England's Case Against Home RuleDicey, A. V. (Albert Venn)
History
England's Case Against Home Rule
Dicey, A. V. (Albert Venn)
Home rule -- Ireland
Home Rulers, it is clear, form already most exaggerated hopes of the
benefits to be conferred on Ireland by Home Rule; and, further, in their
own minds (naturally enough) confound Federalism with national
independence.
"Give Ireland," writes Mr. Finch,[35] "the management of her own
affairs, and you will see called into her service the ablest and most
capable of her sons; while, as things now stand, the intellect of
Ireland is shut out from all share in the administration. With careers
at home worthy of the best and ablest of the people, much of the wealth
which is now drained off from Ireland without any return, will be
expended in developing the industrial resources of the country;
industry will revive, and with the revival of industry will come
employment for the people. 'It is the difficulty of living by wages in
Ireland,' says Sir G.C. Lewis, 'which makes every man look to the land
for maintenance.' With employment for the people, half the difficulty of
the land question will be solved. If, then, we wish to promote the moral
and material welfare of the Irish people, let us make them masters of
their own affairs."
"I have indicated what I believe," writes Mr. O'Neill Daunt,[36] "to be
the radical disease of Ireland: the want of a domestic legislature racy
of the soil, and acting in harmony with the national sentiment. God has
created Ireland with the needs of a separate nation, and with the needs
are associated the rights. 'Our patent to be a State, not a shire,' said
Goold in 1799, 'comes direct from Heaven. The Almighty has in majestic
characters signed the great charter of our independence. The great
Creator of the world has given our beloved country the gigantic outlines
of a kingdom.'
"If Ireland had been left the unfettered use of the natural materials of
wealth in her soil and in her people, and of the facilities of internal
and external commerce supplied by her physical configuration and her
geographical position--if her interests were protected by a Parliament
sitting in her capital, securing the expenditure at home of her annual
revenue, both public and private, rendering impossible that destructive
haemorrhage of her income by which she is impoverished, aiding the
development of her industries, and resisting all aggression on her
commercial and political rights--in a word, if the Irish Constitution
had not been treacherously undermined and overthrown, we should now have
been the best support of the Empire, instead of being its scandal and
its weakness."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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