THE CLERICAL ADDRESS TO MR. GLADSTONE.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."]
Srn,—As one of the clergymen who signed the memorial to Mr. Gladstone, I hope you will in fairness allow me to protest against the assumption that the Home-rule movement is only an agrarian question, as stated in your comments of March 10th.
I have been a Home-ruler for a great many years, and have heard Home-rule attributed to American influence and American money, as it is now attributed to land-greed. The desire for Home-rule is older than American influence, more deeply seated than to owe anything but increased power to American gold ; and though connected with agrarian questions, was quite as strong before the Land League or the "Plan of Campaign," as it is now. Having no claim to be considered a politician, I was only generally interested by sympathy in the Home-rule ques- tion till I read Sir Gavan Duffy's "Young Ireland" in 1881. Then I became a Home-ruler by conviction, assured that the movement, though it had been, and might be, alloyed with baser motives, owed origin to a deep national impulse. That since then misery has made the Irish patriots acquainted with strange bedfellows, is, in my judgment, due to the perversity with which we English, conscious of our own rectitude of pur- pose, refuse to believe that any one can be unhappy under our beneficent rule.
We have grudgingly given the Irish many things, but not what they want, and because we have not given it, they have been compelled, in trying to force upon us the conviction of their earnestness, to adopt measures from which, I suppose, all the true men in the movement revolt as much as we do. I do not think that history teaches us that any patriot can have quite clean hands ; he must work with men and with move- ments as he finds them. I may surely feel that I should have been on Cromwell's side, without approving of all that he did, or all done by the party he headed.
As those who, like myself, have signed the memorial are sup- posed to be subverters of order, will you allow me to say that I signed the memorial only in general approval of the principle of Home-rule P I crossed out in the copy sent me all relating to coercion. To me, law is sacred, and if any man breaks it he ought to suffer. I do not quarrel with the knife that cuts me. Law- breaking might become an occupation on which men would enter with a light heart if the penalties were not severe.—I am, Sir, &c., [The facts are against our correspondent. Home-rule lan- guished in Ireland under Mr. Gavan Duffy, under Mr. Isaac Butt, and under Mr. Parnell until Mr. Davitt persuaded him to take up the agrarian question, in order to stimulate the tenant-farmers to identify themselves with Home-rule.—En. Spectator.]
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