OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE

New Zealand Tablet, 18 January 1912, Page 19

OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE

Mr. J. Redmond, on November 24, addressing a mass meeting of the electors of Banbury, remarked at the outset* that we were at the commencement of a great controversy upon the question of Home Rule. Some of the opponents of Ireland said they were endeavouring to smuggle Home Rule into law. Why everyone knew that for the next year, perhaps for the next two years, Home Rule in all its phases would be discussed on every platform in every town and village in the .country. All that he and his colleagues were anxious for was that their side of the question should be fairly heard. They believed profoundly that the opposition to Home Rule in the past had been due to Ignorance of the Facts of the Irish situation, and they intended to bring the true facts, of the situation to the' knowledge of every class of the people of this country. The advocates of

Home Rule, Mr, Redmond went on, really had one very great advantage in this controversy. The general principle of Home Rule had received universal acceptance at every -period of the world’s history, and was at this moment in operation in every, continent of -the universe and in every part of the Empire. . What they had, therefore, to convince the people of was not that the principle of Home Rule was sound and wise and just. That was admitted. What they had to convince the people of was that the particular application of the admitted principle to Ireland was wise and just and safe. No man acquainted with the history, of England and Ireland would attempt to deny that while mutual interests, geographical position, and social and commercial ties made them pre-eminently united, there were, no two nations in Europe more diverse in national characteristics and history than England and Ireland. No one could deny that it had been found -impossible to fuse the two people into one homogeneous nation. The advocates of Home Rule started with the enormous advantage that the principle of the demand they were making was admitted. Ireland- to-day was demanding that that principle should be applied to her, that principle which was applied to Canada, which changed Canada from a country in open revolution into a peaceful, prosperous,-and loyal portion of the Empire; that principle which had been applied to Australia with the same effect; that principle which had changed what was a perfect pandemonium of \ Racial Passion in South Africa into a portion of the Empire, peaceful and contented and loyal. They had given Ireland representative institutions; they had given her the franchise and the ballot, and by the exercise of the ballot year after year she had returned the same- answer. . English parties ebbed and flowed, but . in Ireland there had been no change. For thirty years eighty-six out of one hundred Irish members had come back to Westminster and said, You have given us the right to vote, and we tell you by our votes and by our franchise that we demand the right which you have given to other portions of the Empire to govern ourselves.’ One of the objections to the giving of Home Rule to Ireland that had been made, Mr. Redmond proceeded,, was that Ireland, was a disloyal country, and that therefore Home Rule would lead to separation. He must say with all respect to the men who used that argument that they were using an argument fitted only, for children and fools. The whole experience of their own ,Empire was against them. He did not deny at all that there was disloyalty in Ireland; but not disloyalty to the Throne and Crown. The whole history of Ireland showed that the Irish people had been loyal to the Crown, sometimes at their cost, when England was, on the other side. The disloyalty was directed against the system of government.’ The only way to change Ireland,’ he declared, from a country disloyal to the existing system of government is to put ®the government in their own hands, and in that way alone will be created a really united British Empire.’ Another argument used against Home Rule, the speaker said, was that of religion. i ■ The Argument Founded on Religion, namely, that the Irish nation was a nation of savages, a nation who who were described by Lord Salisbury , as unfit to govern, as a race of Hottentots,-was the most odious, the most ignoble, and the most cowardly argument that could ever be used; and it was being .supported in England at the present, moment by the most odious, ignoble, and cowardly means. Mr. Redmond referred at length to a pamphlet which he said had been issued by the Liberal Unionist Executive with reference: to his attitude towards the Irish Protestants. - The statements in the leaflet, he declared, were worthy of a coward and an assassin. All through his political life he had preached conciliation towards those who differed from him on the question of Home Rule. ‘I fear,’ he went on, * there is a small handful of men, not representative at all of the Protestants,of Ireland, who probably will fight this matter out-to the bitter end. I allude to Sir Edward Carson and his men in buckram. They can fight it out, and when they are beaten, I can

assure you Sir Edward Carson and his men in' buckram will be quite ready to take their share of the loaves arid; fishes. ; Speaking of another leaflet dealing with the criminal statistics of Ireland, Mr. Redmond said that Ireland to-day was freer from the more serious kinds of crime than were England, Scotland, and Wales, There had been for some years a steady decrease of crime in Ireland. In fact, , comparatively speaking, - ->’* ■ The Country was Crimeless, and it was a disgraceful thing that a man in the leaflet should ask the English people to believe a whole series of falsehoods against the Irish people. Such arguments were in use by the lower and meaner type of their opponents. They were methods to which their more honorable opponents did not descend. The Irish Party wanted nothing but the truth. Ignorance about Ireland in this country had always been their great difficulty. The Irish cause was a great and just cause. Ireland in the past had suffered grievously, and Ireland in the past, naturally, as they would all ac£mit, had had their souls filled with bitterness; ’ but times had changed. Ireland had lived through the storm and was beginning to recover, and .Irishmen, even the most bitter and prejudiced, were _ beginning to understand that the guilt of Irish misgovernment really never rested at the door of the mass of the people of England. , Ireland to-day wanted ; peace with - England, peace with the Empire. Irishmen and Englishmen desired to shake hands across the gulf of the past, with all its iniquities and miseries,. to forget and ■ forgive. Believe me, he concluded, the day that they do so, more will have been done, for the glory and unity and stability of the Empire than has - been done by the greatest British army that ever existed, or the most formidable British fleet that ever ploughed the waves.' Those who come forward and endeavor to stand between the English and the Irish at this golden opportunity in their history, and endeavor to prevent the reconciliation of these races, are not merely, in my opinion, enemies to their own country, enemies to Ireland, enemies to the principle of freedom, but, I honestly believe, are enemies to the peace of the world and the welfare of . the human race.