THE IRISH QUESTION

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 8, 5 October 1920, Page 7

THE IRISH QUESTION

* (To the Editor.) SL\—ln his letter on the above subject your correspondent "Fair Play" informs us that Lecky, Gladstone, and others have not hesitated to describe the Act; of Union as the "blackest fraud .in history." That a political partisan hko Gladstone may have passed such adjudgment is not impossible, but I would remind your correspondent that the same statesman said that tho Irish Nationalist Party were "marching through rapine and murder to the dismemberment of the Empire." That tho judicial Lccky should make such a statement seems most unlikely, seeing that ho was a firm opponent of Home 'Rule, and for many years sat in Parliament ns the Unionist member for Dublin University. The charge that tho Union was brought about by corruption and fraud has nothing to justify it, and is duo to. the error of judging the men of the eighteenth century by tho standards of the twentieth. Those wore tho days of "rotten boroughs," when throughout. Great Britain and Ireland seata in Parliament wore bought and sold as private possessions, and were regarded as the property of the landed gentry. Rioh men thought it no shame to sell seats under their control for large sums, sometimes as. high as ,£BOOO, without incurring any condemnation from society. Tho end of the eighteenth century, found Irish affairs in a desperate condition, due to the mismanagement and corruption of Grattan's Parliament. In twenty-five years tho National Debt had increased from .£1,000,000 to <£25,000,000, and tho Presbyterians and Roman Catholics had risen in the rebellion of 1798. Pitt realised that tho only hops of saving tho country from bankruptcy and anarchy was to unite her affairs with those of Great Britain, and tho Act of Union was conceived in tho best interests of Ireland and in tho highest principles of statesmanship. Pitt had to do with things not as they ought to have been, but as thoy were, and he realised that an each seat had a recognised money value, ho must either par the price or sacrifice the measure winch ho believed to be in the best interests of tho country. Two things are of tho essenco of a bribe—secrecy, and that tho briber will make his gifts only to thoso who agr;e to give him' what he'wants. Neither of these conditions obtained in the case of the Union, for what Pitt gave lie gave openly, with the knowledgo an<l consent of tho nation; and those members of tho Irish Parliament who opposed tli« Bill to tho bitter end received tho sanio emoluments as those who gave it tno'r support. To speak of such action as bribery is to deprive tho word of ltn meaning, and to traduce tho namo of th* statesman who was the first to rofuso (ho perquisites of office and to whom most of all wo owo tho purity of modern politics. Boforo passing tho Bill, Pitt Bent a copy to the Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy, asking for their opinion. If tho Bill' was the "blackest fraud in Inslory," will your correspondent explw? tho fact that'of ten Irish Roman Catholic bishops who voted on tho measure onW two opposed it, and eight-one of whom was tho Primate--gave their vordict in its favour?—l am. etc., ULST2RMAN. September 28, 1920.