The Irish Quakers have drawn up a memorable addrese in
regard to Home-rule, and forwarded the same by post to over 8,000 of their fellow-members in Great Britain. The address is signed by 1,376 out of the 1,690 Irish Quakers who are over sixteen years of age. Considering that some were unable to sign because of illness, and that others were absent from home, those who refused to sign because they did not agree with the address must have been a very trifling number. The address appeals to the English and, Scotch Friends "to con- sider their responsibilities" in relation to the Home-rule Bill. The Irish Quakers believe that the Irish Legislature will be dominated by 'clerical rulers," whom "experience has shown to be frequently unmindful of the claims of equal civil and
religious liberty, and of whose modes of action the events of recent times in Ireland do not enable us to take a more hopeful view." The so-called safeguards which have boon introduced into the Bill are "almost, if not wholly, illusory." They earnestly desire the peace and pros- perity of all around them. "Yet we cannot," they go on, "ignore many facts and circumstances of which our friends in England are necessarily unaware, and we are solemnly con- vinced that our rights and liberties, both civil and religious, and those of our fellow-countrymen in Ireland of all conditions and of all religions, cannot be securely guaranteed, as they now are, under the new and unprecedented arrangements proposed to be made." Those who know what Quakers are all the world over will realise how much these quiet, passion- less phrases mean. The Friends do not move unless there is real cause,
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