LOOKING FORWARD

New Zealand Tablet, 8 May 1913, Page 53

LOOKING FORWARD

THE ‘ OLD HOUSE * IN COLLEGE GREEN In an interview which he gave to a representative of the Manchester Guardian on March 14, Mr. Redmond was full of hope and confidence for the future of Ireland. I We are now within sight,’ he said, of the end for which we have been working for so many years. A year on Monday . (St. Patrick’s Day) and Ireland will, have passed the last St. Patrick’s Day without a Parliament of her own. In the summer of 1914 the Home Rule Bill will become law under the Parliament Act. Of course a certain time will have to elapse after its enactment before the first Irish Parliament since the Union can be actually sitting. I suppose the present Lord Lieutenant will cease to hold office when the Act is passed, and a new Lord Lieutenant appointed by the terms of the Act for a fixed tenure. He will really be rather a Governor-General than a Lord Lieutenant. His first duty will be to choose a Ministry. Offices and departments must be created and set up, and for some months the Ministry will, no doubt, be occupied in drawing up and issuing Provisional Orders and preparing Standing Orders, which must be submitted to the Irish House of Commons when it is elected. But I hope that six months after the passing of the Bill this new Irish Government will be able to meet the elected representatives of Ireland. Should it fail to secure their confidence, or the confidence of the majority, then it will have to resign, and another Ministry representing . the views of that majority will take,its place.

The Old House,' and No Other.

' You may be quite certain,' Mr. Redmond said, in reply to a reference of mine to a rumor that the Irish Parliament could not return to the old Parliament House in College Green —' you may be quite certain that there is nothing whatever in these rumors. I have not myself heard them as much as suggested. Even if they had been, you may be sure that the universal sentiment in Ireland would insist on the Parliament going back there. It is said that the building is not quite convenient for modern Parliamentary uses. Even if it were, the ties of memory and tradition would be too strong to be broken. No Irishman would dream of having his Parliament anywhere else.

Ireland and Imperial Affairs.

' What of the Irish members who are to be left at Westminster ?'

' You will find, I think, that they will be a very good type of member —not at all of the uninterested absentee kind that some people seem to imagine. I have no doubt there will be a great desirel should have it myself if I were in that position—not to interfere at all in purely English or Scottish local affairs. I fancy they will distribute themselves over the three remaining great parties in the State. There will be some Liberals, some Labor men, and some Conservatives, just as the compact Irish vote in some English constituencies at present will find itself being distributed under the ordinary political headings. And of course Irish members will then take an active part in the affairs of the Empire as a whole. They will have no longer any reason for abstaining. They will be, like the rest of the House, candidates for office, and some of them, I do not doubt, will sit on the Treasury Bench. In a few years, just as no Ministry is likely to be formed now which does not contain members sitting for Scottish as well as English constituencies, no Ministry will be likely to be formed which does not contain a member sitting for an Irish constituency.

Anglo-American Relations Improved.

'"ln America,' he said, the strength of feeling is extraordinary. I have received unanimous resolutions (I hope to publish them shortly) from both Houses of the Legislatures of about half the States in the Union. They present a very striking series of facts. In no single case was any opposition offered to the resolution

being carried; in no case... either was it proposed by Irishmen. American public men who are not Irishmen are no less enthusiastically our supporters. Mr. Roosevelt recently wrote me an enthusiastic letter in which he declared himself a fervent supporter of Home Rule on one ground— there could be no real union between the two great Engilsh-speaking races till Home Rule came. ' '■-.-. -

' So far as the Irish in America are concerned they have never been so united as they are in support of the present Bill. There are still, of course, a few extreme men whom nothing would satisfy except complete separation and a separate State, but these are a handful. They do not affect the virtual unanimity with which Irish America supports the Bill.'

The Terms to the Landlords.

I asked Mr. Redmond what he had to say on the Government's promise in the King's Speech to bring forward this session a further Land Purchase Bill.

' It would be a fatal thing,' he said, ' if the land purchase scheme were not completed and at as early a date as possible. It is indeed a necessary part of the Home Rule settlement. Speaking for my own part and for Irish Nationalists generally, I should be glad to see the most generous terms possible offered to the landlords as part of that settlement. But I should not support such a course without conditions. The terms we shall be willing to support and to see given them will depend on their attitude towards the passage into law of the Home Rule Bill. If they will help to work the Act and take their part in the new Constitution, then I am sure they will have nothing to complain of. But if they think they can get very generous terms and remain hostile to the demands of the Irish nation and to Home Rule, I assure them they are mistaken.'