Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who is said, on Mr. Parnell's authority,
to be getting £40,000 a year out of the South African diamond-fields, has sent Mr. Parnell a cheque for 25,000 for the promotion of the Irish Home-rule movement, —promising to send him another cheque of the same amount,—on the ground that he thinks Home-rule in Ireland will open the way to the Federation of the Colonies, a view in which Mr. Parnell appears to be now very willing to encourage him, for he declares the exclusion of the Irish representatives from West- minster to have been a defect in the Home-rule measure of 1886 which is not likely to be repeated. "It does not come so much within my province," says Mr. Parnell, "to express a fall opinion on the larger question of Imperial Federation; but 1 agree with you that the continued Irish representation at Westminster will immensely facilitate such a step, while the contrary provision in the Bill of 1886 would have been a bar."
Previous page
