THE ENGLISH PRESS BEGIN TO CONSIDER HOME RULE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 357, 20 February 1880, Page 19

THE ENGLISH PRESS BEGIN TO CONSIDER HOME RULE.

Says London Truth, " It is somewhat amusing to perceive how each party in the State repudiates the idea of being tarred with the heresy of Home Rule. And yet there is nothing absolutely monstrous in the idea of fedcralization. Local self-government under the general supervision of the State, in truth, has much to recommend it. At present the Imperial Parliament has so much to do th«*t it cannot efficiently perform its duties. Ireland is not an integral portion of England. Its relation to the central Government is not that of Kent or oT that of an English county, and any scheme of arrangement that proceeds upon this assumption is doomed to failure. To have a Parliament sitting in Dublin co-equal with that sitting in Westminster would be undesirable for many reasons. Bat short of this, any plan which would leave Irish matters to bj decided by the Irish merits fair consideration.

"We must accept facts. Amongst the Irish Home Rulers there is much exaggeration of language ; but this exaggeration would not secure to them the support a f the vast majority of their countrymen, were it not that it is felt that there is some considerable amount of justice beneath this exaggeration. It is manifestly absurd that matters on which the Irish are fully competent to judge should be taken out of their hands, and decided by an Assembly, the majority of whose members know no more of Ireland than they do of the North Pole.

" Anyhow, it is impossible permanently to rule by repression. The Irish question will have to be treatad in a large, statesmanlike spirit, and the basis of any arrangement come to will have to be, that the Irish, so far as all local questions are concerned, are, if not the best, the only legitimate judges of what they want. Sooner or later we shall have to concede this.'