MR. MORLEY'S TASK IN IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 106

MR. MORLEY'S TASK IN IRELAND

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way unquestionably bears all before it for the moment.. Capitals are strangely often at opposite poles from their countries in such matters. M. Yves Guyot was almost the only non-Boulangist deputy returned by Paris at the General Election at which France effaced Boulanger. Dublin did not return a Nationalist member until 1885. That was not the fault of the working masses, who were always intensely Nationalist; but the country cannot forbear smiling at the Dublin Town Councillors who have taken to instructing Cork and Tipperary how to deal with Sassenach Lords-Lieutenant in the high heroic way.

In one respect, the most hopeless feature of our domestic quarrel is that it has no substantial cause which can be comprehended and removed, but is an affair of personal feeling. But this also has its advantages. The personal ill-feeling does not extend to Mr. Morley. Bitter things said in the heat of Committee Room No. 15, where the struggle was, in the nature of things, as fierce as one with guns and pistols on a Parisian barricade, are at the bottom of whatever resentment still survives against the victors. Mr. Morley's way of dealing with the last tragic passages of Mr. Parnell's great life was sympathetic, and even tender. He is known to have co-operated actively in the endeavour to save him by reconciling him to the step which his own councillors without exception favoured. A Dublin crowd may be induced to cross Mr. Morley's policy, but will not be easily brought to think evil of him.

The moment our opponents cease to appeal to the feeling of sorrow for Mr. Parnell's fate—which all honest Irish hearts share to the full as ardently as they—and come to state what practical differences of policy they have to show for their separate existence, the unsubstantially of the Redmondite feud as a factor in practical politics … continue reading »

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