Against Home Rule: The Case for the Union: (1912) — John Shaqi
Against Home Rule: The Case for the Union: (1912)
History
Against Home Rule: The Case for the Union: (1912)
Home rule -- Ireland; Ireland -- Economic conditions; Land tenure -- Ireland
the Roman Catholic Church to be absolutely null and void unless they are
celebrated in a Roman Catholic Church. We have also to bear in mind that
these marriages will not be permitted by the priesthood except under
conditions which many Irish Protestants consider humiliating and
impossible. No more deadly attack upon the faith of the Protestant
minority in the three provinces in Ireland can be imagined than to make
a denial of their faith the essential condition to the enjoyment of the
highest happiness for which they may look upon this earth.
The second decree prohibits, under pain of excommunication, any Roman
Catholic from bringing an ecclesiastical officer before a Court of
Justice. Even under the Union Government this decree is a danger to the
liberty of the subject. Under an independent Irish Government, nothing
except that vast anti-clerical revolution which some people foresee
could possibly reassure the people as to the attitude of the Executive
Government in dealing with a large and privileged class. These
considerations make one more reason for refusing the Colonial analogy
which is so ingeniously pressed by such apologists for Home Rule as Mr.
Erskine Childers. Mr. Amery analyses the confusion of thought between
Home Rule as meaning responsible Government and Home Rule as meaning
separate government which underlies the arguments of Liberal Home
Rulers. Ireland has Home Rule in the sense of having free representative
institutions. She is prevented by geographical and economic conditions
from enjoying separate government under the same terms on which the
Colonies possess it. As Mr. Amery points out, the United Kingdom is
geographically a single island group. No part of Ireland is so
inaccessible from the political centre of British power as the remoter
parts of the Highlands, while racially no less than physically Ireland
is an integral part of the United Kingdom. Economically also the two
countries are bound together in a way which makes a common physical
policy absolutely necessary for the welfare of both countries. The
financial arguments which might have made it possible to permit an
independent fiscal policy for Ireland under free trade, have disappeared
with the certain approach of a revision of the tariff policies of
England. There can be no separate tariffs for the two countries, or even
a common tariff, without a common Government to negotiate and enforce
it. If there were no other objection to the establishment of a separate
Government in Dublin, it would be impossible because legislative
autonomy can only be coupled with financial independence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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