HOME RULE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXII, Issue 15511, 11 January 1911, Page 10

HOME RULE.

AN EX-M.P.’s OPINION. United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. SYDNEY, January 10. Dr G. B. Clark, ex-M.P. for Caith-ness-shire, who is in Sydney on route for Now Zealand, states that lie does not think Homo Rule will meet with further serious opposition except from the Irreccncilables of Ulster. There is no burning question in Ireland that should lead to unjust legislation. “WHAT IRELAND WANTS.” MR REDMOND EXPLAINS WHAT HOME RULE MEAN.'. [Fr.on Ora Co lints fond ext.] LONDON, November SO. What does Ireland want in the way of Home Rule? For thirty years one writer - and speaker after another have been engaged in answering that question, bus doubt and uncertainty still exist-. -ter Redmond, at least, is clear and explicit. The leader ot the Nationalist Party contributes to the December number of “Nash’s Magazine'’ an article on “What Ireland Uauts,” and his answer is a very timely contribution to what is once more a burning question o-f the day. “What Ireland wants is the restoration of responsible government, neither more nor less. The Irish demand is, in pla.in and popular language, that the government of every purely Irish affair shall be controlled by the public opinion of Ireland, and by that alone. \Ve do not seek any alteration of the Constitution or supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. We ask merely to be permitted to take our place in the ranks of those other portions of the British Empire—some twenty-eight in number—which in their own purely local affairs are governed by free representative institutions of their own.”

Mr Parnell in 1886, speaking for Ireland, explicitly accepted the offer of a subordinate Parliament. As t-o- whether Irish members should be retained at Westminster, Mr Redmond says Ireland is willing to accept whichever alternative England prefers. The Irish leader sums up what Ireland wants in the following passage:— We want an Irish Parliament, with an Executive responsible to it, created by Act of the Imperial Parliament, and charged with the management of purely Irish affairs (land, education, local government, transit, labour, industries, taxation for local purposes, law, and' justice, police, etc.), leaving to the Imperial Parliament, in which Ireland would probably continue to be represented, but in smaller numbers, the management just as at present of all Imperial affairs—Army, Navy, foreign relations, Customs, Imperial taxation, matters pertaining to the Crown, the colonies, and all those other questions which are Imperial, and not local, in their nature, the Imperial Parliament also retaining an overriding supreme authority over the new Irish Legislature, such as it possesses to-day over the various Legislatures in Canada, Australia, South Africa and other portions of the Empire.” Mr Redmond enters into a long argument to show that the demand for Home Rule has its root alike in historic title and in the “disastrous failure of the attempt since .1800 to govern Irish affairs by a British majority at Westminster—a failure, he further asserts, “ admitted by all men of all parties, and, indeed, incapable of denial in the face of the patent facts of the case.” In effect, tried by the tests of population, of civil liberty", and of industrial progress, the British Government of Ireland is, he maintains,, a failure.