Home Rule

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 52, 28 December 1905, Page 1

Home Rule

' Every civilised country,' says John Stuart Mill, ' is entitled to settle its internal affairs in its own way, and no country ought to interfere with its discretion ; because one country, even with the best intentions, has no chance of properly understanding the internal affairs of another.' And Guizot, the great French Protestant statesman and historian, wrote : ' The special end and raison d'etre of government should be that the people should have the constant direction and effectual control of their own government, and should be ruled, not according to abstract prfnciples, but according to wants generated by their own special circumstances.' According to recent cable messages, some timorous English Liberals — of what we may call the ' increasing dose ' school — are not prepared to accept to the full this sane principle of statecraft in regard to Ireland. But homoeopathic Liberalism of this kind makes no appeal to the mind of ' Honest John Morley.' He stands by the principles of 1&86 and 1892 and finds in them 'no other intelligible application of the GJadstonian spirit.' ' What,' said he 'in his recent great speech at Forfar, ' is the principle at the root of the Liberal policy ? It is the right of the Irish people to the management of their own domestic affairs. The successive plans, for which Mr. Gladstone and others, of us were responsible, the successive plans by which, in 1886 and 1892, an attempt was made, failed to satisfy the country, but the principle (these are the important words), the principle

of self-government, the principle bl an elective element that shall be the governing element in Irish affairs, that still remains.'