COMMONSENSE ABOUT IRELAND.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 December 1919, Page 9

COMMONSENSE ABOUT IRELAND.

BY EVERETT P. WHEELER IN THE OUTLOOK (U.S.) The declaration of an Irish republic, independent of Great Britain, the advertisements of an Irish committee, and the delegates sent to Paris to present the case for Irish independence have drawn American attention anew to the Irish question. It is very important to remember a few facts which the advocates appear to overlook. The first of these is that there never was a united Ireland, independent of Great Britain. To quote from Justin McCarthy: The island was divided among native chiefs, who concerned themselves mainly about their local interests, and had, no doubt,. their natural rivalries. There were four petty kingdoms: Ulster Munster, Leinster, and Connaught. For a brief period in the eleventh century the Danish invasion led them to unite under Brian Boru, who defeated the Danes in the battle of Uontarf in 1014. He was killed in the battle, and the condition of Ireland became the same as it was before Brian. Then comes an episode which reminds one of the Iliad. The King of Leinster earned ofT the wife of one of the other chiefs. An army was raised which drove the King of Leinster from the oountrv. Ue sought help from England, which was given, and the Norman Conquest ensued. As McCarthy says: Many of the Irish chiefs had sworn allegiance to the Conqueror and accepted his support, while others held out to the last against Aim. The hatred of those who accepted the new conditions for who refused to acknowledge them must have been as intense as the hatred of the conquering Normans for the native chiefs who resisted their rule. The English then established an Irish arhament, but "it was fenced around by bo many limitations that it became merely a convocation of those openly ktion 6 " CiaimS ° f tho native P°P U " Reformation came in the Henry VIII., religious strife bel ™ , the source of new enmities and >ri. B ® ln re ' an d." Then came the period of religious pprS lo "mtu M ' Who eI « to bo King of Ulster, proclaimed himself the champion of Irish national independence visited Queen Elizabeth, and negotiated an agreement jvhich on his return to bv to"™ £ iaimed lad been obtained by force. He insisted that "his ancesors were Kings of Ulster, and that Ulster was his kingdom and should consought f In tUis condition ho did n!t L a - *"22. Frnncc - wl,ich I'e in TTli ain ' , The Scottish set «ers ■wn» mi i a Sainst him and he killed in an affray. „? r e P" ti9a " s of independence soon «n! i-T another revolution, and actually did procure assistance from Spain but the rising failed. I n the time of Cromwell many settlers from Great Britain were established in Ulster, and UIl er r b »ame. a province devoted to the English Government and opposed to the independence of Ireland. The rest of country the cause of the Stuarts and took up arms for James JJ. _ They also were defeated and the religious persecution continued. . n "rose a new group of leaders who sought the repeal of Porning's law from , the Iris!l Parliament fiom effective legislation, and' Bought Th» fl° r . man Catholic emancipation The first was accomplished under the leadership of Grattan, and the Irish Parliament gave the elective franchise free from religious restrictions But a full Z a 7l t C atholic emancipation 2 denied by the new Irish Parliament, i hen came the movement for Wj s u Zt:r n Great Brit ain ami Ireland. Any one reading the. life of Grattan and his speeches will find that this union was-favored by ft Roman Catholics, who ho'ffor more liberal treatment from the Parliament at Westminster than thev had received from the Parliament at Dublin At any rate, an act of unio „ was passed and became a law in 1801 ti>; ™ t on in Parliament as New York has in the Congress of the United States and under it the two kingdoms have 'been united ever since. Catholic emancipap I TV™ in i!le time of Sir Robert Peel. Restrictions on l r j g ], mte? IC Vh a e d , be r, a removed _ The land laws wore refdrm Ilv , ' Protestant Church was dk established, and finally, in July, 1903 a bill passed and was approved by the ing creating a commission to buy estates from landlords and Bell them +n tenants, thus creating a peasant means''of r to aS3ist the tenant s by means of a Government loan." During all this period there were occasional insurrections against the United Kingdom. All of them failed But all the old grievances which had naturallv aroused resentment were removed ex mSt"® That if l? f loCal self"g°«rn--/r linally was conferred hv the Home Bule Bill, which was to have gone into effect in 1914. Unfortunately tho t? Jealousies between Ulster and ued /tV In f, l Provinces continued. ft 13 impossible bv ledsln Hn„ +„ make people fond of each other. The people 1 of Ulster preferred to continue the union w?th Great Britain, and were satibfied with the legislation of the British 1 arlianient. • They protested vie-

Then came the world war, The neoFnt e o°th U1 f ter t ' ,rew T> tl,en,selvta lovall v into the struggle. But many of those who had come to favor Irish independence endeavored to obtain aid from the Germans, receded from them money and arms, and tried to achieve an insurrection, which proved futile Sir Koger Casement was tried, convicted of treason and condemned to death r A e from these indisputable facts which are taken entirely from Irish sources and mostly from that impartial historian Justin McCarthy, is plainly tins. The situation of Ireland i ,ith reference to Great Britain is such ; lt ! 3 J llst possible for the British to permit the independence of Ireland Dermit W + a v! n - the Northern States to permit the Union to be dissolved and the Mississippi to become the property w a f°n ? onfetler aev. The English have followed our example. So Ion" as the so-called Irish Parliament at , confines itself to talking, they have been left alone, as the Confederate Congress was when it met at MontgomB "t it; i« perfectly certain that if t us larliament should undertake warlike measures and fire upon the forts or troops of the United Kingdom the insurrection would be suppressed, as every previous one has been.

Again, it is just as possible for the British to relinquish Ulster and put that province under the dominion of a DubJin Payment as it would have been for the United States to return West Virginia to Virginia, after the fall of

the Confederacy. The loyalty bf Ulster during the great war has established a claim upon Great Britain which she will never ignore. On the other hand, what . the rest of Ireland ought to have, and what the British are willing to concede, is a local Parliament which shall ha*e the same power as the Legislature of New York has with reference to the Federal Congress. Very possibly if this local Parliament should govern well, Ulster might be glad to come into union with it.

In American history we find that the State of Rhode Island was unwilling at first to ratify the Constitution and did not join the Union until more than a year after President Washington was inaugurated. It would have been a crime if the other colonies had sought to compel Rhode Island to join the Union. It seems to me it would be equally a crime for Irish leaders to compel Ulster by force to come under their rule. We hear much about self-determina-tion. But self-determination was never applied to the case of a portion of a country which had been united to the rest for more than a century, and had participated in all the legislation of that period; especially when it had in the main obtained all that it claimed. Even if the case for self-determination were as broad as some of our Irish friends argue, it is applicable to Ulster as well as to the rest of the Emerald Isle.

We have given our Irish citizens every opportunity that we claimed for Americans. They have risen to places of distinction in both Church and State. We honor their many sterling qualities, but We cannot, and ought not, to sympathise with the attempted secession from the United Kingdom, and still less with the attempt to coerce Ulster into joining the Irish republic. Let us, in conclusion, call the attention of our Irish friends to the words of one of their greatest statesmen, Edmund Burke, written in the last vear of his life: My poor opinion is, that the closest connection between Great Britain and Ireland is essential to the well-being,l had almost said, to the very being, of the two kingdoms. For that purpose I humbly conceive that the whole of the superior, and what I should call imperial politics, ought to, have its residence here (in England); and that Ireland, locally, civilly, and commercially independent, ought politically to look up to Great Britain in all matters of peace or of war—in all those points to be guided by her —and, in a word, with her to live and to die. At bottom, Ireland has no other choice—l mean, no other rational choice Little do many people in Ireland consider how much of its prosperity has been ow- ■ ins to, and still depends upon, its intimate connection with this kingdom.