MR GLADSTONE ON HOME RULE IN IRELAND.

Evening Star, Issue 7259, 9 July 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

MR GLADSTONE ON HOME RULE IN IRELAND.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—The Grand Old Man (Mr Gladstone) recently delivered a very important speech at a private meeting of Nonconformists and clergymen at the house of the Rev. Dr Joseph Parker, London. Subjoined is an extract, which I trust you will kindly insert. Mr Bright once said, referring to the difficulty of getting Parliament to legislate beneficially for the Irish tenants, " You cannot expect the cats to legislate for the mice." The London ' Times' recently, alluding to the exodus from Ireland, states the following number of emigrants left Queenstown (Cork) for America:—January, 1,678; February, 2,749; March, 7,147; April, 18,968. The opposition to Home Rule is daily decreasing, as evidenced by the recent Home Rule Victory in Lincoln-shire.-I am, etc., SPERANZA. Dunedin, July 6.

Alluding to tho cry that under Home Rule the Catholics would persecute the Protestants, Mr Gladstone said:—"There has been some holding back here and there on the part of individuals, due to an apprehension that if Home Rule should be passed for Ireland the Protestants would be in danger of persecution. Now, the candid observer cannot fail to be struck with this face: That in tho choice of their leaders, both in the last century and since 1829, when they had the power of choosing Roman Catholic leaders and sending them to Parliament, the Irish people have been perfectly impart'al as between Roman Catholics and Protestants. We aie told that there have been great cruelties in Ireland at certain epochs of rebellion and conflict. Yes, gentlemen, there have been; but even hero in the case of the Irishman, as considered and_ compared with the case of his oppressor, there is not one of those rebellions in which, to every one act of cruelty on the part of the Irish nation, arising from an insufferable oppression, that there have not been ten, twenty, and even fifty such acts committed by who were beating them down and who have kept them down; and there is this remarkable circumstance, that in 1798 and 1641, the saddest perhaps of these occasions, the leaders of this historical nation did all they could to mitigate the passions of the people; while unfortunately it is well known that officers wearing the Queen's commission, Irish gentlomen serving in the Yeomanry, Irish peers, men of importance and authority, who could have done much to mitigate the cruelty, instead of doing so, urged on the atrocities and the soldiers. There is one little incident which is so touching and striking that I cannot help referring to it. It iB not so much known as it ought to be. Our memory goes back to the time of the reign of Queen Mary, to whose name we sometimes apply an epithet more oxpressivo than it is mild, In that reign, as you vory well know, the Protestanta formed in England a vory powerful party; and notwithstanding that they aid form a very powerful party, they were

subjected to very sanguinary persecutions. In Ireland there was not a natural and spontaneous growth of the Reformation. The tisan hj istorical fact, and it is set forth in no better way than in a very interesting volume by a Tory Judge and an ex-Chancellor of Ireland —Mr Bull-who published a book on 'The Reformation in Ireland.' The Reformation in Ireland was imported. The Protestants there were the merest handful of people, unable to cause any uneasiness to the Government or to offer the least resistance to their persecutors. Under these circumstances, the Irish people themselves were possessed of powers. "h ea they were in unison with the religion of the Government that ruled in England, there was not one single act of persecution. We disgraced the whole of those years; and not only so, but it is a positive and absolute fact that from Chester and Bristol, two British ports from which was then carried on the principal communication with Ireland, the Protestants of England fled in numbers to Ireland, because they knew that the public spirit and public feeling in Ireland would make them safe when they touched the shore. Well, gentlemen, is it not rather too much—is it not cruel, is it not shameful—when the antecedents of the people proved so Bpleudid, and showed so well their aversion to persecution in the days when persecution was almost universally carried out; is it not rather too much, ought we not to blush for ourselves when we charge upon those people, in defiance of their own assurances, as well as of the teachings of their history, an intention to persecute the Protestants in Ireland? —(Loud ohecrs.)