The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1887.

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 279, 26 November 1887, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1887.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And tho good that we can do.

Mr W. A. Mo Arthur, M.P. for North Cornwall, delivered last night one of the most admirablo addresses on the Home Rule question we have ever had the pleasure of listening to. He rightly attributed the opposition which Mr Gladstone is experiencing from a con" siderable section of the English Liberal electors, to ignorance of the present condition and past history of Ireland. Wβ believe that no man of fair mind who reads Irish history can come to any other conclusion than that the troubles of that unfortunate country are due solely to bad government —government without sympathy for the people,and administered by and for the landlord class. The whole administration is in the hands of nominees who represent the. landlords. As Sir Eedvers Buller observed before the Irish Commission, there is not much law in Ireland, but what there is has been framed for the benefit of the landlords, and the people have never received the smallest concession or redress for their burning grievances without violent agitation. Mr Me Arthur reiterated with emphasis the statement made by Mr Henry George , , as the result of his Irish tour, that my people who would tamely submit to such wrongs and to such a system of government would be contemptible and unworthy of sympathy. The Irish have never submitted to it; eightyseven coercion Acts since the abolition of the Irish Parliament have left them more determined than ever not to submit to it, and though the whole of the Irish members and half the population were lodged in gaol with Mr O'Brien, the country would only have so much the stronger case against the atrocious and tyrannical system which has decimated the population and brought ruin and misery upon a fair land. The arrant folly of this blind resort time after time to coercion for Ireland is one of the most wonderful things in modern English history. Not one political leader or party, but Conservative and Liberal alike, with fatuous and feelpless stupidity, have tried this extraordinary prescription for making Ireland contented and happy. Undaunted by failures by the score, heedless of the promptings of conscience and justice, deaf to entreaty, with their senses wilfully dulled by over-mastering prejudice, they have persisted in aggravating instead of healing Ireland's wounds. It is true that, inch by inch, concessions bave been wrung from the British Parliament, but these hm& failed to reach the seat of the disease, »nd it was only when half-a-century's experience had taught Mr Gladstone that no remedy was possible but

the natural one of allowing the Irish people to govern themselves that he placed himself at the head of the Home Rule movement. By that act, the ultimate triumph of Home Rule was assured, ty Lord Aberdeen stated, the Liberal party can never go backwards. Home Rule must come, and the quicker the more complete and generous the form in which it comes t!r- :K>re certain it is to assure the ij;: : : ...'.;* of Ireland.

i : ; -mong English people who have i>" '"-quaintance with colonial selfgovernment there should be an inherent prejudice against a separate Parliament for Ireland, and a lurking suspicion that it necessarily means separation, we can understand; but that colonists, who enjoy perfect freedom themselves, who would take up arms at a moment's notice to protect their liberty against coercion by the Mother Country, should cherish such feelings is very extraordinary, and shows how long habit, prejudice, and association will cling to a man despite the plain teachings of experience and his better judgment. The coercion of the Poles by Russia excites his warmest indignation, but no feeling of sorrow moves him when he reads of the evioted tenantry of Ireland, and the shooting down of men who had assembled for the purpose of holding an orderly public meeting which would have been perfectly lawful in any other division of the kingdom. He sees a great nation like the United States enjoying perfect State autonomy, yet fighting for the Federal bond, but he cannot believe that the same thing is possible, or would be beneficial, to the United Kingdom. Prejudice, ignorance, and indifference are the three great bugbears that prevent the attainment of Home Rule by Ireland, but with intelligent men like Lord Aberdeen and Mr McArthur, whose sympathies we might naturally expect to be on the other side, engaged in the dissemination of sounder views upon the Ixish question, we may rest assured that the conversion of the whole of that section of the AngloSaxon race whose instincts are Liberal to the Home Rule creed will not be much longer delayed.