NEW IRISH REGIME.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 March 1921, Page 3

NEW IRISH REGIME.

THE TWO PARLIAMENTS. A reply to the arguments of the Nationalists for a single government of Ireland and to the fears of the Southern Unionists has been presented by Lord Meath. A Southern Unionist himself, he views with deep apprehension the strong probability, indeed the certainty, that a single Irish Legislature would at once proclaim an Irish Republic. Lord Meath argues that a single Irish Legislature including Ulster would be overwhelmingly hostile to England, and that the presence of the Ulster representatives could not really allay this hostility. Indeed their presence in a single Irish Legislature would be “a constant irritant to the Nationalist majority.” The result would be that the friction would provoke legislation intended to weaken the power of the loyalists of Ireland in the South as ‘ well* as in the North. Lord Meath concludes:— G A strong organised Government in the North of Ireland, friendly toward England and the loyalists of the South, would prove to the world that there existed in Ireland two opinions, and by influencing the publit opinion inside and outside of Ireland would prove a far more effective means of protection against oppressive legislation in the South than the. presence in a single Legislature of a few loyal men whose votes would be swamped by an overwhelming majority. Looked at from the point of view of the Irish Nationalists, it is not in their interest to transfer to their own side the sore which they now keep open in the side of England, for there can be no doubt that if Ulster were forcibly united to the South in a single Parliament the Northerners would make legislation in Ireland as difficult and as impossible as the Nationalists now attempt to do in England.”