Irish News

New Zealand Tablet, 28 December 1911, Page 2651

Irish News

ANTRIM—Ulster and Home Rule

The distinguished lawyer now at the head of the. Irish Unionist forces, who can on occasion throw such ardent fire into his eloquence, is wont to speak of Ulster as if it were an exclusive preserve of Unionism. Half the people of Ulster are Nationalists and Home Rulers, and in addition there is arising amongst the extreme Protestants of the Province, a movement against the undemocratic principles supported by the Unionists. Mr. T. H. Sloan, J.P., addressing a large and enthusiastic meeting, held on October 25 in the Ulster Minor Hall, Belfast, under the auspices of the South Belfast Parliamentary Association, a body which was, he said, neither dead nor dying, declared war upon those who, under the pretence of opposing Home Rule, are conducting a campaign against the working classes in Ireland. Ulster he affirmed, had, to her own detriment, fought hard in the past for the coercion of Irishmen, for the privileges of landlordism, and against the giving of five shillings a week to the aged poor. She had fought hard in the interests of gentlemen who could afford to lounge in easy chairs and laugh at the democracy, whom they had gulled, were gulling, and intended to gull. When Mr. Sloan uses language of this kind about the leaders of Irish Unionism it may be assumed that their cause is rapidly dying even in Ulster.

Unionist Practices

In the Ulster ..Hall, Belfast, on November 4, Mr. Hemmerde, K..C, Recorder of Liverpool, delivered, an address on Home Rule and Social Reform,' under the auspices of the local Liberal Association. He said he did not know that there was any more nauseating hypocrisy in the world than that of men who, for political purposes, tried to delude other men by putting on the cloak of Protestantism and raising the ' NoPopery ' cry. He asked Sir Edward Carson what pecuniary sacrifices he had ever made for his principles. He asked the audience to bear in mind that the object of men of the type of Sir Edward Carson, Captain Craig, and others was to fight the battle of privilege. He asked these twin leaders of anti-Nationalism did they know how their friends in England fought? Did they know that there were counties in England where a Liberal could not rent a house ? Did they know that there were villages in England where a Liberal could not hire a committee-room at an election, that there were shopkeepers in England boycotted for daring to show Liberal colors, that the engines with which their friends fought were the engines of bigotry, intolerance, and social ostracism ? The foreigner was not their enemy their real enemy was the man at home who opposed the onward march of the nation. The social questions, the great human questions cried aloud for treatment. Parnell once said Ireland could not spare

a single Irishman. He (the lecturer) said England could not spare a single Irishman, too. DUBLlN—Protestant Prelates and Politics V

In the course of his remarks at Ringsend on Sunday, October 29, the Archbishop of Dublin pointed out that Protestant prelates claim rights in politics, and a certain section of the Protestant press who support the claim would deny those rights to Catholics. His Grace said: 'lt strikes me, indeed, as somewhat noteworthy at how many of the meetings of Irish Protestants, the Bishops, when presiding at their Diocesan Synod, have shown that such meetings, held though they are for religious and ecclesiastical purposes, are regarded by the Bishops and others as furnishing suitable occasions for the delivery of addresses upon a subject so eminently political in its nature as that of Home Rule. Well, this may be right or it may be wrong. I am not going to express any opinion as to how I myself regard it. But I will say tjhis, that if I, taking the opposite view of the subject from the view of it taken by those dignitaries of the Protestant Church, were to go even half as far as they have'gone, I should be prepared for something like a deluge of vituperation from a certain section of the Protestant press of this country, more especially of the press of the north-eastern district, which so audaciously arrogates to itself the honored name of our northern province of Ulster.' FERMANAGH—What He Expected

' I knew it would be when I saw the Bench so well filled,' was the remark made by Judge Craig at the Enniskillen Licensing Sessions, when a license for Garrison Hotel was granted by a majority, despite the police objection. There were, he said, a great many magistrates there whom he had never seen in his life. TYRONE—Consecrated Bishop

The Right Rev. Dr. Gunn, a Marist priest, who was lately consecrated Bishop of Natchez, Mississippi, U.S.A., is a naitve of Fivemiletown, County Tyrone, where his mother still lives.

GENERAL

Irish and Scottish Conditions Compared

A lecture delivered by Professor Geddes, in Edinburgh recently, contained some instructive references to the present condition of Ireland, and illustrated the progress which has been made in the sister island since the Government has begun to take an interest in its welfare.. He had recently visited some of the provincial Irish towns, in connection with the approaching survey for the Town-planning Exhibition, and he said that Ireland bade fair, before many years, not only to have prosperous agricultural counties, but correspondingly reviving towns. The industrial development of Scotland had created the evils of "congested tenements and debasing slums, with the results not only of an intemperance, vice, and crime which "was tragically in excess of those of Ireland, but also a web of deteriorative conditions far more difficult to clear away.