They will never be satisfied until their commissions are
signed by an Irish name. Nobody in the employ of the government is
loyal. Every man hates and loathes England, and doesn't hesitate to say
so in public and in private, on all occasions, although he draws his
rations from the British government. And when you remind him of that he
answers promptly that the money comes from the pockets of the Irish
rate-payers and England grabs £3,000,000 of it for herself.
Ireland contributes an annual average of £10,500,000 in taxes to the
imperial treasury and £7,500,000 of it is expended in maintaining her
government and constructing her public works. The remaining three
millions is her contribution toward the support of the British empire,
the wages of the king, the expenses of parliament, the support of the
army and navy, and the interest upon the public debt, which is not kept
separately for Ireland, and for various other purposes.
Ireland has twenty-three peers in the House of Lords and one hundred and
two representatives in the House of Commons, of whom eighty-two are
nationalists or home rulers. The remaining twenty are conservatives,
unionists, and anti-home rulers, who believe in maintaining the present
system of government and the existing relations between Great Britain
and Ireland. The Irish members of parliament have been a thorn in the
flesh of John Bull for many years, ever since Daniel O'Connell was
admitted to the imperial legislature in 1829. They have fought fiercely
for concessions term after term, have built fires in the rear of the
government and have attacked it upon all sides until they have
accomplished a great many reforms and are near to the point of achieving
final success. If the liberal party wins at the next election every
patriotic Irishman expects political emancipation, because its leaders
are pledged to complete home rule on the same basis that Mr. Gladstone
proposed several years ago, when he was prime minister.
The Irish peerage, like that of Scotland, are not entitled to all the
rights and prerogatives enjoyed by the British peerage, and have only
twenty-eight seats in the House of Lords. The total peerage of Ireland
consists of two dukes, ten marquises, sixty-three earls, thirty-six
viscounts, and sixty-four barons, a total of one hundred and
seventy-five nobles, of whom seventeen also have titles in the English
peerage, nearly all by inheritance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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