ARRIVAL OF MR. JOHN DEASY, M.P., AT SYDNEY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 50, 5 April 1889, Page 29

ARRIVAL OF MR. JOHN DEASY, M.P., AT SYDNEY.

(Freeman's Journal, March 16.) The Irish National Delegates, the first of whom, Mr. John Deasy M.P., for West Mayo, arrived here on Wednesday, find one part of their mission to Australia considerably forestalled. It is Dot necessary for them now to enter into aoy defence of their leader or his party agaiDst the foul slanders which for so many months hare been heaped upon them. The cable has Jone that for them, and we can imagine with what satisfaction it was that they heard on reaching Australia the glad news, though doubtless not unexpected, that the few weeks of their pleasant paswage to the Antipodes had sufficed for the total collapse of the Times case. Tbeir mission may be one no w solely of argument and reason, or as Mr. Deasy put it, 'a mission of peace to state to the Australian people exactly how tha Irish question stood at the present time, and to put forth the grounds upon which they based their appeal. " " The delegates," he said, •' were the advocates of right and of the principles of self-government which the people of Australia h»d put into practice, and they only desired that the Irish people should enjoy those principles which had been shared by the dependencies of the Biitish nation," and he further "wished emphatically to state at the outset of their campaign in Australia that their programme would in no degree exceed the limits of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule proposals of 1886 " Events travel so fast that it is possible that before their Home Rule campaign in Australia is half over it may have ceased to be necessary. It is evident we were not wrong in supposing that the collapss of tne' Times conspiracy was as good as a year's growth to Home Rule and we can say from our own knowledge, as fllr. Deasy says of the Capa Colony, that there are many people here whom the complete clearing of the Irish leaders from any suspicion of complicity with crime will convert at once from mere passive nympathisers with the Irish cauae into very active supporters. But the battle, unfortunately, is to be fought not on Australian ground, or tha campaign would ba short and decisive iodeed, but on Engliah. although even there it iB impossible to doubt that the influence of ihe Times fiasco has been and will be very fully felt. At any rate, Mr. Deasy has no manner of doubt about it. The balance of power in Great Britain, be tells us, rests in the hands of about 7 per cent, of the electors, which percentage, if won to the Irish cause, would mean an overwhelming majority at the next general election ; and he declares his belief, not only that it will be I won, but that a tar larger proportion of the electors even than that will turn frum the Tones in diH^ust. "I am confident," he says, "from my knowledge of English politics that a dissolution is only necessary in order to place Mr. Parnell, the Tb/wx criminal, in the position of Piioit; Minister of Teland." And the basis of his belief is that it mutt now hi clear to the English electors, who, he fea\s, are "in the main observant and fair-minded," that '• t>>e Government and the Times entered delibeiately into a conspiracy to ruin Mr. Parneil ami ihe Irish party, and through 1 im to wreck tbe Irish cauße," and that the Knylish people hate conspiracies. It h mainly through this old bugbear of conspiracies, each fouler and falser than the other that England has been kept so long blinded and prejudiced against leland, but the ttblesare now turned, and the conviction of tbe Tory Government and the Tory journal of the crime most hateful to Englishmen, cowardly conspiracy, will clear at once and for e/er from that always lying aspersion the Iriah cause. It was a bappy coincidence, by the way, that tbe papers which announced Mr. Deasy 's arrival heie ulso announced the cheerful fact that another of the Times' gi od men had gone wrong, and that despairing of a cape tv which every fresh witness only aided fie^ perjury the 'Times had again and finally decided to proceed no further. I'hus enda in hbamefif defeat and di«ijrace what the Herald called the o her day • an uapleasaut inciden ," but whtt history will call one of the moat infamous p.ots that ever recoiled on the heads of its wicked devisers. With tue arrival of Mr. Dillon next montn the Australian campaign will begin in earnest. But it will Dot be a campaign. It will be an ovation ; a more than ioyal progress ; one long, continued, tiiumphal procession in honour of the men, there and their worthy comrades over the ten, wl,o. under the blessing of Gjd on their righteous cause, have saved Ireland.

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