REFRESHING A FRIENDSHIP.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 30, 15 November 1889, Page 23

REFRESHING A FRIENDSHIP.

(From the Nation, September 7.)

The great meeting in the Leineter Hall on Tuesday night — a meeting larger in point of numbers than any indoor meetiDg ever before held in the city, and as enthusiastic and unanimous in spirit and feeling — occurred at a most appropriate moment. When the air is full of rumours as to the plots of Mr. Balfour, and the weak surrender of the liish people to his blandishments, it was well that this great demonstration of welcome to the representatives of our English allies should have taken place, and that tbe principles of the alliance should be affiimed and republished before all men. The demonstra-

tion was participated in by all classes and creeds ; and if the prophets who cheer the idea of a sectariin wedge could have seen tbe welcome accorded to the Protestant Rector of Kenmare by the laige body of Catholic clergymen present, and heard the derisive laughter witn which the latur greeted the prophecy th\t they were to be bribed from tbeir aLegiance to a cause to which they have always rendered the s -rvices of loyal and unselfish patriots, the prophets would be silent for a while. The whole proceedings were a grand exhibition of the charitable and tolerant spirit tfcat is the breath of National hie in Inland, and a testimony that neither flatterer nor firebrand shall change it. They witnessed, too, to the unbreakable union tbat exists between the people of Great Britain and the people of Ireland. It is a union founded on a basis that transcends the patty policies of the mome it — a basis of high intention, lofty motive, and truihtul and iighteous purpose. When ihe orators set themselves, as Mr. Stansfeld declared at tbe start he would do, to sink temporary and accidental issues, and to turn to the " principles policy, and great objects," which are the life of the present movement, the mists disappeared. It only needed the eloquent statement

of the posmon of the grea 1 Liberal party which Mr. ritanfi -Id made to do that, and it only nee led the hearty acceptance of his position on tb^ part of the assembled thousands, to ehov that the atti'ude of the advocates of Irish liberty here and ' Great Britian towards one another is unchanged and unchangeabk

For what is the position which Mr. Stansfeld takes up f He does not mmcc his words in order not to frighten the old women of the political arena. He dtfines it as the characteristic of the Liberal attitude towards Ireland that they believe ia the fact of Irish nationality. Whatever plan, or scheme, or Bill theyioffer for the settlement

of the Irish question will take that fact into account and will aim «t the recognition of our nationhood. They do not accept the £a, unwillingly or propose grudgingly to recognise it. They welcome if and respect us for being true to it. " That spirit," said Mr. Stansfeld, " that instinct of nationality ia providentially implanted in the human heart, and I say, Woe to the statesman who would presume to crui-h it out of existence." That woeful presumption is Lord Salisbury's, and Lord Hartingtonp, and Mr. Chamberlain's. It is a vain one, Mr. Btansfeld believes, because it is being resisted by a party thai has Dever known defeat ; but if it were possible for them to succeed they would be " guilty of the greatest crime of which humanity is capable, the murder of the life of a nascent nation." Nor does Mr. Stansfelct misunderstand Irish nationality. He has traced Its historic origin and watched its growth through the suffering which he regretfully confessed was inflicted by his own countrymen. " I know something of national questions," he declared in an eloquent passage of his speech, "and I know of no nation in history which has earned its nationality by more suffering and has attained a greater right to it than the Irish people. Born in the black days of utter and brutal oppression, nursed through centuries either of discredit or of brutal tyranny ; fed, I might say, almost upon the decimation of your population, the spirit surviving, the body dead — on the decimation of your population by famine and enforced emigration, the destruction of your imperial interests by penal laws invented and passed in order to destroy, 1 aay that the nationhood of Ireland has attained its majority, let who will give the lie to its life." Ibis is the gospel put forward authoritatively in the name of English Liberalism. There is no man or cause on earth to weaken the alliance of Ireland with ita honest apostles, least of all the man and the cause stained by the tears and blood of unhoused, plundered, and murdered liish peasants.

But this alliance has yet another basis. Mr. Moretou, Dr, Robertson, and Bey. Charles Beriy described it in their speeches. The alliance is not meiely one between Irish Nationalists and the pledged and trusted friends of Irish nationality. It is the alliance of a people plundered, outraged, and wronged in the name of class privilege with a people who suffer in their own measure from tne Bame oppression, and who have not hesitated to suffer for the moment in silence in order that Ireland shall have its fair chance of full rediess. Dr. KobeiUon declared that the workingmen and workingwomen of England have made great sacrifices for the Irish people, We recognise that and we are grateful for it, and it enables us to accept the assurance that the wrongs of Ireland, though perpetrated in the name of England, were perpetrated by men who had not the sanction of the English people. In a bitter school we have learned the lesson of sympathy with the masses id every land, and the cause of the masses in Great Britain is not less dear to us because their oppressors have been our oppressors. This sympathy constitutes the bond between us a double bond, which no divergence ot opinion on matters that depend upon the conscience of each can weaken or break. We are the sworn brothers, cot merely of the fiiends of Irish freedom, but of the friends of social freedom and regeneration ; and the great welcome ot Tuesday to the representatives ot the masses of Great Britain was our pledge of that brotherhood. He is a man ot little faith in the cause of Ireland anu in the cause of the people who thinks that either the Irish masses or their leaders can be weakened in their faithfulness to that pledge.