MR. URQUHART'S LETTER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 65, 13 April 1909, Page 4

MR. URQUHART'S LETTER.

To the Editor. Sir,—''The British Empire: Past, Present, and Future," is lite tide of a work just published by the League of the Empire oif behalf of the trustees of the Spitzel Education Trust. 1 should advise your esteemed correspondent, Jlr. Urquiiart, to purchase tin's volume and study its pages carefully. Jt will convince him that history is being rewritten. It is becoming, as the Germans say, "objective"—that is, inspired by objective facts, viewed in a judicial spirit, not by the subjective views of the writer. It is no longer the fashion to respect tho traditional view without testing it by every fragment of contemporary record. This process is at last being applied to Ireland by painstaking and conscientious English historians, and the .result is a startling revelation to many. Thus, tho publication to which 1 refer is written in no spirit of rampant imperialism, but of sober fairness; it is not a glorification of all virtue and an ulisonrntion of all faults. Quite the contrary. Hear its verdict on English rule in Ireland: •■lrish wealth and culture, which have been greatly underrated, attracted English adventurers, and while the eagles of enter-

prise plumed their 'wings for the Span- ; ish Main, the vultures swooped down ' upon Ireland. Few conquered countries, indeed, have been treated with less generosity; her religion and her commerce were alike oppressed. Roman Catholics were excluded from political influence and from many of the professions. Every sort of inducement, material and immoral, was offered to those who would abandon their faith. Irish industries were suppressed at the dictation of rival English manufacturers, and her commerce, was regulated so that it might not compete with England's. Partly from religious and partly from

commercial motives England did its best in the early .part of 'the eighteenth century to complete the ruin of Ireland." Such admission is not rabid imperialism; it makes for sane and just imperial government. That her sons should speak their mother fair is to be expected. But when thu stranger speaks fairly of her, his praise is proof. Listen, again, to these writers on England's imperial majesty when they tall; of England's treatment of Ireland: "She lias received equal treatment only where equal treatment has been hardest for her to bear, namely, in the yearly Budgets since 1853. Thii't there has lieen no real union is proved by the simple fact that at the present time four-fifths of the Irish members demand Home Rule for Ireland. The instincts of race, tho feeling that it separate race should have a separate government, even hatred for England--a sad though perfectly natural heritage from it past which is discreditable to us —all combine to create this demand. The Irish say, and there is no gainsaying the statement, (hat England has never understood Irish problems, or, understanding them, has resisted the solutions demanded by the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of Iraland, and has only grudgingly and in a piecemeal fashion conceded them, not to expedite justice, but to conciliate anger and to diminish the motives for that form of retaliation which English law calls crime but Irish opinion far too readily condones as warfare." These extracts from this most impressive book deserve to bo read again and again. They are written not by some Irishman who has felt a wrong, but by an Englishman who admits one. Their frankness, their fairness, are characteristic of the whole volume, which I heartily recommend to your correspondent, Mr. L'rqiihart, and all whose minds arc lilbd with prejudice against Ireland and the great majority of her people.—l am, etc., JAS. JIcKENNA.