The Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 1907. IRELAND AND HOME RULE.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXI, Issue 12066, 11 January 1907, Page 4

The Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 1907. IRELAND AND HOME RULE.

Those who were privileged to hear tie address delivered by Mr. Devlin last evening could not but be impressed with the speaker's earnestness; and not a few, we venture to say, who attended the meeting, and who previously were not in sympathy with the object of his visit to New Zealand, were induced to alter their opinions as they listened to the forcible arguments, the unanswerable statistical reasoning, and the eloquent pleadings of the Irish envoy in favour of Home Rule for his island home. Mr. Devlin made it perfectly clear that he simply claimed for Ireland the same privileges which the inhabitants of New Zealand' enjoyed : the right of the Irish people to conduct their own purely domestic and internal affairs according to their own ideas and aspirations. We are not of those who think, as a colonial Conservative journal recently argued, that colonials should not express an opinion on Home politics, even with regard to the great question of Imperial preference, the question whether Chinese labour should or should not bo allowed in the Transvaal, the Newfoundland fisheries dispute, the New Hebrides settlement, or other equally important Imperial matters. We claim that it i 3 in the best interests of the great nation to which we belong that we should concern ourselves in matters directly affecting a particular part of the Empire, and therefore, indirectly perhaps, all the other portions. Indeed, it is the imperative duty of our statesmen to interest themselves in all important questions affecting the Empire as a whole or in part. It

would be a grave mistake indeed if limitations were placed upon our liberty to express an. opinion, upon such questions. Rather should we remember that we are mem'oers of an Imperial race, and as such we must see to it that the Empire shall not be unhealthy in one of its most vital parts, and we must insist that there shnll be just conditions for all. Those conditions do not obtain In Ireland, as Mr. Devlin plainly demonstrated last evening. Since 1851, 4,028,589 persons of Irish birth have left their native land, the majority to settle, apparently, in the United States. In 1841 the Irish people formed nearly a third of the population of the United Kingdom. In 1901 they were scarcely an eighth. Since 1901, when the last census was taken, the disproportion has become greater. But it must be remembered that, in losing over four millions of her sons and daughters by emigration, Ireland has lost much of the best of her own blood. The men and women who have gone have been mainly the young and energetic — 42.1 por cent, of those who left last year were between twenty and twenty-five years of age — while the weak and infirm have remained. And why, it might be aaked, should the people of Ireland decline in number? That is a question which strikes deep, and the answer will only be found in a close examination of social, economic, and agrarian conditions. Surely it is of some interest to those of our colonists who were compelled to leave Ireland, and to their descendants, if not all colonials, to know that in portions of the Empire of which we form a part the average wage of the Irish agricultural labourer is 8s a week, and that he works from 6 in the morning till after 7 o'clock in the evening? We should also be concerned to know that in a portion of the Empire of which we are so proud 80,000 labourers live in tenements of a single room — houses unfit for human habitation? It is claimed by Mr. Devlin and those who think with him that this intolerable condition can be altered if the people are granted responsible government and are permitted to deal directly with their own affairs. Mr. Arnold White, writing recently on " Crimeless Ireland," pointed out in the London Daily Chronicle that in 1903 there were 2114 criminal convictions in Scotland, while during the same year the convictions in Ireland were 1169, but that in Ireland the cost of the police force was for that period £1,569,214, while in Scotland it amounted only to £539,196. According to Mr. White, Ireland is twice as crimeless and ten times as moral as Scotland, and yet the law costs and the Land Commission in Ireland total £555,229, while the same business is done for Scotland at a cost of £259,373. The census of 1903 gives the illegitimacy rate of Scotland as being about ten times that of Ireland. Again, the Local Government Board of Ireland costs £79,875, while the Local Government Board of Scotland manages to get through its work at a cost of £15,825. In fine, Ireland with 300,000 kss of a population than Scotland, and with but one-half its crime, has to pay two millions a year more than that country for the conduct of its legal business. But serious as these financial grievances are, they are not the only ones nor the greatest from which Ireland suffers to-day. And it is not an unreasonable claim for Mr. Devlin to make that, given Home Rule, these conditions will be altered for the better. The envoy's reply to the arguments about the disintegration of the Empire and Borne Bule if Ireland were granted responsible government were equally as forcible as his other pleas, and his remarks on these points must have carried conviction to his audience. Mr. Devlin's address was un/quqstionably a powerful and convincing discourse.