MR FROUDE ON HOME RULE FOR IRELAND.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2304, 16 April 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

MR FROUDE ON HOME RULE FOR IRELAND.

Writing to an American friend, Mr Froude Sll ya : _" You ask me to say shortly what I think of this Irish business. The Irish are an unchanging people. The National movement, is a repetition of the same attempts which have been made four times already to rid Ireland of the Anglo-Scotch settlers. Those attempts failed. If the Euglish aud Scotch have not changed either, this one will fail also. It remains to be seen. Three centuries ago, when Great Britain became Protestant, the Irish continued Catholic. The Catholic powers tried to crush the Reformation by fire and swurd. In their efforts against England, Spain and France, the Pope, or whoever it might be, found constant allies in the Irish. To lose Ireland would have been fatal to us. A Catholic proverb in the sixteenth centuay said— He that would England win With Ireland must begin. If, with Ireland's help, spiritual liberty had been trampled out in England, political liberty would never have been born, aud nil that the English race has since done, and all that has come out of it, would have been iost to the world's history. It was indispensable to us to keep our enemies ,out of Ireland. To hold it by a military force did not suit our institutions. The country itself was an uncultivated desert of bog and forest. Elizabeth, James I. aud afterwards the Long Parliament, planted Ulster, and in part Leinsfpr nnd Minister, with Protestant colonies to hold the native Iri-h in <-h°ck and cultivate the land. Wheiv they havo been industry ha* thriven, and there has been order and p°ac:o and prosperity. The rest of Ireland i!ns remained in beggary and nm-irodiii>ss. and tho perpetual object, the perpetual effort, of the old inhabitants, has been l;o de-troy intruders out. of the miih.il ■of tlvm. They iried in 159S and brought th'a Spaniards in to help them. They tried in 16U,. and filled Euro pn with horror at a massacre which rivalled die murde.! , of the Huguenots in Paris. They tried again tinder James 11. ami Tryconudi, when their Irish Parlia-in-'.nt repealed thi J Act of Settlement and confiscated the estates of nine-tenths of the Protestant land owners. The last attempt in 1798 began in sympathy with The French Revolution, baton breaking out assumed at once the old form of a struggle between the native race and the Anglo-Scotch settlement. We are now in the fifth act of the old drama. It has pleased the Liberal party in England, who are the historical representatives of the Long Parliament and the Revolution settlement, to choose a loader with the religious opinions of Laud. Under Mr Gladstone's guidance they have been persuaded to regard the Protestant establishment in Ireland as an Upas Tree. They have blown into flame the old Nationalist ashes. They have destroyed the Protestant political influence, and have now been invited to complete their work and hand the colony over to be ruled by those whom it was planted in Ireland to control. They have recoiled at the last moment, and are now split from crown to base. Romanists, deirocratic, sentimental atheists, weak enthusiasts who are carried away by oratory, still stand by Mr Gladstone, with a large mass of stupid people who have no creed but party. Liberals of the old school have returned to the traditions of their fathers. Advanced Radicals, like Mr Chamberlain, see no occasion to sacrifice the Imperial greatness of their country to the discontent of a faction who will not be content with equality, but demand to rule in what they call their own land. The question us is whether we are to allow the Empire to be disintegrated and the Protestant and loyal interest so laboriously built up by our great Liberal ancestor-* to be trampled under foot. I cannot tell what answers the constituencies will give. This only is clear to me, that the two races between whom Ireland is divided will not be able her to live together there. The world is wide, and one or the other will seek another home. I f England decides to uphold the Union, the native Irish will not bear another disappointment, and will μ-n, as so many of them have gone already. If the Dublin Parliament is set up with control of the Executive and supreme over the four provinces, Protestant Ulster will refuse to submit. If there is a civil war, and if England does not interfere, she will hold her own and perhaps do more. It in possible, however, that we may witness the. monstrous spectacle of our own people compelled by outown bayonets into subjection to a numerical majority of their enemies and ours._ If this be so, if the long drama is to wind up thus in shame and ignominy, then I think that, like the Pilgrim Fathers, the Ulster men will gather their property together and move off beyond the reach of English faction to some distant colony, which they will assist into independence, as their great grandfathers assisted the Americans. I will not speculate on the fate of Ireland, but she will have the satisfaction of having brought down into the dust her old oppressor. If England cannot keep order in Ireland, which is at her own doors, the Fates will not trust her much longer with the charge of an Empire."