LORD RIPON AND IRISH IDEAS.
[TO TH2 EDITOR OF T52 " SPEOTATOR."1
Srn,—The interesting letter of Professor Goldwin Smith in your issue of last week invites a reply from any one who is anxious, as I and many other Irishmen are, to see some solution of the Irish problem undertaken. Lord Ilipou asserted that Ireland must be governed in accordance with Irish ideas. To dispute this common-sense axiom, Professor Goldwin Smith writes, as I say, an interesting letter, mixing up politics, history, and all the sectarian themes which make Irish government by Great Britain so difficult. If a foreigner were to say Great Britain must be governed by British ideas, every one would agree, and say it was self-evident; and yet in Great Britain there are as many national antipathies, political, historical, and sectarian troubles, as there are in Ireland, though perhaps, owing to the very fact of Great Britain being governed in accordance with British ideas, they are not as acute as they are in Ireland. There are also within the island of Great Britain several nationalities, and yet they all work together because they are governed in accordance with British ideas. Ireland, on the other hand, has always been governed by external ideas, very often foreign to the sentiments of the people living there. The result has been a certain amount of failure, and therefore many of us who for a very long time have hoped for some change for the better have now become what are called, for the sake of a better name. Home-rulers, or what Lord Ripon calls "men who wish to see Ireland governed according to Irish ideas." Professor Goldwin Smith is wrong in thinking that because our history has been tragic, and because we have been alternately the cat's-paw of one religion
or another, one King or another, one conqueror or another, one personality or another, we have no nationality. The truth is, the whole trend of the best and purest Irish thought is towards a nationality which will embrace all Irishmen— Protestants, Presbyterians, Catholics, Celts, Teutons, West Britons, or Anglo-Normans—so long as love of their native land is the essential of that nationality. I am also glad to see that all those who advocate this national life for Ireland deprecate in their speeches and by their actions the old time-worn dislike to England and English rule. Ireland has (within the short period that has elapsed since Englishmen have understood the necessities of Irish life, and thereby assisted the development of that life) made great strides towards true national existence, and a remarkable change to a more friendly attitude between North and South, and between all classes and creeds, has been accentuated in many ways during the last ten years. Irishmen who wish to see their country well governed, and in accordance with Irish ideas, must look forward to the future, and not, as Professor Goldwin Smith does, back to the past.—I am, Sir, Szc.,
62 Green Street, W.
CASTLETOWN OF UPPER OSSORT.
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