreßS Association-Copyright London, March 3. Mr. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, presided over a meeting at the Eighty Club addressed by Mr. J. E. Redmond, leader of the Nationalist party. In introducing Mr. Redmond Mr. Churchill urged the maintenance of a strong Navy and the reconciliation of Ireland. Mr. Redmond, in his speech, declared that Ireland was now peaceful because she was hopeful, but if Home Rule were rejected tho country would be speedily thrown into a welter of coercion.

Mr. John Redmond, in the course of a recent articlo entitled "Are the Irish Lawless?" says: "Lawless Irish people are not, but "lawlessness has existed in Ireland, and will continue to exist until a reign of justice has been established in tho country under a system of selfgovernment which will create respect for law and a sense of responsibiltiy for its maintenance. There is a rooted and almost universal distrust in the administration of justice in Ireland. This distrust is the worst and greatest of all the marks of bad- government, and is the greatest of all arguments in favour of Homo Rule. What is the .origin of this distrust? That is the important question. It springs, no doubt, to some extent from tho fact that tho laws under which wo live in Ireland are foreign laws, made by a foreign Parliament. It springs also- largely .from the fact that many of these criminal laws are not only tvrannical and oppressive, but are special laws for Ireland that could-not be passed for England. But most of all this distrust springs from tho mnnner in which tho criminal laws are administered in Ireland and from the character of tho tribunals who administer them."