Ireland and the Home Rule MovementMcDonnell, Michael, Sir
History
Ireland and the Home Rule Movement
McDonnell, Michael, Sir
Home rule -- Ireland; Ireland
who will attend to the interests and the development of Irish trade.
Lastly, the most practical of their proposals lies in the discouragement
of recruiting, a movement which, if applied on a large scale, would have
a remarkable effect on the resources of the three kingdoms under a
voluntary system of military service.
These proposals, which, until a Gaelic name was thought necessary for
their acceptance in Ireland, were known as the Hungarian policy, are
admittedly based on the success of the struggle for Hungarian autonomy
which culminated in 1867, but the fact which the advocates of the
application of this policy to Ireland omit to mention, is that Hungary
was face to face with a divided and distracted Austria, defeated by the
Prussians at Sadowa, while in the case of Ireland we are concerned with
a united Great Britain, which has shown no great signs of diminution in
her power. A closer parallel than that of Hungary is to be found in the
case of Bohemia, which, in respect of general social conditions and the
proportion of national to hostile forces, bore a much stronger
resemblance to Ireland, and which adopted in 1867 a policy of withdrawal
of its representatives from a hostile legislature with results so
disastrous that after a few years she returned to the methods which the
Sinn Féin party are anxious to make an end of in Ireland.
All foreign parallels, however, are apt to be misleading, but Irishmen
have only to remember the fact that the secession of Grattan and his
followers from the Irish Parliament in 1797 paved the way for the
passing of the Act of Union to find in it a warning against what is the
main plank in the platform of Sinn Féin--"the policy of
withdrawal"--which, moreover, would leave the control of Irish
legislation to the tender mercies of such Irish members as Mr. Walter
Long and Mr. William Moore, which would further involve the condemnation
of the policy pursued by every Irish leader since the Union, and would
mean the abandonment of the weapon by which every Irish reform has been
wrested from English prejudice--namely, an independent party in the
House of Commons, backed up by a vigorous organisation in Ireland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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