CORRESPONDENCE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 3720, 3 September 1886, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

» THE IRISH QUESTION. TO THE EDITOR OP THE TIIIARIT HERALD. Sin, — I must declino Altogether to discuss tbo Irish question with " Kerry man." On any other question, perhaps even on this, under altered condition*, I may bo wiling to meet him. But here, bo far as lam concerned, lie is an outsider. My firßt letter defined the terms on which I undertook to present myself before the public— that of an Englishman speaking to Englishmen. I proposed to ask Englishmen what just ground they are really prepared to advance for refusing Homo Rule to Ireland An Irish Protestant like " Kerryman," whoso position m Ireland is maintained by our bayonets, has no place ia this controversy. Ho may have good reasons of his own for wishing to enlist on his Bide the sympathies of the public, but he is entitled to no answer from me. If indeed lie comes as a suppliant, entreating us Englishmen, for pity' 3 sako, to go on keeping down his Catho lie fellow-countrymen with a standing army of 30,000 men, we may be fully willing to take his case into consideration ; but he must speak m a tone very different from that of his letter, before wo are likely to attend to him. He mistakes his position altogether. Thus far, Sir, I have dealt with the question on the basis of the present actual condition of Ireland, nnd on the fact that it ie ! English misrule which has made her what she 13. But the case has more than a moral aspect. In the pass to which things have come, Ireland is a constant cVag upon England's action. If, like Scotland, ahe had her own church and her own laws (for we all know that ia the Imperial Parliament, Scotch questions are always left to the Scotch members) we could dispense at once with the Irish constabulary, and reduce the 30,000 army forco to the Scotch establishment of " one regiment of cavalry, andtwo battalions of Highlanders." What the precise cost of the constabulary is I have not at hand the means to verify ; but the annual cost of the Irish army is £3,000,000, and whenever an European complication arises, every man of that 30,000 ia as completely neutralized to us as if held m check by an opposing force. Want it as we may, elsewhere, m Ireland it must stay. Its actual numbers vary from year to year by some 2000 or 3000 ; but outside of this small limit it can neither bo diminished nor relieved. It fills up no gaps caused by our losses m the field. In the coming struggle with Russia wo shall be all that the weaker j and the exaggerated estimate at St. Petersburg of its effect upon our resources is at this moment ono of the main motives to her provocation of the contest. But here bursts m upon us the cry of separation. Blesß U3 and keep v? : when a limb 13 mortified, what is thero for it but separation ? Amputate and done with it, m God's name j and be thankful if even at this cost you have aavod the life of your patient. This, Sir, is not the only answer, nor the wisest ; but to hear separation clanged about as it is m view of the state of things m Ireland wo havo actually to deal with, is provoking. But let us examine it coolly. What does this separation cry really moan ? It means, I take it, this : that the passing of | such a bill as Mr Gladstone's, will p!ace it l irrevocably m the hands of the Irish people to enforce a separation from the British empiro, and that we can have no real guarantee against their so using it. I don't suppose any one will say the separation cry means more than this. No ono has made moro of it than Mr Goschen. With a ra'O fertility of imagination ho has developed for us from an abstract point of view the boundless possibilities of mischief which this bill is inevitably to lay up for us. Theoretically, I am very much disposed to agree with him. But I confess that while I havo been reading his speeches I have been forcibly remindod of what was once snid to me by a hard headed statesman at homo : — " There is not " then it was said, " there is not m the whole universe a more cunningly devised piece of machinory for the frustration of all the ends of good government and setting everything at confusion, than the British Constitution : and it is the only constitution m the world that is worth twopence ha'penny." The reasoning is obvious. To bo able to do good involves a corresponding power to do evil. The moro adequately your plans are framoi for grappling with a gigantic mischief, the more surety you exposo yourself to objection on the ground of other ejriU which your scheme- may bo the means of originating. Mr Go3chen'3 criticisms are precisely those which havo been applied mutatis mutandis to ove r y reform that has been accomplished for the last Cfty years; and they have all had one character m common— they were unanswerable when they wore uttered : they were falsified only, but absolutely, by the event. For some reasons, Sir, which I find I must ask your permission to hold ovor to another letter, I do not look upon Separation as a probability coming within the range of practical polities. But supposing it otherwise, m the actual condition of things wo havo no help for it but to consider whether we must not face that danger. And if we do faoo it — if it arises— if the attempt at separation is actually made — on which side, I should like to ask, ia the greater force. Ireland — I hope my Irish fellow-countrymen Trill forgive me for referring to this most distasteful part of the subject — Ireland has no fleet, no army, and no means of equipping either. It is no doubt conceivable that she could give us trouble— a great deal of trouble— as much perhaps as she is giving now. But she would give it, not as now, but for a short time only. At the worst we shall but hare to do again

for a just cause what will no longer be fault of ours that it need bn done at all. I am, &c,, A» EN(JLISH3IAN.