AN AMERICAN VIEW OF IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 35, 28 December 1883, Page 18

AN AMERICAN VIEW OF IRELAND.

(Paul Pastnor in The Golden Rule.) Ireland is longing to try self-government. The feeling seems to be thoroughly a national one,* and it would seem to appear as though the first breathings of republican liberty and of national unity had stirred within this dormant people. If the resources of Ireland could be applied to her own needs ; if she could retain that wealth which now flows into the coffers of her unnatural mother-country, and garner the fruits of her own industry, the " days of want and crying " would soon be past, and Ireland would rank among the prosperous nations of the world. It is no " stubborn rebelliousness " which stirs the heart of the patriotic Irishman, and inspires him to spend his unguided and injudicious energy in vain endeavors to cast off the tyrant yoke of England. It is a true and worthy longing for national freedom, and must in the end receive the willing recognition and sympathy of all true patriots and lovers of liberty. This is the picture of Ireland as it is to-day. Is there anything repulsive about it — anything which could warrant the unjust and bitter prejudices which are but too popular among certain classes in this free country of ours ? Ireland stands almost where America stood in 1776. She is yearning for freedom, but with even a greater hopelessness than ours was then. Ought she not, at least, to have justice in the eyes of the world, if she cannot have sympathy ? The Philadelphia, Times says:— "An impartial view of the despatches from Londonderry brings but one interpretation— that in this case the Orangemen directly, and the British Government indirectly, were to blame for the recent riot there. It is not necessary to go into any questions of differences between Orangemen and Nationalists. Nobody questions the right of the Lord Mayor of Dublin to make a speech in Londonderry or any other part of Ireland, and when the corporation of the city had granted the use of the City Hall, and honorable arrangements had been made for the Lord Mayor to speak there, all the powers of the British Government should have stood by the arrangements, even if a whole townful of Orangemen stood in the way. In taking forcible possession of the City Hall, and preventing the Lord Mayor's speech, the Orangemen have not trampled on the rights of Nationalists or of Irishmen alone, but ou human rights, as asserted in all modern civilization. For the corporation of the city, out of deference to a mob, to rescind their action granting the Cit.y Hall to the Lord Mayor was as cowardly and subversive of social order as the action of the Orangemen themselves. The sympathy of the civilized world will be with the Nationalists in this case. Their moderation will commend their cause to the respect of mankind. And if Northcote and the Conservative nobodies who have tried to stir up this fratricidal opposition expect to gain by it, they will find themselves most seriously disap« pointed.