THE HOME RULE QUESTION.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 August 1916, Page 3

THE HOME RULE QUESTION.

To the Editor. Sir.—Mr. Wright seems to expect a letter from me. Hi: must have an abnormal appetite if he has not already had enough to digest in the letters o'f "Reader" and Mr. Diggins. (1) I am quite prepared to believe that New Zealand, in her days of poverty, had to resort to soup kitchens. Indeed, the late James F 'ward Fitzgerald, first 'Premier of New Zealand, and up till his death controller of the colony's finances, made much of these and other evidences of poverty in his ihistoric letter to Mr. Gladstone. This letter, marking the contrast between the colony under English government and the colony under home rule, was Mr. Gladstone's strongest argument for Home Rule for Ireland.' Poverty will disappear from Ireland only when she has succeeded, like New Zealand, in shaking off British rule. (2) The prosperity of Irish farmers is attributed to English gold. Where, then, are the farmers of England? What has English gold done for them? ''Felix qui pntiiit l'crum cognoscere causas." The cause must be sought elsewhere. Surely a man who has travelled thousand's of miles in Ireland and England must have made some original research; The Irish people have killed landlordism because they have something which keeps liberty alive within their breasts and saves them from the servile State, whose ugly head ii. lifted up in England and Germany; whereas the English farmer, despite the wealth of English gold, has been ground out of existence by landlordism's juggernaut wheels. lam not without hope that the alliance between the democracies of Ireland and England will teach the people of England what liberty means, (3) May I correct Mr. Wright's next sentence by saying that Dublin Corporation demands (not''wants") three millions of English gold to build O'Connel street. England must repair the havoc wrought by English 'Huns; and Mr. Asquith has promised this. (4) Mr. Wright has assumed that I object to the Orange Attorney-General of Ireland on the score of religion. Is Mr. Campbell a-. Protestant? Not all Protestants are Orangemen; not all Catholics are Home Rulers. 1 shall be quite interested in learning the religion of Campbell. (5j ''Why didn't Protestants 'rise' when War! became Premier?" Why drag in this question of religion? Would it not be well to lat sleeping dogs lie? Mi. Wright slept during his travels in Ireland ; he was asleep during the last two general elections. A hundred times he crossed the sea; He crosse/l it—that's all can be said; For all it taught, I guess that he Might just as well have been in bed. Who go to Spain bring back from Spain Just what they carried there from 'home; Their skies they change, their minds retain. Who over far seas blindlv roam. -I am, etc., p. J.'POWER. Hawera, August 19.