HOME RULE PROGRESS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 149, 10 March 1876, Page 14

HOME RULE PROGRESS.

Notjiixg is so remarkable in the political life of the present lustre as the growth of the Home Rule movement. It is passing fast out of the inevitable stage of ridicule, and has arrived at that of the determined active opposition which invariably preludes success. Statesmen now consider it worthy of their denunciations, of their virulent hostility. That is one of the most decided marks of progress it has yet been able to exhibit, and it should bo an immense encouragement to the members of the League, and more so to the large body of supporters, who have not yet formally declared themselves. As we long ago foretold — we take no credit for it, as the prophecy was a mere setting down in black and white of the natural sequence of facts — both the great parties in the realm, Tory and Whig, are determined to combine to oppose it. Such combinations are unavoidable, but they of all things in the world, are essentially worldly, for thej invariably are of the most transitory character, for the reason that they ai - e ephemeral growths in opposition to nature. We have no doubt that if the Home Rule question were brought before Parliament to-morrow, Tory and Whig would unite and cast it out by a triumphant majority ; that they would do the same the next year, the next, and so on until they began to weary of the task, until human nature began to assert itself, until the thirst for power could be no longer stayed, until a political contingency arose, irrestistible in force, and capable of sweeping away all other considerations save that of ruling English official life. .Besides all that, the movement, being based on justice and truth, must independently of all considerations force its own way to tlie position of an accomplished fact; and if time be wanting before that end is attained, surely there is plenty of the commodity to be found, and Irishmen can afford to wait ? We regard the Home Rule movement as being at the present time, in a most remarkably healthy condition. — ' Liverpool Times.'