Mr. William O'Brien made an interesting speech on the Conference
at Yonghal on Sunday last at a meeting of the All- for-Ireland League. The party that wrecked the Conference, he declared, would wreck itself at the polls in England, for the House of Lords could be induced to carry Home-rule infinitely more easily than England could be induced to abolish the House of Lords. "It would be a fatal policy to make the chance of Home-rule dependent on the chance of inducing England first to plunge into a revolution to overturn the *hole Constitution. The Conference might or might not break down. The hints of Mr. T. P. O'Connor and the Freeman that the Conference was already discussing Home- rule would turn out to be silly twaddle ; but if the Conference should succeed in working out some rational compromise as tO the House of Lords upon lines of mutual concession, they would have an unanswerable precedent for applying the same methods to some great Imperial settlement of the question of Irish self-government on federal lines." We are very far from wishing to regard the Conference as a half-way house to "Home-rule all round." None the leas, we welcome Mr. O'Brien's remarks as indicating a far saner view of the significance of the Conference than that shown by the leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party.
Previous page
