One hundred years ago
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 £5,000 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 Westminster 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 full opinion on the larger question of Imperial Federation; but I agree with you that the continued Irish representa- tion at Westminster will immensely facilitate such a step, while the coun- trary provision in the Bill of 1886 would have been a bar.'
The Spectator, 14 July 1888
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