There was a public meeting at Reading on Wednesday to
welcome a deputation from the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union. The Mayor (Mr. A. Hill) presided, and strong resolutions against any repeal of the Union were passed and spoken to. Mr. Pen- rose Fitzgerald, M.P., declared that it was not the Irish, but the Irish-Americans, who had brought about the recent revolution. "As Chairman of the Grand Jury of Cork, and as one who had lived for the last five winters among his people in the South of Ireland, he knew well what the people suffered from the opera- tions of the National League. He should like the English people to see under what conditions the inhabitants of the South of Ireland lived. It was a perfect hell upon earth." Mr. Walter, who also made a speech, said that he had met an Irish Nationalist once in a railway carriage, who said frankly :—" We shall get everything we ask. You English have no fight left in you. You have been going down in the world ever since the Duke of Wellington's death, and you are pretty well used up." That is a very rash assumption. But perhaps the worst omen for the future of the two countries is the doable fact that the Irish Nationalists really think this, and that the English people are quite willing that they should think it,—and, indeed, hardly know themselves under what conditions they would be roused to prove the assumption false.
Previous page
