HOME RULE AND THE LIBERTIES OF IRISH PROTESTANTS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 47, 21 March 1874, Page 10

HOME RULE AND THE LIBERTIES OF IRISH PROTESTANTS.

(' Dundalk Democrat/) Thb * London Standard ' throws its shield over our Protestant fellowcountrymen, and asserts that their liberties cannot be exposed to the vengeance of a Popish Irish legislature. Well, bad as we are in Ireland, we have never gone the length of English Catholics and Protestants in our fury, for they burned each other at the stake, and gloried in their barbarous achievements. We may crack each other's heads in this country, but we deny that Catholics have ever persecuted Protestants, and although Protestants have persecuted, we are bound to say that many of them protected the property of Catholics from confiscation during the days of the Penal Code.

The ' Standard ' need not, therefore, feel any uneasiness for the rights and liberties of Irish Protestants, especially as it is more than probable that the majority of the Irish legislatare will be corrpoeed of Protestants, to which wo will not have the slightest objection. But the ' Standard ' further threatens that Home Rule cannot be yielded under any circumstances, and assures us that sooner than submit to suoh a calamity, the English and Scotch members will drop all party distinctions, and unite to save the empire from dismemberment. We think it right to inform the ' Standard ' that the gallant people of Ireland despise all these threats with sovereign contempt. They know they are worth nothing, and they receive them as they have received other threats from the same quarter. We all know how threats were uttered against Emancipation, .Reform, the disestablishment of the State Church, the reform of the Land Code, and the Ballot, and yet all have been won by the people. And so will Home Rule. Proteßtants are the leaders of the movement, and these Protestants knowvery well that they are idolised by the people, who will sustain them in their noble course, and faithfully assist them in winning a great blessing for Ireland.