FOR THE CAUSE OF HOME RULE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 104, 4 May 1911, Page 6

FOR THE CAUSE OF HOME RULE

The meeting in the Town Hall which was addressed by the envoys of the Nationalist Party last night' afforded abundant evidence of colonial goodwill to tho cause of Home Rule, but did not lelicit from the speakers any novel contributions to the argument. The time has long since passed when anything •new could be said upon the general _ principles' involved, and it is only with .general principles that a speaker can deal who addresses a popular audience upon the question before there is a Bill to discuss. The drafting and discussing !of the Home Rule Bill will raise all isorts of difficulties, which we are quite •certain will not prove insuperable if ■they are approached by all parties in ,a*pirit of candour, justice, and moderation. But for the present it is still wibh principles rather than details that 'the public is concerned, and on this aspect of the question a colonial audience needs no conversion. Having ourselves enjoyed the blessings of complete self-government for many years, we are naturally prepared to assume that ib will be good for other people. If the object of our visitors had been to make converts to Home Rule, they would .have been engaged in the superfluous task of preaching to the converted. Bub their object is not so^ much to argue and illuminate as to gain moral and material support from a country which they know to be sympathetic. Their errand, as Mr, Hazelton frankly avowed last night, is mainly a money-making one. It haa been eapiently asked why at this stage the Nationalist cause is in need of money. The is really not a very difficult one. Even if the Home Rule Bill which the Government will introduce next session finds favour with the House of Commons and the nation, the possibility of its reaching the Statute-Book during the same session is out of the question. Even when their clawa have been clipped by • tho palssing of the Parliament Bill, the Lords will still be able to delay for two years the passing of any measure. We may be perfectly sure that every legal power of obstruction and delay which remains to them after the Parliament Bill has become law will be exercised to the detriment of the Home Rule Bill, so that at the best that measure could not be passed over the heads of the Lords till the session of 1914. The chances are, however, that the task will prove so great that, as Mr. William O'Brien predicts, another general election will intervene before Home Rule is an accomplished fact. Now, even on the more favourable and lew probable hypothesis the Nationalists have before them three years' campaign of intense severity and on an unprecedented scale, and it is not' be wondered' at that for tho financing of such a campaign the Nationalists need to look beyond the limits of poverty-stricken Ireland. Bnt the chances are that they will also have to face another general election, /,nd it is one of the humours of democracy as practised in the Old Country that candidates have to pay all the official expenses of conducting anelection as weE as their own, and are also privileged, if elected, to find their own salaries. The need of the-National-isba for money is, therefore, more urgent now that the goal is in eight than ever it was, and even those who do not. sympathise with their aims might refrain from cavil on this point. Mr. Hazelton turned the matter neatly enough by suggesting that the shame of the dependence of the Irish cause upon American dollars, which has been the subject of so many taunts, could be done away with if " good British gold " was found to put the crown upon the.Honie Rule movement. Mr. Hazelton's reference to. the £100,000 which has been raised by the opponents of Home Rule in Ireland was also appropriate. We should be glad to think thab those who have organised this fund have 'nothing but the same peaceful and. constitutional ends in view as Mr. Redmond and his followers, or that Unionist«statesmen, who are for ever talking about law and order and loyalty and Empire, had treated tho suggestions of rebellion as they deserve. It is quite refreshing to find the Daily Mail proclaiming that " rebellion is not a weapon in the constitutional armoury." " The issue of Home little," says this authority, which has so persistently opposed Home Rule and sKill opposes it, " must be fought out in Parliament, and what the Legislature determines and the Sovereign assents to must be accepted by the country. To resist the decrees of Parliament by force of arms is to wage war against the Crown, and to prepare for armed resistance is to; come perilously near tojJobelHoo., 1 '

It was stated by Mr. Hazelton that the sectarian bitterness which had for many, yeare kept Catholic and Protestant apart has now been smoothed over. In> spite of tho deplorable extent to which religious feeling hae been "worked up in Ulster, especially since the last general ■election, we believe that this statement 16 accurate in the main; and we trust that the policy of the Vatican, which has recently caused anxiety to more than one European Government, will provide Ulster with no further pretext* for alarm. On the side of the Nationalists, strong evidence of their determination to subordinate religious prejudices to their avowed political object is offered by the fact mentioned by Mr. Hazeltou that no less than eight Roman Catholic constituencies in Ireland have elected Protestant representatives. Even if the leaders of the party could be credited with any Machiavellian design in compassing this result, ifc would plainly have been impossible- for them to induce theelectors in ten per cent, of the Roman.. Catholic constituencies of Ireland to vote for Pi-ote6tants if religion really exercised the mastery over Irish politics which has been frequently attributed to it. The, supremo difficulty of the Irish problem now is not the religious question, but the putting in a concrete and workable form of the general proposition which now finds general favour, viz., that the Irish shall be given full control of their local affairs, while the British Parliament retains full jurisdiction — and not merely a passive or nominal jurisdiction, but a real and active one —over Imperial affaire. Mr. W. Redmond stated last night that th« Nationalists did not care whether Ireland continued to be represented at Westminster or not. From tho colonial standpoint, however, the distinction is vital. Our object being to secure in due bourse ihe representation of the whole Empire at Westminster, the exclusion of Ireland from such representation would be a step in tho wrong direction. Under the other alternative, Irish representation at Westminster would be an Imperial objectlesson which might ultimately be ge'ner-. ally, followed.