"'TWAS PITT DID IT!"

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 9, 25 June 1886, Page 9

"'TWAS PITT DID IT!"

( United Ireland, April 17th.) THE above interjection from Mr. Gladstone daring Major Sannderson's speech on Monday night is of historic intereßt. It Bhowa that Englishmen have at last brought themselves to confess one of the blackest crimes ever laid to the charge of English rule in Ireland. Major Saunderson was repeating the hoary falsehood which was so often on the lips of those who carried the Union, that it was the B °< f £ alional Independence in 1782 that caused the rebellion *•}■ „", xt TTry^ ry reverße ! " shouted Mr. Gladstone, " 'twas Pitt £ vI. _ Never dld a more awful impeachment pass the lips of an English Prime Minister. It is only what Irish publicists have been proclaiming for the past three-quarters of a century ; and it is aa potently true as tnat the Union was purchased with gold ; but how we have advanced, to be sure, when Pitt's successor from Pitt's place in the House of Commons avows that not only was the immediate means of the Union shameless bribery, but its way was paved by the most hideous organised massacre. In order to carry the Union, Pitt to&a nrst to terrify the aristocratic classes out of their wits, and with this object the rebellion of 1798 was deliberately nursed and organised. lhe hundreds of thousands of people who were shot, hanged, flogged, and Pitch-capped were all killed or tortured as a necessary portion of the cold-blouded scheme which Pitt sketched in his closet. The massacres of « the Croppies " were the first portion of the programme ; the bribery of the Parliament the second. Murder was the foundaSifi'™ C ?J? pti ?V h ? BU P«structure. Is it wonderful that the edifice should topple ? Irishmen knew this all along ; but it is of incalculable importance that English eyes should at last be opened to the infamy. Mr. Gladstone's exclamation is one of the most significant pronouncements of the century. Like Mr. Morley's famous declaration, that "he could Tery well believe" any story of toe baseness and mendacity of the anti-Irish Press, it shows that the thick wall of misrepresentation which concealed the truth about Ireland from English eyes is riven, and that all men now recognise mn^r f TT + K a I e T? ol^ ng beea P^testing in vain— that Pitt was a murderer and that Dr. Pattonia a-sayer of unsooth, and that the whole system of English rule founded and maintained by such men SMn° 1 Cmne ' t y fann 7 and 1". Mr. Gladstone's exclamation i B scarcely leas rrmrv unble than his Bill.