HOME RULE TRIUMPHANT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 48, 22 March 1889, Page 13

HOME RULE TRIUMPHANT.

TO THE EDITOR N.Z. TABLET.

Sib,— lt is an admitted fact by nearly every intelligent man that Ireland is and must ever be indissolubly connected with Great Britain. Whatever the solution of the pioblem may be that iB to traoquilise that part of the Empire, its separation from a joint interest in the destinies of Great Britain cannot now be enter ained for a moment as a possible, or even desirable factor towards that end. It is essential, therefore, from its intimate and abiding connection with the Empire that Ireland should as speedily as possible be freed from every impediment to progressive prosperity. The wretched friction, the serious discontent, the bitter animosities, and the chronic poverty of its peasantry, which are prevalent in th.it country are, indeed, grangrenous sores that are daily becoming more obnoxous and give painful evidence of bygone maltreatment. It is useless, however, to reflect on "what might have been," for the ulcerous wounds are there, and no body can be sound when any member thereof refuses or is incapable of working in harmony with the controlling will of the head. If any reasonable and kindhearted man were to witness a horse with galled shoulders and n feeble emaciated body refusing, with the resolute boldness of inability, to pull an impossible load, and sen its master cruelly using a whip to urge it forward, his impulse would be to remonstrate against the barbarity, and to suggest the lightening of the load. The legislative union with Great Britain, secured, as it was, by fraud and injustice, and without the consent of the nation, and based upon pross partiality to the small minority of the inhabitants of Ireland, was the intolerable load laid upon an impoverished and weak people Which a powerful master has compelled them to bear for nearly a century. It is true that time after time a few concessions have been reluctantly granted in order to avoid the total breakdown of the disabled and fractious nation, but still there is left the most oppressive part of the burden, the exceptional administration of the law, known as Castle Bule, with all its hideously ciuel espionage, and anti-Irish spirit. Surely after so long an experience of the utter futility of coercion and compulsion to bring the Irish people into loving subjection to Great Britain, it seems like the madness of an infuriated tyrant to continue applying salt to the gaping wounds which are spread over the whole body politic of Ireland. A wise, kind, and skilful physician, finding that drastic treatment was making his patient daily worse would try a milder and quieter method. Home Rulers are like that physician ; they advocate a conciliatory system of government, and although they do not anticipate any miraculous cure of the chronic evils of Ireland, they do hope that granting self-government to 'hat country will most materially teud to improve the relations between itself and Great Britain. They want the speedy realisation of that hope, for they do not for an instant doubt that it will sooner or later be achieved. Wnen Home Rule is obtained, the wonder will be, as it has been in all past concessions to Ireland, why it was not granted long before the end of the century. Among the marvels that Pilgrim saw in the house of the Interpreter was a fire, upon which one kept casting oil while another constantly poured water. Yet did the fire maintain its work and continually burn higher and higher. In like manner, we see the British Government on many occasions and in many and various ways feeding the fire of liberty with the oil of education, of liberalismg-and extending the franchise, and of colonial examples of self-government and we see the same Government pouring torrents of the water of coercion on the fire they keep inflaming, repressing the aspirations they rave created, and putting aside id contempt the loyal and moderate representations which they have taught the Irish people to make tnrough their electpd representatives in Parliament. Why Ireland has been decied ordinary fair play for so long is because tbe popular mind and will of Great Britain had scarcely any expression in Parliament until recently, the rich landlords and upper classes predominating, and the main opposing forcj 1o the demand for Home Rule lies still in that body. It is to that body the words ol Professor Harrisou apply, with which I close, describing a po-icy that is doomoiand that has been tbe corrupting cauße of the agrarian miseries and crimes in Ireland. He says, " For miny centuries rich men in England have found in li eland an unlimited field where tup strong might wring wealth out of the weak. There for centuries they have built up a scheme of speculation wh eh trey pleased to call Law, maintained by a system of terrorism which they nic-named Government, and consecrated by a system of religious injustice which they pretended to be a Church. The end of it all was pecuniary, not politic."— l am, etc., A Tkue Unionist.