The Moderator of the General Assembly of Presbyterians, the Rev.
R. J. Lynd, made the chief speech on behalf of the deputation, and an admirable one it was, disowning altogether anti-Catholic feeling, contending only for the guarantee which the Union gives for equal liberties and equal civil rights, expressing the strongest sympathies with the tenant-farmers in their effort to secure a wise revision of the Irish Land Laws, and declaring that if they had thought that Home-rule would give prosperity to Ireland, they would have adopted it with the utmost enthusiasm; but that, as on the contrary they believe that it would pat Ireland back a hundred years at least, by placing the wealth and education of Ireland at the disposal of a group of men who had shown no special capacity of any kind except as agitators who had again and again refused to be bound by the trammels of law, they had had no choice as patriots except to resist it. After the most careful inquiries, Mr. Lynd was himself convinced that, rightly or wrongly, the success of the Irish Home-rule movement must result in civil war.
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