Ireland as it is, and as it would be under Home RuleBuckley, Robert John
History
Ireland as it is, and as it would be under Home Rule
Buckley, Robert John
Home rule -- Ireland; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901; Irish question
Here an English civil engineer said:--"When I was engaged on a line at
Mayo I actually saw the priest walking in front of some hundreds of
voters brought into the town from the rural districts. I was driving
along in a car, and my driver shouted 'Parnell for ever!' He was
struck on the head and face, his cheek cut open, and himself knocked
off the car. How the priestly party do hate the Parnellites! I wonder
what would happen if the Nationalists got into power."
"They would exterminate each other, if possible," said the Dublin man.
"We should have an awful ferment, a chaos, an immediate bankruptcy.
But let us have it. Let us make the experiment, and thus for ever
settle the question. To return to the priests. The people of Ireland
have not the franchise, which is monopolised by a few thousand priests
and bishops. The Nationalist members, the dauntless seventy-one, are
as much the nominees of the Catholic clergy as the old pocket-borough
members were nominees of the local landlords. And the same thing will
hold good in future. People tell you it will not be so, but that's all
humbug. It may be different in five-and-twenty years, when the people
are educated, when the National Schools have done their work, but half
that time is enough to ruin England. Thanks to agitators, Ireland
cannot be any worse off than she is."
Some time ago there was a Convention in Dublin, a Home Rule
Convention. There were five hundred delegates, sent up by the votes of
the people. Four hundred and nine were priests, who had returned
themselves. Can the English Gladstonians get away from the
suggestiveness of this fact? Is it sufficiently symptomatic? Can they
not diagnose the progress of the disease?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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