THE COMEDY OF HOME RULE.
[To vas EDITOR Or THIS " SricciATos."] Sta,—As Mr. Boner Law said the other day, the situation would be comic if it were not so tragic—in more ways than one. The truth is that Ireland does not want Home Rule at all; she is bored at the very thought of it. The only Home Rulers at the present day are the "intellectuals" who brood over Ireland's ancient wrongs in English at home, and recount them with extreme difficulty in Gaelie and kilts on the platform, some of the priests who think it advisable to be on the winning side, the gombeen men, the slum-owners, and the politicians who look forward to administration as a Tammany-sent means of enriching their friends and impoverishing their enemies. The farmers, the backbone of Ireland's greatest industry, are dead against it practically to a man. The Wyndham Act gave them their farms, and Sir Horace Plunkett gave them their markets. They want law and order above all things. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The Nationalist Party, when they found that land purchase and co-operation were making the people contented and therefore loyal, hung up the one and hounded the author of the other out of office. A large proportion of the Roman Catholic clergy regard the Bill with alarm, while the big manufacturing industries will have none of it. Ireland, with the exception of Dublin. in which the municipality is in the hands of the Nationalists, was never so prosperous as at the present time. The savings banks are full of money, and the whole country is blossoming like the rose. There ia little doubt that, if there were real secrecy of the ballot in Ireland, Home Rule would be defeated at the polls there to-morrow. It is now or never for Mr. Redmond, and well he knows it.
Half the Empire is administered by loyal Irishmen. Wherever you go over the world you find them doing their country's work with brilliant success. Are these the men to whom England shows her gratitude? No. It is the men who fawned on Ford the dynamiter when he was alive and weep over him now that he is dead that we delight to honour. An Irishman kept the flag flying in Ladysmith, an Irish- man relieved Mafeking, an Irishman saw us through the dark days and brought us out triumphant in the end. Are these the nation's heroes? No, but the men who cheered Colenso in the House of Commons and covered the Irish hilltops with bonfires to celebrate the ?dodder River ; the men who brand as a traitor every Irishman that takes service under the Union Jack. Our children's children, when they read the brazen joke in days to come, will tarn over the page for very shame.
Let us free our minds of cant. Ireland is " entitled " to Home Rule because Ireland has eighty votes to sell. Eighty votes to sell on the one band, and a million and a half of Protestants to sell upon the other. (Even Dr. Clifford must have qualms.) Our unhappy country is to be given over to civil war, and the British Army is to be split from top to bottom, because Mr. Asquith has to deliver the goods.
Sir, out of great evil good may come. At the first shot that is fired in Ulster, the Liberal Party will be swept off the face of the earth for ever.—I am, Sir,
LEINSTERMAN.
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