LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 25, 24 October 1918, Page 8

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

■—._» IRELAND AND THE WAR ,

Sir,—l fear I cannot accept Mr. J. Scanlon's letter, as any sufficient .reply 'to my contentions that Ireland has to-day no political .wrongs, and- that the attitude of hate and'unforgiveness maintained by the majority of Irish lioninn Catholics to the sister isle is unreasonable and unchristian". It is significant that in seeking to take exception to my remark that all the wrongs for which England has been guilty towards Ireland occurred before the Union, Mr. Scanlon has to go back to the year ISI6, and to recall nn event which if it happened at all—and this I very much doubt—was probably due to an erior in judgment due to the faulty communications of the time and could not by any possibility be a political wrong. In any* case, such an event could not recur jn these days when eteam and telegraphic communications have brought the two islands so close together as to make them practically one country.

With regard to your correspondent's contention tlwt a system of taxation which would benefit England would bo the ruin of Ireland, it is. to point out that under her present system ( the foreign trade of Ireland increased' in the six years before the war by thirty per cent., that that foreign trade is now greater than that of Japan, which ranks as a first-class Power, and that her internal trade and wealth is increasing in an even jr-reaten proportion. Further, it is significant that the opposition to Home Rulo comes from the Protestants who, carrying on as they do most of the business of the country oiUside Agriculture, are called upon to nay the greater part of the taxation. Three-fourths of the Customs dues of the country pnss through the Customs houses of Ulster, and over 55 per cent, of) her shipping is cleared from the port of Belfast alone. What guarantee have the prosperous northerners that the writable peasantry- who hare responded so readily to the orations of Sinn Fein demagogues will return the class of men who can maintain this remarkable development—remarkable in any conntiT, but especially so in a coiintrv with the small resources of Ireland.

As for your correspondent's statement that Home Rule has the support of Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Atheists as well as Roman Catholics, it is sufficient to say that whatever truth 'there mnv be in this with rraird to Gr;-\t Britain it is entirely incorrect so far as Ireland is concerned. It is, of courw. impossible to get absolute unanimity on any nolitical"filiation, but it is safn to My that in tho Emerald Isle the Fomc ■Rule movement is being eupnorted by 98 per cent, of the Roman Catholics nnd opposed by an equil proportion of tho Protestants.—l am, etc., JOHN JOHNSTON. Nelson, October 21.'