Home rule -- Ireland; Ireland -- Economic conditions; Land tenure -- Ireland
Here is our difficulty under Home Rule. Irish Protestants see that they
must either refuse to go into an Irish Parliament, or else go into it as
a hopeless minority, and turn it into an arena for the maintenance of
their most elementary rights; in which case the Irish Parliament would
be simply a cockpit of religio-political strife. But it would be a great
mistake to suppose that the religious difficulty is confined to Irish
Protestants. It is a difficulty which would become in time a crushing
burden to Roman Catholics themselves. The yoke of Rome was found too
heavy for Italy, and in a generation or two it would be found too heavy
for Ireland. But for the creation of the Papal ascendency in Ireland,
the responsibility must rest, in the long run, on Great Britain herself.
England and Scotland, the most favoured lands of the Reformation, by
establishing Home Rule in Ireland, will do for Rome what no other
country in the world would do for her. They would entrust her with a
legislative machine which she could control without check, hand over to
her tender mercies a million of the best Protestants of the Empire, and
establish at the heart of the Empire a power altogether at variance with
her own ideals of Government, fraught with danger, and a good base of
operations for the conquest of England. Can this be done with impunity?
Can Great Britain divest herself of a religious responsibility in
dealing with Home Rule? Is there not a God in Heaven who will take note
of such national procedure? Are electors not responsible to Him for the
use they make of their votes? If they sow to the wind, must they not
reap the whirlwind?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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