A DEBT LONG DUE

New Zealand Tablet, 22 September 1921, Page 11

A DEBT LONG DUE

It may be safely said that there is neither an Englishman nor an Irishman who did not rejoice on Saturday last (writes J. P. Boyle, in the London Catholic Times, for July 16) when he learned that a truce, preparatory to a settlement, had been arranged. How the negotiations that are still to take place will end I cannot prophesy, but there is good reason to hope they will end happily, because there is a strong feeling amongst the people of Great Britain that in the event of failing to seize such a favorable opportunity of settling a vexed and age-long question, their Government should be held to strict account.

Self-Determination

There certainly will be no serious objection by Great Britain to a settlement on the most liberal terms, and J believe the Sinn Fein plea for self-determination will be generally accepted. Now-a-days no one will deny that Great Britain has done Ireland grievous wrong and has a very heavy debt to pay. In a pamphlet which he issued on the occasion of the Fenian rising over fifty years ago, John Stuart Mill wrote: "Irish disaffection assuredly is a familiar there have always been those amongst us who liked to explain it by special taint or infirmity in the Irish character. But Liberal Englishmen have always attributed it to the multitude of unredressed wrongs. England had for ages, from motives of different degrees of unworthiness, made her yoke heavy upon Ireland. According to a well-known computation, the whole land of the island has been confiscated three times over. Part had been taken to enrich powerful Englishmen and their Irish adherents; part to form the endowment of a hostile hierarchy ; the rest had been given away to English and Scotch colonists, who held, and were intended to hold it as a garrison against the Irish. The manufactures of Ireland, except the linen manufacture, which was chiefly carried on by these colonists, were deliberately crushed for the avowed purpose of making more room for those of England.

Catholics Deported "The vast majority of the Irish nation, all who professed the Roman Catholic religion, were, in violation of the Faith pledged to the Catholic army at Limerick, despoiled of all their political and most of their civil rights, and were left in existence only to plough or dig the ground, and pay rent to their task-masters. A nation which treats its subjects in this fashion cannot well expect to be loved by them. It is not necessary to discuss the circumstances of extenuation which an advocate might more or less justly urge to excuse these iniquities to the English conscience. Whatever might-- be their value in our own eyes, in those of the Irish they had not, and could not have, any extenuating virtue. Short of actual depopulation and desolation, or the direct enslaving of the inhabitants, little was omitted which would give a people cause to execrate its conquerors.” A Puzzling Question I have often asked myself why it is that the English, a people whose toleration and common sense have secured for them allies, and, friends in all parts of the world, have been so hostile to the Irish, a kindly and warm-hearted people, as to make them desire at any risk, even of death itself, to be separated from them. This was clearly against English interests. But in their relations with one another

individually there has been no antipathy, and Irishmen, have found no difficulty in . working in the service of Englishmen, and vice versa. John Stuart Mill says that there is probobly no other nation in the civilised world which, if the task of governing Ireland had happened to devolve on it, would not have shown itself more capable of that work than England ha* done. The reasons which Mill gives are these. First, there is no other civilised nation which is so conceited of its own institution* and of all its modes of public action, as England is; and secondly, there is no other civilised nation which is so far apart from Ireland in the character of its history, or so unlike it in the whole constitution of its social economy; and none, therefore, which if it applies to Ireland the modes of thinking and maxims of government which have grown.: within itself, is so certain to go wrong. Fundamental Prejudice These reasons may partly account for the failure, but they do not completely explain it. I think the explanation is to be found in some fundamental prejudice by which the wisdom of the Englishman has been obscured, and that the object of this prejudice is the Catholic religion. In a word, I believe that Catholic Ireland and non-Cath-olic England cannot live happily under the same Government. With separate Governments they will live in amicable relations, each, because of its resources and the commodities it supplies, feeling the necessity of perpetual friendliness. <-*X>