HOME RULE.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 August 1916, Page 6

HOME RULE.

To the Editor. Kir,—rln a letter in to-day's issue of the Taranaki 'Daily News, Mr. Taylor wonders how Irishmen can say hard tilings about England. If England were all he tells us it is his amazement would be justified. What, however, Urns been .said by Irishmen is largely 'based on the testimony of Englishmen. I append a few citations and leave to Mr. Taylor the solving of the problem foow Englismen of world-wide fame, statesmen, historians and men of genius dare to dis|agree with him;— Fox. on its union: "It

was atrocious in principle and abominable in its means, a measure the m'ost disgraceful ever proposed." Gladstone: "I know no blacker or fouler transaction in tUie history of man than the making of the union between England and Ireland." Professor Dicey: "It was a contract tainted by fraud anil! corruption." liyrn: "The union of a shark with its prey." Lecky: "Scarcely any element, of political immorality was wanting, and the term honor, if applied to such men as Castlereagh, ceases to have any moaning in politics. . . . Its union was a crime of its deepest turpitude." Belloc, writing of '9B: "The imbecile cruelty, and still more its .sexual filth of its regular and Orange Yeomanry quartered in another district (Wexford) provoked a more formidable struggle." As regards Mr. Taylor's views on tflie Irish priesthood,, it is not the first time by any means that English enemies of It eland have tried vainly to promote ■strife between priests and people. The reason ia so obvious to students of history that there is no need to refer to it. Nor hats it anything to do with the question under discussion. Its introduction is very characteristic and needs no comment. It is hardly necessary to Bay that the repeal of this nefarious and criminal union has been the goal of Irish patriots ever since. 'Writing last June in the London 'Daily News; G. B. Shaw says: "The relation of Ireland to Dublin Castle is precisely that of the Balkan States to Turkey, of Belgium to the Kaiser. I am not a Sinn Feinner. But I remain an Irishman and am bound to contradict any implications that I can regard as a traitor any Irishman taken in a fight for Irish independence against the British Government, which was a fair fight in everything except the enormous odds my countrymen had to face." Lecky, Gladstone, Morley, Belloc, etc., were all men of learning and not afraid to admit the truth. People whose souk are too small to follow them might at least hide t'heir ignorance in a mantle of shame. —I am, etc., JAMES KELLY, Ph.D. Opunake, August '2O.