WHAT IRELAND WANTS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 224, 16 January 1911, Page 8

WHAT IRELAND WANTS.

MR. REDMOND'S VIEWS. London, December 2. What does Ireland >wajit in the way of Home Rule? For thirty years one writer and speaker after another have been engaged .in answering that question, but doubt and uncertainty still exist. Mr. Redmond, at least, is clear and explicit. The leader of the Nationalist party contributes to the December number of Nash's Magazine an article on "What Ireland Wants," and his answer i» a rery timely contribution to what is once more a burning question of the day. Mr. Redmond explains that:— "What Ireland wants is the restoration of responsible government, neither more nor kss. The Irish demand is, in plain and popular language, that the government of every purely Irish affair shall be controlled by the public opinion of Ireland, and by that alone. We do not seek any alteration of the Constitution or supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. We ask merely to be permitted to take our place in the ranks of those other portions of the British Empire—some twenty-eight in number—which, in their own purely local affairs, are governed by free representative institutions of their own." Parnell, in 1880, speaking for Ireland, explicitly accepted the offer of a subordinate Parliament. As to whether Irish members should be retained ait Westminster, Mr. Redmond says Ireland is willing to accept which ever alternative England prefers. The Irish leader sums up what Ireland wants in the following passage—"We want an Irish Parliament, with an Executive responsible to it, created by Act of the Imperial Parliament, and charged with the management of purely Irish affairs (land, education, local goi vernment, transit, labor, industries, taxation for local purposes, law and justice, police, *>tc), leaving to the Imperial Parliament, in which Ireland would probably continue to ho represented, but in smaller members, the management, just as at present, of all Imperial affairs—army, navy, foreign relations, Customs, Imperial taxation, matters pertaining to the Crown, the colonies and all those other questions which aro Imperial and not local in their nature, the Imperial Parliament also retaining an over-riding supreme, authority over the ne,w Irish Legislature, such as at possesses to-day over the various Legislatures in Canada, Australia, South Africa and other portions of the Empire." Mr. Redmond enters into a long argument to show that tba demand for Homo Rule has its root alike in historic title and in the "disastrous failure of tihe attempt since 1800 to govern Irish affairs by a British majority at Westminster—a failure," he further asserts, "admitted by all men of all parties, and, indeed, incapable of denial in the face of the patent facts of the case." In effect, tried by the tests of population, of civil liberty and of industrial progress, the British government of Ireland is, he maintains, a failure.