Home rule -- Ireland; Ireland -- Politics and government
adopted and beloved in the Colonies, never associate with them the hated
name of force and coercion exercised by us at a distance over their
rising fortunes. Govern them upon a principle of freedom." At that
moment, after half a century of coercion and neglect under what was
called the "Union," Ireland was bleeding, as it seemed, to death.
Scarcely recovered from the stunning blow of the famine, she was
undergoing in a fresh dose of clearances and evictions the result of
that masterpiece of legislative unwisdom, the Encumbered Estates Act.
Her people were leaving her by hundreds of thousands, cursing the name
of England as bitterly as the evicted Ulster farmers and the ruined
weavers of the eighteenth century had cursed it, and bearing their
wrongs and hatred to the same friendly shore, America. For the main
stream of emigration, which before the Union had set towards the
American States, and from the Union until the famine towards Canada,
reverted after the famine towards the United States, impregnating that
nation with an hostility to Great Britain which in subsequent years
became a grave international danger, and which, though greatly
diminished, still remains an obstacle to the closer union of the
English-speaking races. On the other hand, it is interesting to observe
that among the Irish emigrants to countries within the Empire, and a
very important part of this emigration was to Australasia, the
anti-British sentiment was far less tenacious, though the affection for
their own native country was no less passionate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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