AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC ON IRELAND.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] Sts,—I thank you much for giving farther publicity to the question I discussed in the Weekly Register, and for bringing before another and very influential circle of readers the argu- ments I adduced in favour of Irish self-government. That you, as editor of the leading Liberal weekly newspaper, were able to give but a partial and heavily-conditioned support and sympathy; not to my opinion, but to the cause I unworthily. advocate, was a disappointment. But the courtesy with which you treat, not me again, so much as my unpopular subject, bmboldens me to trespass on your space, in order to draw attention to two points touched by you in your late article.
1. I wish to recall to the minds of some, and to inform those who may not be aware of, the terms of the Act of Parliament, which once gave to Ireland what Ireland now reclaims,—self- government. They are as follows :—" That the said right [and I ask for your observance of this Parliamentary avowal] claimed by the people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by his Majesty (George III.) and the Parliament of that kingdom (Ireland), and in all cases whatever shall be, and is hereby declared to be, established and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time hereafter be questioned or question- able." This declaration, I think, should have modified much of what you wrote on the question of abstract justice.
2. Your article seems to assume that the Union has been justly carried out in practice. Allow me to quote the opinion of the late Mr. Isaac Butts than whom, probably, none was more qualified to speak. He says (I abbreviate his language): —"By the Act, restrictions were placed on the future action of Parliament, by imposing on it obligations termed essential and
fundamental conditions of the Union In many of their provisions the articles have been deliberately violated
We are not now governed by a Parliament administering a Treaty of Union, but by a Parliament exercising the supreme control and absolute power of legislation, exactly as if England and Ireland had always been one country, an Irish Parliament had never existed, a Treaty of Union had never been made. This is a form of Government which was never agreed to, and one to which the assent of an Irish Parliament never could have been obtained." (" Irish Federalism," 1870.) I hardly think that this fact could have been before your mind, when you wrote of " Ireland's behaviour under a policy of conciliation," or of " England's solemn obligations for which we are answer- able."—I am, Sir, &c., dthenceura Cleib, February 14th. ORBY SHIPLEY.
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