LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
HOME-RULE AND SEPARATION.
[To Tea EDITOR Or Tea Brsukrw."]
attach no importance to Mr. Dickinson's reference to any extreme language used by Irish Nationalist leaders, for the following reasons:- 1. In heated controversy of this kind men are apt to use language which runs ahead of their sober thoughts. Kossuth and other Hungarian leaders not only claimed entire separation from the Austrian Empire, but raised an army and waged a great war to establish their claim. Yet they accepted Home-rule in lieu of Separation. Garibaldi and other Italian Nationalists intrigued, and argued, and fought for the establishment of an Italian Republic. Yet they accepted a Constitutional Monarchy when the question came before them for practical decision. There were leaders of public opinion in Canada before the grant of Canadian Home-rale who agitated for complete separation from Great Britain and annexation to the United States. Those centrifugal tendencies have been completely cured by Home- rule. Examples might be multiplied ; bat these will suffice. On the other hand, the policy which Mr. Dickinson advocates lost us our American Colonies.
2. The equitable rule in controversy is to accept a man's in- terpretation of his own words. The Irish leaders have declared that they never used language inconsistent with their acceptance of Parliamentary Home-rule as a final settlement of the Irish Question. Mr. Parnell's denial of language attributed to him has been denounced as a lie. This does not seem to me a wise thing. But assume that Mr. Parnell did use the language attributed to him. What then P Ho is reported to have said that he would not rest till he had " severed the last link " of connection with England. Grattan declared :—" I will never rest content so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking to his rags." Yet everybody knows that the unity of the Empire, with Ireland as an integral part of it, had no more strenuous champion than Grattan at the very moment when he was using the language which I have quoted. Why should not Mr. Parnell's almost identical language, even if he used it, be capable of a like interpretation P 3. The extreme claims of the Nationalist leaders, taken at the worst, have been advanced as an alternative to the present system, not as an alternative to Home-rule.
4. Mr. Parnell and his followers have declared publicly and repeatedly without a word of dissent from Ireland, that they accepted Mr. Gladstone's scheme as a final settlement of the question.
5. Every motive of self-interest on the part of the Irish people makes against Separation. To suppose that the Irish would agitate for Separation after they got Home-rule, is to suppose that the Irish are a nation of incurable idiots. Individuals here and there may, like the swine of Gadara, rush headlong to destruction; but nations axe not capable of whole- sale suicide. The Irish peasant has an acute sense of his own interest, and is not at all likely to ruin himself without a motive.
I have known Ireland, more or less, for twenty years. I have taken the trouble to learn to speak the vernacular,—a wonderful key to the confidence of the Irish. I have talked to men and women in all classes, and I have been connected for some years with Irish land. I should not be surprised if I knew quite as much about Ireland as Mr. Dickinson does; and my opinion is that the cry of " Separation " is too shadowy a phantom to merit serious discussion.
But Mr. Dickinson cites against me the "convictions of the wisest, strongest, most serious, most statesmanlike minds in Great Britain." Assuming, for the sake of argument, the strict accuracy of his modest estimate, I reply that in cases of great reforms and Constitutional changes, the intellectual aristocracy of the day have been almost invariably on the wrong side. In the great controversy with America, the educated scafety of that generation denounced Burke as " a man of disordered intellect." Now we know who were the " Separatists," and who was the one pre-eminently wise man and true Unionist. But we have paid dearly for our knowledge. Abell omen !
If I am wrong in thinking that " the only alternative to the present system of governing Ireland is Home-rule," will Mr. Dickinson show me any better system on which the opponents of Home-rule will unite ? If you could transport Ireland two thousand miles from the British shore, it might be possible to govern it, mach more satisfactorily than it is governed now, on the Indian system. But we are at present attempting an im- posssible task in Ireland,—namely, arbitrary government on Parliamentary principles.
Mr. Dickinson charges against me the oft-repeated fallacy that I am " prepared to hand over the government of Ireland " to the present Irish Members. I am prepared to band over the government of Ireland, under proper Constitutional safeguards. to the people of Ireland, who will be free to elect their own representatives, and who, under Mr. Gladstone's Bill, would have been obliged to elect a large number of men of property.
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