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
"An Irish Legislature would lead to untold miseries. We might arrive
there some day, but not at a jump. The change is too sudden. We want a
little training. We want to grow, and growth is a thing that cannot be
forced. It takes time. Give us time for heaven's sake. Give us Home
Rule, but also give us time. Give us milk, then fish, then perhaps a
chop, and then, as we grow strong, beefsteak and onions. A word in
your ear. This is certain truth, you can go Nap on it. Tell the
English people that the people are getting sick of agitation, that
they want peace and quietness, that they are losing faith in
agitators, having before them a considerable stretch of history,
which, notwithstanding the scattered population, is filtering down
into the minds of the people, with its morals all in big print. The
Irish folks are naturally quick-witted. They are simple and confiding,
many of them very ignorant, if you will, but they find out their
friends in the long run. Look at Balfour. Not a man in the whole world
for whom the people have so much affection. Which do you think would
get the best welcome to-morrow--Balfour or Morley? Balfour a hundred
thousand times. Ah, now; my countrymen know the real article when they
see it. Home Rule we want for convenience and for cheapness. We don't
want to be compelled to rush to London before we can build a bridge.
But rather a million times submit to expense and inconvenience than
hand the country over to a set of thieves who'd sell us to-morrow.
We're not such fools as ye take us for. Don't we know these heroes?
And when we see them and Gladstone and Morley and Humbug Harcourt with
his seventeen chins, all rowling together in Abraham's bosom (as ye
may say)--Harcourt licking Harrington's boots, when only yesterday Tim
was spittin' in his eye--we say to ourselves 'Wait yet awhile, my
Boys, wait yet awhile.' But when ye've finished yer slavering and
splathering, and when Tim Healy can find time to take his heel off
Morley's neck, then, and not before, we'll have something to say to
you.
"But you should call on my friend on the right. He is also a Home
Ruler--like myself."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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