Mr. John Redmond addressed the members of the Eighty Club,
who are making a fortnight's tour in Ireland, on Friday week. Mr. Redmond said that their visitors would find Ireland no longer " most distressful," but alert, self- confident, self-reliant, and at last beginning to prosper, thanks to the settlement of the land question, the University question, and the institution of a great system of
local self-government. But the increasing prosperity of Ireland, so far from weaning the people from self-government, had made them all the keener to secure it. He was glad the members of the Eighty Club were to meet the Irish Unionists during their stay, for they were brother Irishmen and would be an import- ant and powerful part of the Irish nation under Home Rule. But he denied the right of any small minority of the people permanently to overbear the will of the vast majority, either in Ireland or in any other country in the world. All that Ireland asked, said Mr. Redmond in conclusion, was that she might be permitted to take her proper place as a loyal and contented portion of the Empire upon terms similar to those which, after years and years of turmoil, disloyalty, and rebel- lion, had brought peace and loyalty to Canada, Australia, and South Africa. Mr. Redmond's speech only heightens our curiosity about the terms of the forthcoming Home Rule Bill.
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