IRISH ROYALTY

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 12, 25 March 1909, Page 453

IRISH ROYALTY

The following leading article under the above heading appeared in the Dunedin Evening Star of March 19. Our evening contemporary, we may remark, is one of the, best informed secular papers of the Dominion ' on the Irish question. It thoroughly understands whereof it writes, and is neyer led astray by the partisan cable news on Irish affairs which finds its way to the Antipodes : -7—

'It is somewhat refreshing to . find a cable message concerning Ireland and the Irish people that is free from accusations of outrage- and crime, and bears testimony to their claims to humanity and loyalty. The world is told so much and so persistently of 'the "first that it comes as a surprise when we hear of the/ existence pf the seppnd. Ireland, we are afraid, is to many a country wJiolly given "over to treason, broken heads, plundered habitations, and' harried cattle. The Governor-General of Australia, however, does not accept this picture as historically accurate, ' and the Earl of Dudley, a member of Mr. Balfour's Unionist Administration, knows whereof he speaks. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for some years, and one of the most popular in recent times. He toured the country in a motor car with his -Majesty the King; he saw and spoke and associated with the people; and though an aristocrat of the aristocrats, he gave himself no " airs." On retiring from office he stood up in his place in the House of Lords and told his brother Peers that if they wanted a peaceful Ireland they must govern her according to Irish ideas. No surprise, therefore, need be expressed that on Ireland's great anniversary Lord Dudley should not only "preside at a St. Patrick's Day banquet, but tell his audience, and through them the world at large, that " he was convinced that the great majority of the people of Ireland were at heart as loyal- as any other people in the King's Dominions." A statement of this nature requires some courage, especially to a man of Lord Dudley's official rank, social status, and political affiliations. In saying what he did he possibly knew that he would cause offence to a considerable minority of his friends at Home and in Australia. But truth will out occasionally, and after all is said and done the GovernorGeneral of Australia was only repeating what he had said before, and what nearly every great English official in Ireland after a few years' practical experience has also said. Until Gladstone's day the Governments of Great Britain had done worse than nothing to make "the Irish people loyal. From the fearful days of the Wexford rebellion, when a J.P. who had treacherously gained admission to a sick rebel's room shot him dead in cold blood, and turned to the weeping wife to say, " You will now be saved the trouble of nursing your damned popish rebel husband,' until the day before yesterday Ireland has had small cause to be loyal. And yet there is and was no rational reason why she should not be as loyal as Scotland has been since her union with England. " Had England maintained an alien garrison in Scotland, had she refused for half a century political rights to the mass of .the Scottish nation, had. she imposed a land system that was a relic of confiscation and conquest," there would have been not one, but two Irelands to-day. The fault of Englishmen in the past has been. their attempt to govern Ireland the wishes and without the consent of the majority of the governed. Nor can England ever hope for a prosperous and contented Ireland until sbe whole-heartedly reverses this policy, accepts the situation as it is and will be, and I honestly legislates accordingly.'