MR GLADSTONE AND IRELAND

Temuka Leader, Issue 807, 29 December 1881, Page 3

MR GLADSTONE AND IRELAND

At the ceremony at Guildhall of presenting the Hon. W. E. Gladstone with an address by the City Corporation of Loudon in recognition of his brilliant career as a scholar and a statesman, the Prime Minister is reported by the Standard as having said : —‘‘ It is not with the people of Ireland—and especially the mass of the tenantry of that country constituting, as you are aware of themselves considerably more than a moiety of that entire people—l say our firm belief is that the mas-, of that tenantry are earnestly desirous to make full trial of the equitable provisions which, with great labor, effort, and resolution, Parliament has introduced into the law of the land (cheers.) That with which we are struggling is a power which prcsum to come between the people and the law, and which tells them how far, when, how, and upon what terms they are to have the benefits which Parliament intended for them without restriction and without reserve (hear.) We have, I repeat, no fear of the people of Ireland in the mass. What we have a fear of is, lest some should be corrupted by the most demoralising doctrines, and lest—and it is the greatest fear of all—morci and many more should, one by one, be terrified out of the exercise of their just constitutional rights, and, unhappily, induced through intimidation, and from no other motive, to make over their private liberty and the exercise of thei civil rights into the hands of those selfconstituted dictators (cheers), and to place those rights under the unknown provisions of an unwritten law, dictated by nothing but arbitrary will (cheers). It is not with any point connected with the exercise of local Government 5a Ireland—it is not even with any point connected with what is popularly known in that country as Home Rule, and which may be understood in any one of a hundred senses, some of them perfectly acceptable, and even desirable, others of them mischievous and revolutionary (ciieers) —it is not upon any of these points that we are at present at issue.

s \nd with regard to local government in | Ireland, after what 1 have said ot local ; government in general, and its im- , measurable benefits, and of the mannei j in which Parliament is at pn smit overcharged by too great a centralisation of duties, you will not be surprised if I for one will hail with satisfaction and delight any measure of local government for Ireland, or for any portion of the country, provided only that it conforms to this one condition, that it shall not break down or impair the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament.