Mr. Bonar Law was the principal speaker at a dinner
held by the Nonconformist Association yesterday week. After describing the nature of the influence exerted by the Prime Minister on his supporters by doles and rewards, Mr. Boner Law noted that although the House of Commons had ceased to be a true legislative assembly, he had no intention of following the advice of those who urged that the Unionists should walk out of the House in a body, to call the attention of the country to the farce that was being enacted. They had to think not only of to-day but of the future. The House of Commons was drugged, it was not dead; and they believed that the time would come again when it would become once more the free assembly of a free people. Besides, in continuing the fight they were able to expose the absurdities of the Bill, the strange arguments of its supporters, the executive anomalies it involved, and the futility of its safeguards. He vigorously repudiated the view that opposition to Home Rule meant hostility to the Roman Catholic religion. There was no Protestant supremacy in Ireland ; on the contrary, the Roman Catholic religion enjoyed in Ireland not only a freedom but an influence which it did not enjoy in any Catholic country in Europe to-day. The Presbyterians of Ulster, the people most bitterly opposed to Home Rule in Ireland, had never had any part in Protestant ascendency except to suffer from it. Ho acquitted the Nationalist leaders personally of any religious animosity, but by Mr. Redmond's own showing the strongest power behind the Nationalists to-day was the Ancient Order of Hibernian, and the Cork Free Press, which reflected the views of Mr. O'Brien, had said that the domination of such a society would make Ireland a hell, light the flame of civil war in its midst, and blight every hope of its future pro- sperity.
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