HOME RULE FOR IRELAND.

Wairoa Bell, Volume V, Issue 166, 7 October 1892, Page 8

HOME RULE FOR IRELAND.

[An Essay written eok the Port Albert Mutual Improvement Society by Me W. Connell.] In taking upon myself the responsibility of advocating Home Buie for Ireland I feel sure the cause has hut a poor advocate. However, I ■will try and place the cause before you in as condensed a form as it, is in my power within the time allowed me to do so ; that is the twentyfive minutes. Isaac Butt, an eminent lawyer and protestant. was the first man who in 1870 advocated the cause and put, it before the people in a proper form. His first followers were very few, but after tho elections of 1574 he had a following of sixty members. After Mr Butt’s death C. S. Parnell became the leader, and he and his followers have most persistently advocated the cause of Home Rule since. The Home B.ule demand is clear and simple enough. It asks for Ireland a separate Government still allied to the Imperial Government on the principles which regulate the alliance between the United St, tes of America. The proposed Irish Parliament in College Green would have just the same relation to the Parliament at Westminister that the legislation of every American State hear? to the head authority of Congress in the Capital at Washington. All that relates to local business it was proposed to delegate to the Irish Assembly ; questions of Imperial policy were still to he left to the Impel ill Government. The very object of this measure was by relaxing a little t! e legal bonds of union to draw closer the actual ties between England and Ireland In fact to do with Ireland as England has done to hc-r Colonies. By decentralising the subordinate fnnetnns of Government, to strengthen the central supremacy of natural affection and Imperial unity. The example and result of giving selfgovernment to thirty-four ot her colonies would seem not unfavourable to trying Home Rule or local government in Ireland. Some forty years ago Canada, New Zealand, and various Colonies of Australia, were discontented and uneasy at the control exercised by the Government of England over local affairs, and England gave to each of these communities the fullest power of local Government consistent with the unity ift ie empire. The result was that the real Outou was established in the same degree as the apparent tie of control, over local affairs was loosened. Are there any reasons to suppose that the omdiiion of Ireland is such as to render the example of the Colonies inapplicable ? Let us look a little at the past history of the country. Tip to 1780 Ireland was governed practically as a conquered country for over GOO years. The result was that in 1782 in order to save the Imperial unity. England altogether relaxed the local tie and made Ireland legislatively independent. The Empire was thus saved but difficulties arose between the two independent Legislatures. A few years after Ireland had her independent parliament, a party of Irish patriots called United Irishmen formed themselves into a body, independent of creed ; to cut the tie which bound them to England. They were led by Hamilton Eowen, President; T. Nupper Landy, a Dublin merchant, as Secretary ; Theobald W, Tone, an eminent Belfast barrister ; Lord Ed. Fitzgerald, son to Duke of Leinster ; and T. O’Connor ; all young men of the best families and they were all of the Protestant religion. Government soon crushed the conspiracy and made this a pretext for depriving Ireland of her Legislature, which they did in 1802 How the English Government bribed the Irish members with money and favours is a dark blot on England’s history to-dav. One family alone got £60,000 for their votes, and several other members got large amounts. The descendants of these people are now of course against Home Rule' England has managed Irish affairs both local and Imperial from 1802 up to the present time. What has been the result ? From the time that the Parliament was taken from Ireland to the present dry she has been constantly w Diking for the reinstatement of its national legislature ; and. lias been governed by a continue ous system of extraordinary legislation called Coer cion. It is the fact that between 1801, the date of the Act of Union, up to 1882, the year of the great Reform not, there were only eleven years free from coercion ; while in the fifty-three years since that period there have been only two years entirely free from special repressive measures. So much therefore is clear that Irish discontent at not being allowed to manage their own affairs iiys | sf®4p. 4jy ipcfccKsd instead A

The conclusion then would seem irresistible, that if coercion has failed, the only' practical mode of governing Ireland is to give the people power to manage their own local affairs. Coming then to the principle of the Home Buie Bill. The first step is to reconcile local government with Imperial supremacy, or in other words to divide imperial form local powers. If this division he accurately made and the former claim of power be reserved to the English Crown and British Parliament, while the latter only are entrusted to the Irish Parliament, it becomes a contradiction in terms to s«y that Imperial unity is dissolved by reserving to the Imperial authority all its powers, or that Home Rule is a surrendering of the Imperial tie when that tie is preserved inviolable. Imperial powers then are the prerogatives of the Crown with, respect to peace or war, making treaties with foreign nations—in short, the power of regulating the relation of the Empire towards foreign nations—-this is the very soul of supremacy. Assuming now that Ireland has got separation, how is Ireland to he kept within its due limits ? The answer is plain. An Imperial Court must he established to decide in the last resort, whether the subordinate legislation has or has not infringed Imperial rights. Such a court has existed in America since the Independence and no serious conflict has arisen in carrying its decisions into effect. And the Privy Council acting as the Supreme Court in respect to Colonial appeals has been accepted by all the self-governing Colonies as a just and impartial expositor of the meaning of these several Constitutions. In every part of the British Empire which enjoys Home Rule, the Legislature consists of the Queen and the two local Legislative bodies ; the administrative power resides in the Queen alone. The Queen has the appointment of all officers of the Government. The Executive head is represented by the Governor or Lord Lieutenant.

The main principles hare now been laid before you and it only remains to give a summary of the provisions of the Bill, the objects and hearing of which will he readily understood from the foregoing observations. The first clause provides that on and after the appointed day. there shall be established in Ireland a Legislature consisting of her Majesty the Oueeu and an Irish legislative body This is the first step in all English constitutional systems to vest the power of legislation in the Queen and the Legislative body. The Legislature of Ireland shall not make la ws relating to the following matters or any of them Status or dignity of the Crown ; peace or war ; army, navy, militia ; volunteers or any military force ; treaties and other relations with foreign States ; dignities, titles, or honors ; prize or booty of war ; respecting establishment or endowment of religion, or prohibiting the frea exercise thereof ; imposing any disability or conferring any privilege on account of religious belief ; abrogating or derogating from to establish any place of denominational education, or any denominational institution or charity ; prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending the religious instructions at that school ; protecting all rights of property or privilege of any existing Corporation incorporated by royalcharter or local and general acts of Parliament. KExecutive Government shall be vested in her Majesty, carried ou by the Lord Lieutenant, on behalf of her Majesty, with the aid of such office* s aud such Council a« to her Majesty may from time to time seem fit, 'The Loid Lieutenant is an Imperial officer and will be bound to watch over Imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny and to veto any Bill which may he injurious to those interests : on the. other hand as respei ts local matters lie will act and be guided by the advice of the Irish Executive Council. The system is, as has been shown above, self acting. There are several other clauses, but as 1 have not time to go into details I will now give you a few reasons in favour of the Home Rule Bill.

The name of self government has a natural fascination for Englishmen ; but a policy which cannot satisfy the wishes of Home Rulers, which may, it is likely enough, be of no benefit to the Irish people and which will cert, inly weaken the Government in its contest with lawlessness and oppression, is not a policy which obviously commends itself to Engiish good sense. Well may the distinguished supporters of things as they are declare, which refusing to accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen, we must sedulously do justice to every fair demand from Ireland, must strenuously and without fear or favour assist the equal rights of landlord and tenant, Protestant and Catholic, and must at the same time put down every outrage, and reform every abuse. What hope is there of this P Our only guide to the probabilities of the future is our experience of the past, and what has that been in Ireland. In every- year since the Legislative union there have been multitudes of men in England as upright, as enlightened, as well intentioned towards Ireland and with good opportunities of translating their thoughts into Act as we are and what has been the result P Behold Ireland at this time and examine every year of its history since the Union. Do the annals of any Constitutional Government in the world present so poor a monument of parliamentary failure ! to vivid an example of a rural and material ruin, paved with good intentions. Therein lies the pathos of it. Not from malice, cot from owelty, not from wanton injustice, not even from callous indifference to suffering and wrong does England’s misgovernment come. If the evil had its root in deliberate wrong doing on the part of England it would probably have been cured long ago. Each g-em eratjop while fpeely confessing the sins its fathers has protested its own innocence, and boasted of its own achievments, and then with a full sense of rectitude has complacently 1 pointed to some inscrutable flaw iu the Irish character as the key to the Irish problem. The generation which passed the act of Union oblivious of British pledges, solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered what had become of the prosperity aud contentment which the promoters of the lipiop- had jsnuji.»esJ to lyglsMbh, 'j"he next

generation made vicarious penance aud preferred the enactment of Catholic emancipation to the alternative of Civil war and then wondered in its turn that Ireland still remained unpacified. Then came a terrible famine followed by evictions

on a scale so vast and cruel that the. late Sir R. Peel declared that no parallel could be found for sucb a tale of inhumanity'- in the records of any country, civilized or barbarous. Another generation pluming itself on its enlightened views and kind intentions passed the Encumbered Estate Act which delivered the Irish tenant over to the tender mercies of speculators and money lenders, and parliament for a time closed its eyes and ears and relied upon force alone to keep Ireland quiet. It rejected every suggestion of reform in the land laws, and a great minister himself, and an Irish landlord, dismissed the whole subject in the epigram that •' Tenant right was Landlord wrong/ Since then the Irish church has been established and two land la ws have been passed y'et we seem to he as far as ever from the pacification. Surely it is time to enquire whether the evil is not inherent in the English sy'stem of governing Ireland, and whether there is any cure than that which one man suggested, namely the destruction of the system. There is moreover, another question which must convince any dispassionate mind which ponders it. The British Parliament is incompetent to manage Irish affairs and must become increasingly incompetent year by year. In ordinary' circumstances Parliament sits about twenty-seven weeks out of fifty-two weeks, five weeks out of the twenty-seven may be subtracted for holidays, debates on addresses etc. This leaves twenty-two weeks, and out of this two nights a week are for Government business and three nights a week for private members, making in all forty-four days for Government and sixty-four day's for private members, Into these forty'-four days and nights Government must compress all its yearly programme of legislation for the whole of the British Empire, from the settlement of some petty dispute about laud in the Hebrides to some question of high policy in Egypt or India or other parts of the Queen’s world wide Empire. The consequence is that parliament is getting- less able every year to overtake the mass of business which comes before it. The large addition already' made to the Electorate of the United Kingdom is already forcing a fresh crop of subjects on the attention of parliament, as well as presenting old oneg from a new point of view. To overcome this we need some change in our present parliamentary system ; some form of decentralization which shall leave the Imperial Parliament supreme over all bodies, y'et relegate to the historic and geographical divisions of the United Kingdom the management severally of their own local affairs. Viewing it all round then it must be admitted that the problem of governing Ireland, while leaving things as they are is a sufficiently formidable one. Is Ireland in favour of Home Rule? Last election Ireland returned 81 Home Ruler’s and 18 Liberal Unionists out of 103 members, showingplainly that the majority are iu favour of Home Rule. There is a great cry coming from Ulster that they don’t want Horae Rule, and they sav f.Hmss is one party in Ireland that is clamouring for it, In the province of Munster, Leinster and Connaught they have returned all Home Rulers. The Ulster people think they' should govern Ireland their own way', hut we find iu the province of Ulster that two thirds of Down, one third of Armagh, half of Tyrone, half of Fermanagh, and the whole of Cavan. Donegal and Monaghan are as much Home Rulers as any' part of the other province'. Of the whole representation of Ulster 14 seats out of 33 are still Home Rulers, agwl if Antrim were left ou one side members would he about equal ; so it is not Uls er then that declares against Home Rule hut a small portion of it.

Whatever may he the truth about the fear of a Catholic revulsion, there is at least no doubt about the reality »f the Protestant ascendancy-. Where the Irish Catholics really' feel the pinch is in the distribution of offices of honor and emolument which even in the Catholic districts of Ulster go almost entirely to Protestants; not only- are Catholics entirely' unrepresented in the Belfast Corporation hut they are almost entirely omitted from the Commission of the Peace in the Ulster counties, and as one of the Lister correspondents pointed out—, In the county of Armagh, where nearly half the population are Roman Catholics, there areonly cine magistrates Roman Catholic, while there are 109 Protestants according to last returns, Iu Tyrone, where the Roman Catholics numb*- r nearly' throe fourths of the population there are only nine Roman Catholic while there are 159 Protestant justices, and in Fermanagh, where tho overwhelming majority arc Roman Catholics, there is only' one Roman Catholic to 7b Protestant magistrates. From Guoebarg to Sully, alongtho Donegal coast, there is not ou®' Roman Catholic magistrate although ’nearly' all the people are Roman Catholics, In Geudor and Tulcarrow in the same ea«uty there is only the notorious Oliphet, the local landlord who for the past, five years has been engaged in a deadly strqggle with the very' people who are expected, to have confidence in his administration of the law. Takiug the whole province of Ulster thereare over 1000 Protestant magistrates while tlieroare not 100 Roman Catholic ones, although the adherents of both Churches are equal iu number. After all the above privileges it is uo wonder that a few of the people In Ireland are against Home Rule as they reqpi all the benefit under the present Government, while the majority must grin and. hear it. Certainly' if Home Rule is to he refused iili all the prophets of evil are refuted, Ireland must go without Home Rule for ever. If the sky falls we shall Catch larks hut he would he a foolish bird catcher who waited for that contingency. And no less foolish is the person who sits till every conoeivable objection to his policy has been mathematically refuted in advance and every wild prediction falsified.,by the event, for that woqld ensure hjs wytver joying at all,