OUR IRISH LETTER

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 12, 22 March 1906, Page 9

OUR IRISH LETTER

(From our own correspondent.) Dublin, January, 1906. For a whole month we have read elections, talked elections, thought elections, breathed elections : notlunu else has been in the air to breathe, so that it is now a comfort to have the atmosphere free of them and minds at rest as to results. In England the excitement has -been intense, while the upheaval brought about by the swing of the pendulum is almost unprecedented in Parliamentary history But all the hubbub makes very little difference here in Ireland where, as far back as my memory of politics goes, there has been but one ruling idea, one purpose amongst the mass of the people, come Tory Whig Liberal, Conservative, what not : ' Who's going to let us mind our own business'? ' This idea has, as of course you knew long ago returned 83 Home Rule members to Parliament and' 20 anti-Home Rulers, the latter including two from Dublin University. This is the whole General Election work as far as Ireland is concerned. The Elections were tame, very tame. The days of 0 Connell and Vescy Fitzgerald, cracked heads and faction fights are gone for ever, and with them, somehow all the wit and fun of old election times in Ireland' Ihe candidates; of rival politics and the voters of rival Home Rule or Orange colors are as sweet and polite to each other as if they were not in deadly earnest at all ; all the hard knocks (and they really are not many) are given on paper, and it is no longer worth a man's while to make a bitter but witty joke at his opponent's expense. Business is business, and the Irish electors just vote _as they have done now for a generation, let parties change and play see-saw as they will in England. The Late Chief Secretary. After West Belfast, which Mr. Devlin wrested from the Orangemen of thai; city, the most interesting contest we have had was that in South Dublin, where a bitter Orange faction whipped up every power Unionism could muster to insure the election of Mr. Walter Long, late Chief Secretary for Ireland, a man who was rejected by three constituencies in England and whose brain-power may be gauged by the too truthful want of tact shown by him in an electioneering speech made by him in Dublin when addressing a Unionist audience : ' I am not,' he said, ' ashamed to confess that I found, during my tenure of office, net alone that there were interesting problems to be solved, but that to live in Ireland, as the Minister j responsible for the Government, was to spend a very pleasant and agreeable time. i do not wish to blow my own trumpet— but while I managed to do a good deal of work, I also managed to get a great deal of fun, and I regret very much that I am no longer aWle to follow: an Irish pack of hounds or to travel over Ireland and meet Irishmen in various conditions and positions in society and spend, as I have spent, many pleasant days and evenings. . . As Chief Secretary I have had the privilege of enjoying a delightful residence in the Phoenix Park ; it has been my privilege to have sumptuous apartments in Dublin Castle ; it has been my privilege, and a very important one, to draw a very fat salary out of the Imperial revenue as Chief Secretary.' Mr. Long's candid definition of his idea .of a Chief Secretary's duties in Ireland, in return for a delightful residence in the Phoenix Park, etc., did not hinder the Dublin Conservatives from voting for him to -a man and returning him by a large majority. • The principal matter to be noted in these General Elections, aa far as they regard us, is that before and during the fray in England and in Ireland the Conservatives hammered at one assertion, namely : that every man who voted for a Liberal candidate, that every man who voted for Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman gave a vote for Home Rule in Ireland, and a fortnight ago the ' Times ' wrote : ' Let there be no shadow of doubt about it, Home Rule is an issue of the General Election of 1906.' Now, we are told that what is logically plain to every mind must be true, ergo, as, after such an appeal, the English electors have returned such a vast majority of Liberals to Parliament, it must follow that they have returned them in order that they may give Ireland He me Rule. Yet we all know well that it is not so ; we know that the English have voted Liberal because they want free food ; because; they are sick of