16 DECEMBER 1911, Page 3

Colonel Seely attended a Nationalist meeting at Newry on Sunday

in company with Mr. Devlin and delivered a speech on Home Rule. After observing that he believed he was the first British Minister to stand on a Nationalist platform in Ulster, and that he was proud of the privilege, he said that he came with the message that the Government and the whole Liberal Party would stand or fall by Irish Home Rule. He denounced Mr. Boner Law's speech as mean, unworthy, and ill-informed, declared that the Executive Government of Ireland was divorced from all democratic feelings, and asserted that they had in Ireland a Chief Secretary who was trying his best to fill offices that it required eight or ten men to fill in England, Scotland, or Wales. This tribute to Mr. Birrell's assiduity, when one recalls his action during the Irish railway strike, must have caused no little amusement in Dublin.