Ireland and the Home Rule MovementMcDonnell, Michael, Sir
History
Ireland and the Home Rule Movement
McDonnell, Michael, Sir
Home rule -- Ireland; Ireland
indications of the upheaval going on in the traditional Nationalist
Party, save only the mere _ipse dixit_ of the very people who assure us
that they themselves are making it felt. There is every reason to
suppose that the Sinn Féin movement, in so far as it consists of passive
resistance, will be regarded by the Irish people as merely doing
nothing. They could understand a non-Parliamentary action were it
replaced by physical force, and the weakness of passive resistance lies
precisely in this, that the logical result of its failure is an appeal
to armed revolt which no man in his senses can in modern conditions in
Ireland think possible, or, if possible, calculated to be other than
disastrous. The attempt which the Sinn Féin organisation has
consistently, if unsuccessfully, made to arrogate to itself all credit
for the progress of the Gaelic League and of the Industrial Revival, is
singularly disingenuous in view of the assistance which both those
movements have received and are receiving from the Parliamentary Party
and its allies. The provisions of the Merchandise Marks Act, and the
fact that through the agency of members of the Irish Party the Foreign
Office has directed British Consuls abroad to publish separately the
returns of Irish imports, which have hitherto been lost by their
inclusion in the returns under the one head "British," will do far more
for the development of the Irish export trade than the well-meaning but
academic resolutions of their critics; and in the matter of social
reform I have yet to learn that any body of men have done such good work
for their country as have the Irish members by the passing into law, on
their initiative, of the Labourers Act, by which nearly half a million
of the Irish population will be rescued from conditions of life which,
with a population lacking the religious sense of the Irish poor, would
have resulted in absolute moral degradation.
I have spoken throughout of the exponents of Sinn Féin as of a party,
but it is difficult to find the common measure of agreement which such
a term connotes in the heterogeneous elements which for the moment call
themselves by the same name. We read of old Fenians, who have ever
hankered after physical force, presiding over meetings to expound
passive resistance in which young Republicans from Belfast rub shoulders
with men whose ideal is vaguely expressed as repeal--a return one must
suppose to that anomalous constitution of Grattan's Parliament in which,
while the legislature was independent the Executive was not responsible
thereto, but went out of office with the Ministry in the Parliament at
Westminster.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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