HOME UTILE AS A SENTIMENT.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCIV, Issue 14425, 22 April 1911, Page 4

HOME UTILE AS A SENTIMENT.

If there were no other objections to the arg'umouU of our correspondent " Ad Hem " on the question of Home ltulc, they are subject to one great objection- His letter assumes nil through that n .sentiment which may lie though'; illogical, or not founded on tt basis of practical necessities, is a , foolish and an unimportant which can bo properly iffiior'.-l. Hut a sentiment which is held _>y a whole nation, or by a large. proportion of n nation, is a most important and may well .'•l'pm to those wlio hold it to he (he one thins of real and pennan cut importance, transcen f lhiQ' all niiitfrinl ailvantapes. And such a '■p-itiment N (he TT'is'i so>il>>no>>t „'' TTn-np "R-le. ?<>'■ d.> f .-U.,s „ ilK t Englishmen have done their best

to promote tin; tnuyibu- prosjiority of I rob, ml, and tlie vvbi'rlx .if Kydnoy Smith, which were mournfully tnio when 'no wroto ilium ii century ago, could not bo used 10-diiy. "Our -.onduot towards Ireland," !iii wrote, "during the wlioiu of this ivnr has been Unit of n ma 11 who subscribe/! to hospitals, weeps at charity «:r----moms, carries out brotli ' ond blankets to begguro, and thna goes home ;iml beats.!;bi wifo nnd children. We had compassion on the victims of every oppression and injustice esoopt our own." An American paper scorns to mm to express the relationship of a later period with much justice when it nays that since the days of Catholic emancipation and t'ho disestablishment of the Irish Church, England, in her dealings with In-hind, has hud "nothing worse than stupidity to reproach herself with. She has been coi. stitutjonally incapable of understanding that no amount of remedial legislation, no amount of. petting and paternalism, can avail anything at all in the absence of Home ltule, or that sentiment may outweigh in Value' the most material of benefactions. It is n matter of fact, of undeniable fuel, that Irishmen are immeasurably better off than Englishman so far as the land and other laws ara concerned, and that' England baa been indefatigable in showering upon Ireland all those benefactions that are real enough,, but that are not what Ireland has asked for. England, in point of fact, has been unable to appreciate a sentiment. It might oe equally true to say that Ireland has been unable to : appreciate anything but a sentiment. It is a matter of national temperament, of Saxon nnd Celt, and if England is now willing perplexedly to con- ' cede the sentiment, it .is because she is beginning to recognise its reality. She would have ooaecded it long ago but for a lamentable lack of poetic imagination/' Englishmen may fail to see why Irishmen desiro Home Rule, but there is not the slightest doubt that the great majority of Ilium do desiro it strongly, have done so i for generations past, and will be satisfied with no other benefits till their desirn is granted. That is a state of things which may or may not be intelligible to' the j Saxon, but which must be given I some importance in any adequate consideration of Hip question.