AN IRISH PEER PAYS TRIBUTE TO SINN FEIN

New Zealand Tablet, 23 September 1920, Page 13

AN IRISH PEER PAYS TRIBUTE TO SINN FEIN

H After his failure to carry his Dominion Home Rule .proposal. in the House of Lords, Lord Monteagle wrote a letter to the ' Irish Independent, -in ■ which he complained that V the House?'"of Commons is muzzled, and the -House of ' Lords "closes its ears" when the Irish ■question is introduced. Then he went on to f:say: "Meantime a totally new fact is emerging in Ireland which has hardly yet dawned on the British .public, and which the Government so far has failed to face. Far more significant than spectacular sieges; of police barracks or kidnapping of generals, or even than the sporadic and intermittent railway strikes, is the recent desertion of the King's Courts, and the rise of Sinn Fein Courts in their —the supersession of the R.I.C. by Sinn Fein police. The Sinn Fein Courts are steadily extending their jurisdiction and dispensing justice even-handed between man and man, Catholic and Protestant/ farmer and shopkeeper, grazier and cattle-driver, landlord and tenant. . The Sinn Fein police are arresting burglars, punishing cattle-drivers, patrolling the streets, controlling drink traffic, apparently in some cases with the acquiescence, of the local military authorities, who thus show themselves wiser than either the Castle officials or the British Government. Double Significance. And mark the double significance of this new fact. It shows the powerlessness, in Sir Horace Plunkett's phrase, of "government with the dissent of * the governed." It shows also the growing and remarkable capacity of the Irish people for self-government. The chief obstacle to a conciliation policy is the North-East Ulster problem. This is now proved insoluble at Westminster; it can only be solved in Ireland by Irishmen. Sinn Fein won't come to Westminster or negotiate with the Government, but Dominion self-government once given— not merely promised or offered—would come to an Irish Constituent Assembly and negotiate there with N.E. Ulster, which might then be in the proud position to keep Ireland—a united Ireland—a willing partner in the British Commonwealth.