AMERICAN OPINION ON THE IRISH HOME RULE MOVEMENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 47, 21 March 1874, Page 13

AMERICAN OPINION ON THE IRISH HOME RULE MOVEMENT.

(From the ' Chicago Times.') Whether it be for good or evil, for success or failure, for peaceful legislative triumph or bloody revolution, the clergy and the people of Ireland are again nnited in a tremendous political movement. This is their first solid, universal, and enthusiastic union since the days of O'Connell. WitU the rights — meagre enough — which they acquired by emancipation, the clergy became conservative, if not content ; they had suffered so much and fought so long that peace was welcome so long as it secured comparative comfort. The Young Ireland fiasco had never received geueral countenance, and many of the dignitaries and the parish priests fought Fenianism with more bitter weapons than their colleague of Chicago, the retired Bishop Duggan. The incipiency of the Home Rule movement they resisted passively. The question of land reform was then before Parliament, and the clergy felt with sincerity and correctness that if the atrocious oppression of landlordism were constitutionally removed, the condition of the people would be vastly better than that certain to follow a probably abortive neurrection. But the Land Reform Bill was a wretched apology. The University Bill, although modified beyond recognition from the form which the Irish bishops had demanded, failed also. Perhaps it was this double bad faith of the Imperial Government which enabled the clergy to look with~ more favouring eyes upon the rapidly-growing Home ftule agitation ; perhaps it was the unanswerable logic of events which brought about their conversion, for* before the final vote on the University Bill, the new movement had spread in every province with a popular' response surpassing in zeal and unity the warmest ye:ir of O'ComieH'a last campaign. During the last three months the clergy have wheeled solidly into the ranks j have presided at and conducted monster public meetings ; and have headed subscriptions to defray agitation expenses. Although the original leaders were Protestant, the Protestant clergy and their adherents look upon the participation of the priests as portentous of catastrophe, if Great Britain should ba induced to grant the demand for an independent Irish. Parliament, which is all that the Home Rule leaders at present profess to desire. The Protestants argue with considerable plausibility that the Catholic party would be in excessive majority in au Irish Parliament, aud that Protestants would be accorded no more privileges under such a regime than the Catholics enjoyed under Elizabeth or Cromwell. This fear is monstrously exaggerated, but it has uhready had the effect of compelling a number of the excited ministers to denounce legislative separation openly, and it will bo a very strong influence in the Commons when the question reaches debate there. While the present demand is limited to a petition that Ireland be placed in the same relation to England as Canada now holds, the ultimate aim is, of course, Irish independence, and Protestantism in Ireland beholds in that a government by a Catholic hierarchy. One -thing is fully demonstrated — that the British Parliament is unable and unwilling to accord to the Irish people the rights enjoyed by the Scotch and English ; and if the Irish Parliament were certain not to be bought in an hour, as its predecessor was, and not to shut its eyes to the fact that all men are created equal, whether they are church members or not, the civilized world would heartily applaud the success of the Home Rule movement.