THE PROSPECTS OF HOME RULE

New Zealand Tablet, 3 April 1913, Page 23

THE PROSPECTS OF HOME RULE

IRISH LEADER’S GREAT SPEECH

The Mansion House, Dublin, which has been the ■scene of many historic gatherings, was crowded to the doors long before the proceedings commenced on Friday night, February 7, at a great meeting, which voiced Ireland’s protest against the action of the House of Lords in rejecting the Home Rule Bill. Inside, the magnificent Round Room presented an appearance altogether inspiring. Brilliantly illuminated, its statuary and harmoniously tinted curtains constituted a striking background to a scene of enthusiasm. All round the rostrum, winch was draped in green and gold, a mass of representative citizens was solidly packed, and the audience overflowed from the main hall, which accommodated about 3000, into the vestibule and the adjoining corridors, while the galleries were thronged. Great as was the assemblage inside, it was but a trifle in comparison to the vast numbers who congregated in Dawson street and Stephen’s Green, unable to even get near the entrance of the Mansion House. For their benefit two platforms had been erected, one in the garden of the Mansion House, abutting on the street, while another was constructed so as to be within range of the gathering at the Stephen’s Green end. These were illuminated and formed the rallying- centres for an enormous and enthusiastic crowd, whose cheering was periodically audible to those in the Round Room. The Lord Mayor of Dublin presided, and delivered the opening address. After him came Mr. P. J. O’Neill, chairman of the General Council of the County Councils, he in turn being followed by Mr. Michael Davitt, son of the late Michael Davitt. Mr. John E. Redmond, M.P., in coming forward, received a great ovation. The audience rose in their places, waved hats and handkerchiefs, and cheered enthusiastically for some time. He said It is at all times a happy and a blessed thing to come home but to come home as we do to-night, after months of labor, and receive such an inspiring welcome, is something twice blessed. I think I fully understand the meaning of your enthusiastic greeting. It is an expression of confidence in the Irish Party, in its honesty and in its wisdom, and, in addition to that, it is, I think, an expression of absolute confidence in the immediate future of our cause. . So far as the Irish Party are concerned, I take the liberty of saying that your confidence has been earned by a record of steadfastness and success, I believe, unparalleled in the history of any Irish political party in the past. But, fellow-citizens, though this expression of confidence, in my judgment, has been well earned, it is none the less pleasing to receive. The Irish Party has always from people professing to be Nationalists received tokens of sympathy and of confidence in the past, and I tell you here to-day, understanding my responsibility and knowing all the circumstances of the case, I tell you that the most of our difficulties in the immediate past have come from the doubters, from the cynics, from the prophets of evil, and from those superior persons of our own side, so to speak, who have found no time or energy left to aid us after their exhausting and all-absorbing work of criticism and fault-finding. Well, we have succeeded in spite of these men, and I am gratified to find that our success is appreciated by the people. A little over three years ago—barely three years agowe enunciated the policy of

i Concentrating Upon Home Rule and by subordinating every other issue to that end. When the Veto of the House of Lords came prominently before the public in consequence of their unconstitutional act in rejecting the Budget Bill, we believed that that we saw in that situation the possibility of destroying that Veto once and for ever. We believed that the Veto was the most serious of all blocks in the path of Home Rule, and we therefore resolved to subordinate everything else to the policy of smashing the Veto. We knew it would take time; we knew that it might entail sacrifices in Ireland; but we thought it was well worth any sacrifice that might have

to,be made or any time that would be required. With unshaken steadfastness we adhered to that policy. A hundred distractions arose; a hundred attempts were made to draw us to this side or to that side away from our straight line of policy; a thousand doubts were dinned into the ears of our fellow-countrymen. Our fellow-countrymen were told we would be sold, if we hadn't already been sold, by the Liberal Party. We were told that the Veto of the House of Lords was like some great rock which could never be shaken. We were told that, even if it was shaken and removed, its removal would be used by the Liberal Party solely for their own interests, and not for the interests of Ireland. We were told that Home Rule would never be proposed by Mr. Asquith. We were told alternatively that if it was proposed it would be a ' sham ' Bill; and alternatively again we were told that if it was not a sham Bill it would split the Liberal Party from top to bottom, and in any event the Irish people were told that we were practically a party of fools, with no political foresight, experience, or wisdom amongst us —that in the end Ireland would find herself sold by the Liberal Party. Fellow-citizens, we made one very simple answer to those men. We asked the Irish people

To Trust Us and to Have Patience. Amongst any body of sane men in the world trust in their leaders is essential to political progress. If you doubt your leaders change them, but so long as men are in the position of leaders you are bound, unless you are guilty of political insanity— are bound to trust them. We asked the country for trust, for patience, and for moderation and the country responded to our appeal. A more splendid demonstration of trust, of patience, and of moderation in both words and acts was never made, I believe, than that made by the Irish people for the last three years. Where would the cause of Irelandwhere would the cause of Home Rule be to-day if we had allowed ourselves to be diverted from our policy by the Budget, or any other side issue from time to time? If we had done so we would have destroyed absolutely the chance of smashing the Veto of the House of Lords, and the rejection of the Home Rule Bill by the House of Lords would have meant its destruction and the destruction of the Government who proposed it whereas to-day its rejection is merely a stage in its certain and early passage into law. Is it quite realised by everybody that at the latest, in spite of anything that the House of Lords can do, the Home Rule Bill will be the law of this land in fourteen months from this moment The time for argument on the Home Rule Bill has disappeared has gone. All that now remains is an automatic process. In April, in a few weeks, next April the Home Rule Bill will appear again in the House of Commons. The House of Commons will not be asked again to spend forty-two days discussing . the provisions of the Bill. The Bill will be passed through all its stages in a week. It will be in the House of Lords again in the month of May, and again it may be rejected by the House of Lords. If it be rejected again by the House of Lords, then this month next year —the month of February, 1914, —we will be passing it in a few days the third time in the House of Commons, and then,

In Spite of the House of Lords, on May 9 it will pass into law. That is the latest day to which the passage of this Bill can be postponed. But the debate in the House of Lords, to anyone who has studied it, seems to foreshadow a much earlier date. Allusion has been made to the extraordinary change in, the tone of the House of Lords on this question. In 1893 there was but one argument against Home Rule in the House of Lords, and that was a blunt nonpossumus. But in the recent debate it was almost pathetic to see Lord Londonderry standing alone, except for the help of a few utterly unknown specimens of the Irish - representative peerage, uttering the old worn--out cries about the saero-sanctity of the Act of Union, about Home Rule meaning . ‘ Rome Rule ’ and separation, and all the other rubbish ' which the most of the English people have buried once and for ever. The significant thing in this debate was this, that all the

intellect in the debate— there is intellect in the House of Lords—that all the intellect in that debate condemned and abandoned the Act of Union. No man of any importance or weight who took part in the debate attempted to deny the existence or the extreme gravity of the failure of Irish Government which had to be faced, or the urgent necessity of settling the question speedily. No one ventured to contradict Lord Grey when, coming home from the self-governing dominions, he asserted that all the great self-governing dominions of England are to-day unanimously in favor of Home Rule for Ireland, and that this is a problem which must be settled, not only for the sake of Ireland, but in the highest interests of the Empire itself. Everyone who spoke, with the exception of Lord Londonderry and his friends, admitted the -existence of the malady, but they did not like the precise remedy suggested in the clauses of this particular Bill.

What an Extraordinary Change ? What does it foreshadow for the future ? I know not. What does it mean in the present ? I think I can tell you. Like all the great reforms in the political history of the past century Home Rule has survived every open frontal attack that has been made upon it. It is now to be subjected to more indirect flanking movements by suggestions of compromise. Now, fellowcitizens, when in two or three months' time the Bill goes to the House of Lords the second time, we may be met not by rejection, but by a suggestion of compromise. Now to obtain a settlement of this question by agreement would be of course so blessed a thing that it would be worth paying a large price to obtain, but there are some things in which compromise would mean disaster and despair. For our. Northern fellow-countrymen we are willing to do much to assuage their bitterness, to allay their fears, to win their allegiance and their great qualities to the service of our motherland, but there is no earthly consideration upon which we could agree to

The Mutilation or Partition of a Nation, Ireland is one land from Inishowen to Cork, and from the Hill of Howth to Galway. Ireland has been one land all through the ages, through her sufferings and her bitterness and her torture, and one land she shall remain in the coming years of her happiness and glory. Fellow citizens, in the few short months that will now intervene, I appeal once more to Irelandl appeal to her to maintain a little longer the magnificent attitude of trust, of patience, and of moderation. We are winning, and God knows we can afford to be generous. Let us exhibit during these months an attitude of broad toleration to those who differ from us, either in creed or in politics. Let us remember we are all brothers in this land, and that there is no Orangeman so bitter that we would not prefer tp have him governing Ireland than the best Englishman. Let us during these months, then, be animated by a spirit of the broadest toleration, by a spirit of

Unity Amongst Ourselves, by a spirit of moderation in word and in action, and by an exhibition of good order and peace, and by the absence not merely of crime, but of any violence of any sort or kind that can be pointed to by our enemies as a proof that our people are not seriously minded in this struggle. Let us do that, and by so doing we will be giving to the world a foretaste of that blessed day which is now at hand, when justice, toleration, and liberty will preside over a free, a happy, and loyal people.