MR. MORLEY'S TASK IN IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 107

MR. MORLEY'S TASK IN IRELAND

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becomes at once apparent. The English Tory grows chilly over Mr. John Redmond's Home Rule article in the ' Nineteenth Century,' as the Tory cheers dried up in the House of Commons while Mr. Redmond insisted that the Irish Parliament was to be 'a minor Parliament.' The Home Rule resolution arrived at the day after the anniversary demonstration at Mr. Parnell's grave was in substance one which, I presume, any meeting of English Home Rulers would accept as a commonplace. The Irish people are to have the control of an unarmed police, they are to have the appointment of their own judges and magistrates, they are to be at liberty to legislate upon the land question if the Imperial Parliament itself will not undertake an immediate and final settlement of the question. There is nothing new in that. It is as old as Boulogne. The only points contended for by Mr. Parnell, at Boulogne, were the above. He did not at all make any point as to the veto a condition of his retirement. He did not, of course, raise it in his suggestions to Mr. Gladstone prior to the Bill of 1886. The veto is a question rich in pedantic controversies and obstructive possibilities, but of little practical moment to two nations honestly determined upon reconciliation. The Colonial Secretary's power of overhauling the affairs of Canadian and Australian colonies at will is the veto in the most objectionable form it could well assume; and yet what Colonial Secretary's office would be worth a week's purchase if he proceeded to play Caesar over the elected representatives of Victoria or the Dominion? There is no difference in essence between the Liberals and the Irish Party, or between the Redmondites and either. The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is the admitted basis of all negotiations. The Imperial Parliament could not, if it would, divest itself of the power … continue reading »

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