THE PARLIAMENTARY FUND

New Zealand Tablet, 19 March 1914, Page 55

THE PARLIAMENTARY FUND

MANIFESTO BY THE TRUSTEES The National Trustees—Most Rev, Dr. O’Donnell, Bishop of Raphoe, Mr. John E. Redmond, M.P., and Mr. J. Fitzgibbon, M.P.—have issued the following manifesto: ‘ Fellow Countrymen,—For many years the National Trustees have at this season appealed to the Irish people for money necessary to carry on the national movement. This year there is every ground for confidence that the Homo Rule Bill will become law within a few months of the present date, and the long struggle in pursuance of which these appeals have been made will bo closed in complete victory. Under these circumstances, it has been decided that unless in the event of some Wholly Unforeseen Emergency, no appeal for funds will be issued this year. Communications have, however, reached us from many parishes in different parts of the country stating that collections are going on, or are about to be taken up, for the fund : and as we do not desire to prevent these parishes from taking a part in the response to this last appeal, it has been decided to keep the fund open for some weeks. We trust that all those districts which have not yet sent in their collections will do so at the earliest possible date. The response to last year’s appeal has been magnificent, and the amount already contributed creates a record, being the largest subscribed in one year for political purposes since the Homo Rule movement was inaugurated more than forty years ago. This fact alone is a conclusive answer to those who have been recently repeating the old and well-worn falsehoods—that the Irish people no longer believe in the cause of self-government, and have lost confidence in the Irish National Party and its leader. On behalf of the Irish Party and the National Organisation, we tender to the subscribers to„this year’s fund our congratulations and our hearty thanks for their generosity. ‘ At General Election after General Election, the people have recorded, through the ballot boxes, their confidence in the Irish Party, and by every means open to them have declared this confidence to be unabated and unchanged. And now, on the eve of the most momentous parliamentary session for Ireland since the Act of Union, they have once more expressed their confidence in the Irish Party by their increased subscriptions for the national fund, and by so doing have enormously strengthened the hands of the Party for the great and arduous work they have before them.

Considerably more than a hundred men and women agents of the Ulster Unionist organisation have been at work in Great Britain for the last two years They have travelled through the country from end to end penetrating into the homes of the people, circulating the most °

Abominable Falsehoods and Slanders

against the Protestant Nationalists and the Catholic people of Ireland. To save the cause of Home Rule this campaign had to be met and defeated. This has been done through the means of the Irish Press Agency the members of the Irish Parliamentary Party, and the United Irish League of Great Britain. Thousands of meetings have been organised in every part of Great Britain and addressed by members of the Irish Party and by representatives of the Protestant Home Rulers of Ulster, whose help has been invaluable. Millions of pamphlets and leaflets have been issued; and at several by-elections in Great Britain the agents of the Ulster Unionists have been met and their falsehoods and misrepresentations exposed. And here we must say a word of gratitude to the United Irish League of Great Britain, by which the Irish vote has been held loyal and steady under circumstances of great difficulty. This campaign lias been enormously costly, and has been a severe strain on the physical energies of the Irish Party, but the result has been a great triumph, and the position to-day is that, from end to end of Great Britain, the Home Rule issue is thoroughly understood by the people : and to the merits of Home Rule itself opposition in Great Britain has almost disappeared. In Ireland, in addition to the work of the various bureaux connected with the head office of the United Irish League, which" have proved invaluable to the people in connection with the administration of the Laborers Acts, the Old Age Pensions Act, and the Evicted Tenants Acts and other matters, the work of registration has been attended to with the most satisfactory results, so that to-day Derry City is safe for the Home Rule cause, and probably at least two other seats in Ulster which are now held by Unionists would, in the event of by-elections, be captured for the national cause. Ireland faces the future with the confidence which arises from the union amongst her own people and faith in the justice" of her cause. She feels for the first- time that the most enlightened of British statesmen and of the British masses are with her heart and soul in her demand for recognition of her nationality and the restoration of her Parliament. And in the near and certain triumph of this policy she sees the basis of a true and lasting union between the British and the Irish peoples.