Historical Parallels.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 941, 7 May 1881, Page 2 (Supplement)

Historical Parallels.

(Bv Kaiti). The habits of playing fast and loose ■with the highest and the most serious duties of national existence are peculiarly observable in the Irish character. In Henry VII reign, the house of Kildare ruled the country, with English permission, for twenty-five years, according to “ Irish ideas.” In other countries anarchy generally works its own cure through the miseries which it creates ; in Ireland the misery was itself enjoyment. Under the rule of Kildare’s Earls the free right to make war upon his neighbor at pleasure was allowed to every one; and this license was for the time, and relics of it still remain to keep it before the people as the Magna Charta of Irish liberty. But what could be the outcome of this disgraceful mismanagement? What else but the series of dire misfortunes that have followed and come to a grievous head, when an overgrown population no longer found potatoes enough to satisfy its simple wants; this deprivation fonnd vent in sullen mutterings of discontent, ominous signs of commotions to come, perplexity, tribulation, and distress to the kindliness of England’s greatly noble heart. However, Ireland was permitted to slide on to anarchy whilst sluttishly starving from year to year on Act of Parliament freedom. England to her misfortune has never been able to persevere long in any one policy toward Ireland. This is painfully apparent to even the m superficial reader of Irish history. In due course of time Henry VIII turned his attention to his Irish Kingdom ; he well knew that order was a plant of slow growth, that bad habits were a second nature, to be changed only by time and forbearance. He had a severe task before him in Ireland ; yet he disavowed — and in sincerity, for throughout all his troubled relations with Ireland he acted consistently on the same principle —he disavowed all intention of depriving the chiefs of their lands, or confiscating their rights for the benefit of Englishmen. He invited the Irish to exchange many of their laws and usages in reference to land tenure, for the more equitable and more civilised laws of England ; but the Irish gave no heed, their own ways pleased them best. And these have but rivetted their galling chains social, and political, more firmly around their necks. To-day a French paper the Bepublique Francome, remarks:—“lreland will not become free till such shall be the will of EnglajiLjJid-iLia, By vowing resistance, by refusing to mingle her blood, manners, au6 aspirations with England, Ireland is preparing for herself the saddest future among European peoples. Always boiling over, she will always be trampled down, and her irreconcilability will excite in the English feelings little favovrable- to concessions and compromises. Had the Irish representatives at Westminster been reflecting politicians, Ireland would not have come to firing off guns without a possibility of bettering the fate of the island, and Mr. Parnell and his friends would not have forced on their English colleagues the disagreeable resolution of gagging them.” These are wise and weighty words, coming as they do from such a quarter, a quarter that has in the past assisted Ireland with men, with money; and whither Parnell has very lately been on—perhaps—a similar errand with that of Wolfe done in 1796.