The King in Ireland

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 32, 6 August 1903, Page 1

The King in Ireland

This was the proudest boast of • Everard the Bearded, Wurtemburg's beloved lord ' :

1 I my head can safely pillow On my poorest subject's breast. 1 King Edward VII. evidently feels that he can trust his royal person with equal safety to his subjects in the Green Isle, and the dismissal of his Scotland-yard escort converted every Irishman into a member of his bodyguard. King Edward VII. is the first British sovereign that has shown a friendly feeling to, and sympathetic interest in, the nation that, despite galling political disabilities, has rendered such constant and precious service to the Empire both in the council-chamber and on the battle-field. His friendly attitude on the Home Rule and land questions is well known, and the moving scenes of welcome that everywhere met him and his august Consort are what one naturally expects from the warm-hearted Celtic temperament of a people to whom the present occupant of the British throne has greatly endeared himself.

Ireland is now the last spot of British earth inhabited by white people that is governed in accordance with the discarded and discredited policy which in the old colonial days lost America to the Empire. Edward VII. is the Constitutional Sovereign of Great Britain,) Canada, the Australian Commonwealth, and New Zealand, but not of Ireland. ' A Constitutional Sovereign,' says Mr. Swift MacNeill, M P., in a recent issue of the London ' Daily Chronicle,' ' is generally regarded as a Sovereign who acts on the advice of Ministers responsible to the representatives of the people, and through these representatnes to the people at large. The King, who is in England an eminently Constitutional Sovereign, and whose kindly feelings towards Ireland are well known and heartily appreciated, will not be a Constitutional Sovereign of that country till he acts on the advice of an Irish Cabinet responsible to an Irish Parliament, and through that Parliament to the Irish people.' The King is credited, and, we believe, rightly credited, with urging the settlement of the great agrarian difficulty in Ireland. With his well known views on this and other Irish and Anglo-Irish questions, it may not unreasonably be hoped that his visits to the warmhearted people of the most crimeless portion of all his broad dominions may result in the speedy application of

of the one remedy— self-government— which will make him the Constitutional King of Ireland and permanently remove the many rampant evils of the system of ' Castle rule ' that are eating like a cancer into the vitals of the nation.