DEPUTATION TO MR GLADSTONE.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 179, 20 November 1886, Page 4

DEPUTATION TO MR GLADSTONE.

His Latest Utterance on Home Rule. At Hawarden, on October 4th, Mr Gladstone and his wife received Mrs T. D. Sullivan, wife of the Lord Mayor of Dublin, and a deputation of Irish ladies appointed by the women of Ireland to present the exPremier with a mammoth petition in favour of Home Rule. The petition bears the signatures of 500,000 Irish women. Great crowds flocked to Hawarden all day in view of the event. Accompanying the deputation of Irish ladies were deputations representing the municipal councils of Cork, Lim crick, Waterford, andJClonmel. The place was perfectly alive with visitors, who were accorded the freedom of the town. During the former ceremonies Gladstone, Mrs Gladstone, Herbert Gladstone, Rev. Stephen Gladstone, Mrs Helena Gladstone, and Jttev. Henry Drew, the ex-Premier's son-in law, met the deputations as they entered the grounds and conducted them into the library. When Mr Gladstone, with his family, emerged from the house to receive the deputations, he was greeted with hearty and prolonged cheering by the multitude of visitors on the ground. Arrived in the library, Mr Sullivan read the addresa of the Irish women. The Mayor of Cork, the Mayor of Limerick, the Mayor ot Waterford, and the Mayor of Clonmel then presented Mr Gladstone wich the freedom of those cities and thanked him for his chivalrous and splendid efforts to restore Ireland's Parliament, expressing the hope that he would soon visit Ireland to receive from the Irish people at their homes the thanks they all felt toward him. When Mr Gladstone replied his voice was somewhat husky. He said he believed that the deputations and the Nationalist members of the House of Commons truly represented the Irish as a people. "At my age, however," Gladstone said in reference to the question that he visit Ireland, " the question of vieiting Ireland is beset with uncertainties. Whatever may be my condition, whether of bodily presence or absence from among them, the^lrieh people will always largely share my interest and my affection." Mr Gladstone added that he must deny the statement that he had renounced his former attitude by supporting the proposal to restore the Irish Parliament. "He eaid also that he waa thankful for the share he took in passing such Irish measures as had been made laws during his public career. He continued : " The whole character of Irish controversy baa altered. We do not now contemplate the dreadful alternatives our fathers faced centuries ago, nor the alternative Welliugtou faced when he said he proposed Catholic emancipation as the alternative to civil war. It was necessary that the late Government's Irish proposals should have been put forward in accord with the desires of the Irish nation, and also to make it cloar that the proposals stood within the limits of Imperial honour, safety and welfare. These aims were completely attained, and they have been sustained by the singular mildness and temperance of expres-ion which have so far characterised the conduct of Irishmen at every stage of the agitation, till now. The cause represented by these deputations is the cause of order, of peace, of legality. " I am in hope of conducing to the settlement of this great question in political atictirs, lam quite prepared to withdraw from public life if I could believe that it wore better for Ireland, but I am unwilling to anive at that conclusion. England's interest id as much involved as Ireland's. On the lowest grounds of civil and military economy it is England's interest to change in some way the present civil government in Ireland, which costs the British taxpayer nearly 16 shillings per head of population, while the civil government in England and Scotland co^ts yearly butSshilings per head of population. On far higher grounds, England oughtto concede Ireland's request. England's character is concerwed. There is a stain upon England in respect to her relations toward Ireland. I deny that the term separation, which our opponents unscrupulously use to describe the meaning of the late Government's proposals, is correctly applied in the ca-~e. The promoters of the biU nover thought of separation. We courted a careful comparison of Grattan's Parliament with the Parliament the bill proposed. Ihe sphere within which Ireland derives free action, which is specially the sphore of local government, would have been attained under our bill better than it was p ssesaed under the Grattan Parliament. *• The present Government encourages the Irish land occupiers to believe that judicial rents will be reduced. This idea was embodied in the appointment of the present Land Commission ; also in the Marquis of Salisbury's) speech at the commencement of the parliamentary session, in what he said concerning judicial rents. I do not accept his etiitement to any great extent regarding the legislation which he eaid his Government proposed for the next peseion. I reserve judgment also on the wonderful encyclopedia delivered on Saturday by Lord Churchill, whose performances are less known than his promises. I am unable to gather from either of these statements a declaration of fresh concessions. Ido not wieh to clof=e the possibility for a future modus vivendi, but I am unable to gather that anything x-emaine to be done in that direction. It would still be wise to reconsider the pecuniary terms the late Government's bill pioposod. Full justice to Irelund requires a careful investigation of her financial history before we reach conclusions as to what should be accorded her. I hope that Ireland's triumph will come with promptitude, with cheerfulness and with joy, and I hope that there will be no intervening period of gloom."