(The Nation, April 18.)

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 9, 19 June 1885, Page 19

(The Nation, April 18.)

Thb managers of "the royal visit " entertainment have overreached themselves. They have heen too eager to make political capital out of it, and the result is that they have altogether defeated their own object. The royal show may continue for its appointed time despite the events of the past week, but it can no longer serve the purpose of "dishing " Mr. Parnell or deceiving the outeide world as to the feelings and opinions of the Irish people. It has been made so sore a matter for those who conceived and organised it, that if it could now be brought to an end in an hour without giving too great a tuumph to the national party we are convinced that the royal party would be sent home by the next steamer. How the premature bursting of the babble has come about may easily be told. We all know the manner in which the visit of the Prince of Wales was announced. It was, we were told, to be a most innocent business ; it was to have no political significance ; the Prince, who was above and outside all parties, was coming over merely to gratify a desire he had long felt to see for himself how Ireland was progressing. From the first many persons, taught by experience, saw through those pretences ; still the people and their leaders agreed and proclaimed their intention to assume in presence of the royal visitors an attitude of ** respectful neutrality." Under all the circumstances this was on their part an act of remarkable forbearance. They felt convinced that the object of the visit was distinctly political, and that, even if the case were otherwise, it was no time for a series of royal and viceregal junketings and dances ; yet they consented to efface themselves, as it were, while the dodge was in process of performance. With characteristic meanness and audacity the Castle faction took advantage of the popular decision to flaunt their traitorous " loyalty," and the Castle and English Press made haste to comment on the exhibition as a manifestation of the real opinions and wishes of the Irish nation. Addresses to the Prince were prepared breathing the • o l d flunkeyish spirit ; the Orange shepocracy hung out their favourite banners ; the rackrenting and shoneen fraternity waved their handkerchiefs from " loyal " windows as the Prince passed through the streets of Dublin ; feeble cheers were raised at the same time by a comparatively few persons standing in the thoroughfares, led off in many cases by soldiers and policemen ; and then because all this took place, and because, in obedience to the expressed wishes of toe Irish leaders, counter-demonstrations were not indulged in, the whole set of anti-Irisb journals, home and foreign, led by the limes, proclaimed that the Irish people had made their choide between the Prince of Wales and Mr. Parnell, and that their natural feelings of loyalty had triumphed in spite of «• rebellious " counsels. We now see, said the Timet, what " a poor show " Mr. Parnell makes beside the heir to the British crown." That mean and deliberate misrepresentation of this kind should have speedily wrought a change in th« popular tactics was inevitable ; but the change has come with a rapidity and a completeness for which the English and West-Britons were evidently unprepared. The nine great meeetings held on Sunday in various parts of the South, East, and West betokened what was coming. With thunderous sound they proclaimed that the insulting calumnies of the Eoglish Press could no longer be borne in patience. The following day witnessed the commencement of the popular upribing against the Caßtle plot to discredit the Irish national party. Then begun to be seen, in the black flags, in the cheers for Parnell, in the singing of the Irish National Anthetn, evidence of the real sentiments and convictions of the people. A savage attempt was made in one place to prevent a manifestation of popular feeling ; but that attempt has itself but served to emphasise the overthrow of the Castle plotters. To keep the Prince of Wales from hearing and seeing proof of the unalterable attachment of the Irish people to nationality, and of the impossibility of their being wheedled by royal pageants out of their determination to win their national rights, it was found necessary to organise a police outrage more infamous than any since Ellen M'Donough was killed by the bayonets of Porster's policemen in the days of the Land League agitation. Men, women, and even children, have been charged by infuriate policemen, and more persons than, one have been seriously injured by police batons and bayonets, that the Prince of Wales might have an Irish holiday to the exact taste of Dublin Castle. The people who were supposed to be dying to cheer him, and thereby to show their attachment to English rule and all its attendant infamies, have been banished from his presence by armed force. This very fact itself, we repeat, will only make more plain the miscarriage of the Castle plot. Since Monday the popular tactics adopted in Mallow have been followed elsewhere in the South. In Waierford county and in Cork the royal progress has been the reverse of a triumphal march. The 4< loyal minority " and the flunkeys of high and low degree have turned out in their full strength and in all their finery in honour of the event, but the people have turned out too and have shown that they are not in harmony with the fluukey crowd in their slavish prostration before the Castle marionette. For the rest, we do not hesitate to express our hearty approval of every step which the people can take within the law to manifest their displeasure at the ruffianly misconstruction put on the attitnde of non-intervention which they at first decided on adopting. They have practically been challenged to assert their principles by public demonstrations, and they would be poltroons or traitors if they failed to do so. Should the Castle prevent them or try to prevent them from giving au answer in this fashion to the falsehoods of their enemies, that in itself will be a victory for them, as has been the Mallow incident. The one thing to guard against is the possibility of their being misunderstood and misrepresented, and . against that danger we repeat that they are called upon to take every precaution which ihe law will allow, whatever be the consequent - -action of the Castle Ring.