CURRENT LITERATURE.
IRELAND AND THE EMPIRE.
Mr. T. W. Rolleston, an Irishman and a Nationalist, who distinguished himself during the acute period of the Home-rule agitation by his courageous denunciation of the terrorism of the League, has published under the title of Ireland, the Empire, and the War (Sealy, Bryers, and Walker, Dublin, ld.) a timely and eloquent appeal to his countrymen to face the great problem of the relation of Ireland to the Anglo-Celtic Empire, and solve it in a rational manner. How that problem should be solved, in his opinion, can best be indicated by the following quotation. " Let us, while steadily urging forward our national demand, at the same time claim and hold that, place at the centre of authority of the Anglo-Celtic Empire which the facts of physical nature, of race, and of history have assigned to us. Physically and politically indeed we cannot help taking that place. But it rests with our- selves, and our own measure of capacity, insight, and worthiness, to treat it either as a prison into which we are thrust by invin- cible law, or a vantage ground whence we can exercise a world- wide power and fulfil a mission as high as that which a thousand years ago made Ireland a fountain of European civilisation and Christianity. All that is needed is to clear our minds of a confusion which is really of modern growth—it never clouded the minds of our fighting ancestors in their fiercest struggles with English power, —the confusion between England and the Government at West- minster on the one hand, and the Empire, and the Crown which symbolises its unity, on the other. These great forces, the Crown and the Empire, are not hostile to us, unless in so far as we wantonly array them against us." People talk of killing Home-rule with kindness." What Mr. Rolleston wants is that Irishmen should kill, or at any rate modify, the Union by their loyalty as citizens of the Empire. Critics who might have been disposed to regard this view as visionary cannot but be impressed by the corroborative testimony since furnished by the meeting of the Dublin Corporation, where, as an Irish correspondent has said, "Dublin witnessed the definite appearance of an avowedly loyal and Imperialistic Nationalism which carried a vote against the uproar of a howling mob and against the strongest pressure of the Parliamentary Party." The vote in favour of the address to the Queen was carried by a substantial majority, on precisely the principles put forward by Mr. Rolleston in his brilliant pamphlet. In this context it would be unjust not to mention that the cry, "Ireland and the Empire," was first raised by another Irishman, Mr. Nicholas Flood Davin, Q.C. (Member for West Assiniboia in the Canadian House of Commons), some five-and-twenty years ago. Since then Mr. Davin has made a great position for himself in Canada as a lawyer, writer, orator, and wit. In the Jubilee year he represented Canada at Boston,
and has recently spoken with remarkable effect and oratories. splendour on the subject of Canada and the Empire, and the despatch of the Canadian contingents. In the speech delivered in 1876 there was one passage that may be regarded as truly prophetic. Mr. Davin said :—" That day will never come when scattered nations of the British race, looking with loyal love from every compass to the little mother isles-
' Girt by the dim strait sea, And multitudinous wall of wandering wave,
and reposing safe and glorious in that sapphire embrace, shall turn round to call on Canada to add her voice to swell the peal of filial gratulation, of proud assurance, of co-operation, and, should need be, of help—and will turn in vain." At a moment when England is full of gratitude for the splendid services of the Canadians in the field, it is well to take admiring note of the men who fought the battle which made the sending of contingents possible, and amongst these men Mr. Davin stands out as the pioneer of Imperialism in Canada.
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