ILLINOIS
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
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Rare Book & Manuscript Library University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign 2015THE RIGHT HON.
CHICHESTER FORTESCUE, LORD HARTINGTON, GOVERNMENT INFORMERS, IRISH EDUCATION,
AND
HOME RULE.
CONSIDERED IN A SPEECH AT THE DUNDALK HOME RULE ASSOCIATION.
ON JAN., 4, 1872.
BY
THE REV. W. G. CARROLL.
DUBLIN :
PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR,
BY ROBERT CHAPMAN, TEMPLE LANE, DAME STREET. 1872.
6<l.---------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------——.	■■ - -SUBSTANCE OF A SPEECH
AT THE
DUNDALK HOME BULE ASSOCIATION.
It is with great happiness that I once again have the opportunity of addressing a Dundalk meeting on the great question of the day—the question of “ Home Government for Ireland for I need scarcely assure you how gratified we all were by your cordial reception of us last summer. Neither need I tell you what value our Central Association in Dublin sets on the well-directed nationality and on the energetic and stimulating co-operation of the Men of Oriel in this our great demand of national right and national liberty.
Be sure that we warmly and cordially appreciate your forward loyalty in this Celtic movement—this movement for “ oppressed nationalitiesand my only regret is, that we have not Mr. A. M. Sullivan and Mr. Galbraith here. But you will, I know, with me rejoice at their absence when I tell you that they are now on a deputation to some of the chief manufacturing and commercial towns of England; that they are this moment addressing a meeting at Newcastle-on-Tyne; last night they were at Liverpool ; and to-morrow night they are to be at Leeds. If, then, they are not with you, they are at and on your service—educating the English masses on this great question. And besides, if we have not those eminent leaders here to-night, we have a veteran who was tried and renowned in the cause before ever they took it up—one whose philosophical statement of ‘ Federation ’ has won the applause not only of Galbraith and Butt, but I believe I am correct in saying of our Irish Lord Chancellor, Lord O’Hagan; yea, and even of the great O’Connell—I mean4
Father O’Malley. To him I leave the treatment of this question to-night; and I will confine myself to a simple—very simple— examination of the speech of your county member Mr.Chichester Fortescue; and in attempting this, I feel quite distinctly that I am speaking in the presence of one—your honorary secretary, Mr. O’Neill—who has already criticised it so ably as to have won at one of our Dublin meetings the warm eulogium of Mr. Butt; for, in a question of Irish history, as well as in all questions of Irish Art, there are few more capable authorities than Henry O’Neill, the celebrated author of “ The Fine Arts of Antient Ireland,” and the still more celebrated author of “ The Sculptured Crosses of Antient Ireland.” In any country but Ireland either of those books would have made an artist’s fortune.
I now, sir, without another word of preface or apology, come straight across your county member’s sly and plausible speech. It was delivered in November last, to a Bristol Liberal audience, on the occasion of their famous annual “ Colston” day, and I take it asl find it reported in a leading Liberal journal, the Bristol Daily Post, November 14, ’71. Mr. Fortescue came down special from the Board of Trade to that dinner, to “ represent, and return thanks for her Majesty’s Government.” That is no small honour, by the way to you Louth men, that your member should be selected for so high an office, and for so important an occasion; but it would be a greater honour to have him filling these offices in an Irish Parliament. He said, too, that he represented, and spoke for Irishmen (as well as for the English Government); but whether you are going to be as well pleased with what he said, is quite another matter.
In the early part of his speech, then, he assured the Bristol Liberals:—
“We, Liberals (the Gladstone Cabinet?), are the Protestants of politics; we are sometimes the Ultra-Protestants of politics.”
He did not say what they are in religion ! I suppose it was a delicate question. There was not a word, you see, of Catholic friends and alliances; he would not acknowledge Catholics at all. Oh dear, no, not for the world. I wonder would he have said this at a dinner at the Cardinal’s! Or would he say it to5
your Catholic Primate? Or will he say it to you at the next election ?
Well, then, he goes on to say with a charming simplicity:—
“ We possess the critical faculty to a very great extent, and and we exercise it with uncommon frankness and plainness of speech. (Laughter.”)
Mr. Fortescue exercising the “ critical faculty!” Upon which of all Mr. Gladstone’s measures did he exercise it? Was it on the Lucifer Match Budget, or on the Licensing Bill, or on the Army Bill, or on the Megsera, or on what?
However, as Mr. Fortescue possesses and uses this “ critical faculty ” to such a marvellous degree, he surely won’t object to our exercising a much humbler attribute—the “ verifying faculty ”—a faculty which, as you may have heard, some of us Protestants have been exercising lately, and that, too, without asking our Bishops’ leave or consent.
Well, we will now apply this verifying faculty honestly to Mr. Fortescue’s speech, and if we find it approving some of what he said, and rejecting other parts, we will frankly abide by its verdict, and give judgment accordingly.
The first utterance, then, that comes before us is, I am happy to say, one that the verifying faculty entirely endorses; it is, in fact, one of our own leading aphorisms and arguments— namely, that at present the Parlimentary machine is clogged. He says:—
“ The head of a department (in the Cabinet), when he finds this press of matter and conflict of measures waiting for choice,— fears, and he is generally right in fearing, that his own little bills, or even his own big bills, may go to the wall.” (And then he gives as an instance):—
“ There was another very big vehicle which never got through Temple Bar—(laughter)—namely, the Merchant Shipping Bill.”6
(He might have instanced the Mining Bill, and the Ballot Bill, and the Licensing Bill, and a score of other massacred innocents, which had “ to go to the wall,” because Parliament was overcrowded with work; and surely, this is just what we “ Home Government ” people are saying, and what Mr. Pim is saying; and more than that, it is what we are proposing to remedy.)
Mr. Fortescue’s next assertion also is one that we all endorse:
“------Ireland is a country with wh'ich, as you know, I have
been and still am very closely, both politically and personally, connected.”
I will mention, by-and-bye, how and why he is connected with you.
He now goes on to speak of Ireland and of our Association. This is our real business with him to-night; and here I fear that Mr. Fortescue and the verifying faculty part company.
Hear his words:—
“ I would say that Ireland, at the present moment, is prosperous and peaceful. (Cheers.) I must add, of course, that there is still much disaffection amongst a large class, and that there is an attempt to revive, under a new name, the old agitation for Repeal. (Hear, hear.)”
“ Prosperous and peaceful!!” What an idea he must have of peace and prosperity! Since he spoke these words two Irish judges have pronounced the metropolis to be at the “ mercy of well-developed ruffianism.” And just, as one all-sufficient testimony to our peace and quietness and good government, hear these, I presume, official figures extracted from a paper of last week:—
“ That Ireland is not yet pacified or contented, as Mr. Gladstone has affirmed, is shown by the following statistics—(Bristol Times of Saturday)—
Malicious Offences, for 1871,.	.	.	.	764
Assaults on Peace Officers, .	6,2667
Peace Preservation Cases, for	nine months,	801
Proclaimed Counties,	do.,	26
Portions of others,	do.,	5
Persons arrested,	do.,	160
Of the same acquitted,	do.,	142
Strangers arrested.	do.,	75
Of the same acquitted,	do.,	57
Agrarian Crimes,		1,308,
Just think, 26 counties proclaimed—142 innocent persons arrested in nine months—57 strangers arrested, without a shadow of charge against them !! Is there worse than this in Poland, or was there worse in Naples when Mr. Gladstone wrote about it ? (Father O’Malley and I are in danger here to-night.) This lawless legislation is subversive of the freedom of the subject, and for this we are indebted to your patriotic “ Ultra-Protestant ” member. Is this the way to “ cut down the Upas-tree, according to Irish ideas?”
But, let us come on to Mr. Fortescue’s ideal of how Ireland, so happy and blessed, is and ought to be governed.
“ It is hard in Ireland, for the ablest, most energetic, and most enlightened Government to escape the old circle of disaffection and coercion. What happens is this:—Fenianism springs up; Government has to punish evil-doers; those who suffer at once are considered as martyrs; Government has to employ the means of detection of crime at its hand; the police detective is murdered, and his murderer is treated as a hero; (and I ash you all, if Kelly is a hero, who made him a hero ? and remember that a Dublin jury, with seven Protestants, said that Kelly was not a murderer); Government has to pass special laws of repression of crime; I myself and my honourable friend, Lord Hartington, last year had to do it; and at once the senseless, false, and criminal cry of oppression is raised in Ireland by those organs and mouthpieces of opinion which reach the great masses of the people.”
I pray your attention to this deliberate announcement,First, see how handsomely he speaks of himself. He says, “We are the most able, energetic, and enlightened Government.” The Ministry of “ All the Talents” were fools to them; and at all events they are “ energetic” enough in Irish coercion laws and police administration.
Then, as a contrast, look at the language he applies to us— We are “ senseless, false, and criminal.” He rivals Lady Macbeth in “ chastising with the valour of his tongue.” I might give him back his scurrilous adjectives if I cared to do so, but I pass them by with this remark, that we have no reason to complain when the private character of the Queen is blasphemed by English demagogues with impunity, and when the Prime Minister carries Bradlaugh in his pocket, and spouts him to his own constituency. Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Solicitor-General sent a “ Home Government” man to jail lately for a few retracted words which were mild compared with these English outpourings ! The laws for the English people seem to be different from ours, and the reason is, that they make the laws both for themselves and for us—
“ Ours the toil, but theirs the spoil,
And theirs the laws we writhe in.”
But, besides all this, here we have a deliberate avowal and defence of THE SPY-INFORMER SYSTEM! He and Lord Hartington had to use it, and did use it; aye, and are using it now.
This is the system your county member believes in and depends on. Do you settle that with him. I will just read, with your permission, the opinions of three distinguished Irishmen, and not one of them a Fenian, on this atrocious and degrading system. First, Chief Justice Whiteside’s, then Curran’s, and then Mr. Prendergast’s.
CHIEF JUSTICE WHITESIDE, (speaking of Hagan the Informer.)
“The Chief Justice termed Talbot ‘a respectable man,’ on Kelly’s trial. On Mr. Pigott’s trial he said: ‘to brand a man as a spy in professing to give an account of a transaction9
was a violation of duty and a plain infraction of law.’ The extract which follows is from a speech which Mr. Whiteside delivered in defence of Ribbonmen, at the Armagh Summer Assizes, 1842.”
“ To a despotic and unwise government alone is the unenviable honour to be awarded, of employing a horde of depraved, demoralised, unscrupulous spies, who, in the garb of friendship and confidence, steal on their unsuspecting victims ; and, when they have made them criminal with themselves—but not so deep dyed in guilt and unfathomed villainy—hand them over to the authorities, who, in the plenitude of their power, wreak on their devoted heads the full measure of their vengeance! No; I say it is not the duty of any government to employ
means such as this for a conviction.....His (Hagan’s)
character is that of a spy—an informer—an appellation the most odious, the most detestable that could fall on the ear, the very recollection of which brings us back to the darkest period of our eventful history! It is well to respect the officers of the law; but if there is any one mode of bringing the authorities into disrepute, it is that against which I have remonstrated.”
“ Judge Crampton—In commenting on that person’s (Hagan’s) evidence, the counsel wdio has conducted the case for the defence had preferred a charge—had made an accusation—which could not be viewed in any other light than one that was of a most serious character, and most disreputable to the Government. He admitted it might have been done unintentionally in the zeal of the learned counsel for his client. Judge Crampton was sure that the learned counsel would now retract any insinuations which were calculated to convey charges against a Government, the most serious and discreditable.”
Mr. Whiteside (vehemently)—No, my Lord. On the10
contrary, so far from retracting these accusations, I reassert them.”—Irishman, Nov. 18tli, 1871.
J. PHILPOTT CURRAN, (speaking of Jemmy O'Brien the Informer.)
“ Gracious God! is a tyranny of this kind to be borne with when law is said to exist? Shall the horrors which surround the informer, the ferocity of his countenance and the terrors of his voice, cast such a wide and appalling influence, that none dare approach and save the victim whom he marks for infamy and death?”—(Speech for Finney.)
----of Reynolds the Informer.
“ Are you then prepared in a case of life and death— of honor and of infamy—to credit the vile informer, the perjurer of a hundred oaths — a wretch whom pride, honor, and religion could not bind? The forsaken prostitute of every \flce calls upon you with one breath to blast the memory of the dead and to blight the character of the living. He measures his value by the coffins of his victims; and on the field of evidence appreciates his fame as the Indian warrior does in fight—by the number of scalps with which he can swell his triumphs.”—(Speech for Oliver Bond.)
MR. PRFNDBRGAST (treating of the System.)
“ Broghill*now proposed to the Commissioners of Parliament (2nd January, 1651-2), and his proposal was adopted, that such of the Irish soldiers as should come in and deliver up one or more field officers of their party, to be proceeded against according to justice, should be received into protection, and be assigned some place of security out of the Parliament’s quarters, to defend themselves
* Although a bitter Royalist both before and after he was then one of Cromwell’s lambs, and his massacres of the poor Irish were sickening—he became Lord Ossory and one of the Lords Justices ! of the Restoration.11
against the enemy. But none of them were capable of this treachery.”—Cromwellian Settlement, p. 328.
“ This was the favourite resource of the English.” . . .
“ In the Treasurer’s accounts of Queen Elizabeth’s day,
‘ Head Money ’ appears as a heavy item.”..............
“ The Parliament had for ages made the killing of an Irishman no murder, and the taking of his lands no robbery” (p. 333).	“ But no laws bind, no punishments
can restrain outraged nature. The hatred of the Irish to their tyrants increased with their increasing severity ” (p. 338).
“Indeedit is injustice to the Vandals to equal them with the English (in Ireland) of 1652.”—(Preface).
“ The Irish would give no assistance to the law. They declined to aid a system contrived for the degradation of their race, and the benefit of their oppressors. They thought it not an honour, but rather a disgrace, in such circumstances, to be a law-abiding people ” (p. 347).
This is the system, gentlemen, that your county member, and his friend and successor in office, approve. Do you like it? Will you have it? And now, when Mr. Fortescue quoted Lord Hartington as an authority in the matter, is it not a pity that he did not tell the Bristol Liberals what a capable and infallible statesman Lord Hartington is ? His lordship, since he became Irish Secretary, made two speeches, one in Dublin and the other in Parliament, and he commenced both speeches by saying that he did not know a single particle of Irish affairs! What he said was probably the truest thing he ever said in his life, and his candor deserves commendation; but just see what it implies; this namely—that an alien is elected to high office in Ireland on the pronounced grounds of his ignorance and incapacity.
This in itself is a powerful argument for our Home Government, for surely a home administration would not have to elect for the highest offices men like Lord Hartington. But you know, that notwithstanding his ignorance, he was quite able to prescribe for your disease—and to prescribe the drastic treatment of Algerine coercion laws!12
There is only one other country where a man is selected to govern on account of his ignorance, and that is another dependency of England (imagine Prussia or America doino-such things!) I mean India. Most of you have read in the papers, I am sure, the opinion of Lord Napier of Magdala of the state of peril to which this “ government by ignorance ” has brought India. His published letter says plainly that matters are looking worse than before the mutiny, and that England’s means are much less to meet an insurrection! They will, probably, soon be asking for Home Rule in India too.
Yes, this is the condition into which this “able and energetic ” Cabinet is bringing England. Add the little bill ot five hundred millions from America; then throw in to make weight, the Megmra business; and this affair about Judge Colher’g appointment; and you will have a neat bird s-eye view of their infallibility! and these, forsooth, are the men to tell us that we are unfit to manage our own fisheries, or build our own bridges, or construct our own waterworks and harbours, or purify our own rivers, or educate our own children, or regulate our own grand jury, or any other domestic matter, without their meddling and muddling; and that^ it would dismember this great empire, and draw the British lion’s teeth, to trust us with these vast responsibi-
But, to come back to your county member: complacently reviewing his “ Informer ” system, he adds
“1 see no reason to be disheartened at what we have done or as to what we may do.” !
Of course he does not, but the question is—Do you see any reason to distrust him ? But what on earth does he mean by the
W°f f* JlMt WG may ' " Are tboy going beyond Talbot and the Westmeath Acts?
Now we have reached the real virus of the speech, what Mr Fortescue says about our “ Home Rule” Association and about ducation : and as to the former I am compelled to say, though13
I am unwilling to use the words, that nothing can he farther from the facts of the case now, and from the truths of our country’s old history than what Mr. Fortescue said.
“ This attempted revival of Repeal, I can answer for it, has not taken any serious hold upon any considerable body of educated opinion in Ireland.”
“ It is a new expression of the old restlessness, half produced by the armed repression of Fenianism, which is really the strength of what is called the “ Home Rule ” movement.”
“ I AM AN ARDENT UNIONIST, and speaking for the Irishmen, I repudiate with something like indignation the idea of giving up our position as equal members of this United Kingdom in Parliament; and I reject with something like disgust the barren and mischievous agitation which is now going on for the sake of attaining subordinate legislation in Government.”
“ Ireland never had a National Parliament; it is absurd to talk about it. The Parliament, such as it was, was a Colonial Parliament—a Parliament of the Protestant Colony.’’
There is scarcely a word in this paragraph that does not deserve a full and special contradiction if we only had time to go fully at it.
He says, we have “ no hold of educated opinion;” if that be so, why then so much the worse for educated opinion—that’s all. Still, I think, we have some tolerably educated men on our roll list, (of course not so splendidly educated as Lord Hartington and Mr. Fortescue, but still not very dull men, for all that). Martin, Wilde, Butt, Galbraith, Marcus Keene, Haughton, the Sullivans, O’Neale Daunt and O’Neill of Dundalk, and scores of others, don’t in general pass for dunces; and besides, with such an almost universal declaration in favor of Home Rule in Ireland, and with so many Associations formed and forming in England, with so many Mayors and Corporations pronouncing for it, and with so many Constituencies and Candidates and Members of Parliament pledged to it—-in the face14
of all this, it is silly impertinence and ignoble statesmanship for Mr. Fortescue and other Cabinet Ministers to pretend to disown or make little of the national sentiment. But let that pass. It is a graver error and a more audacious statement when Mr. Fortescue says, that we are “ surrendering our position in the Parliament of the Kingdom and seeking for subordinate legislation.” Nothing could be farther from truth than this burlesque of our platform, and so Father O’Malley has just now made plain.
But Mr. Fortescue says he is “ an ardent Unionist,”—no doubt so he is, and as we say in the South, “ Kind father for him.” As Mr. O’Neill writes, the Fortescues are descended from that Sir Arthur Chichester, deputy under James I., the deepest enemy that Ireland ever dealt with.
I’ll tell you just two things he did here:—
1st. He created forty rotten boroughs in one day, and then he had to create eighty rotten members to represent them. It was by these very rotten boroughs that Castle-reagh afterwards destroyed your native Parliament, and carried the Union.
2nd. The other thing that Chichester did was, like all the rest of the Carthaginians, to rob* or, if you like the word better, he grabbed more Irish land and property than almost any other of those “ felonious land pirates,” as the late Lord Clarendon called them shortly before he died.
The actual amount of territory seized by this old land-pirate Chichester, was (says the loyalist historian, the Rev. Dr. Leland, S.F.T.C.D.) “ the territory of Inishowen and all the lands lately
Of course I do not use this word in the ordinary sense in which we applv it to a thief or a forger, or to a man who falsifies his accounts.
Chichester was no such vulgar criminal at all, and he only took what his master gave him. Chichester’s weakness was that English land-hunger, which amounted in hirn to what the Americans call “ Colossal Kleptomania and he and the other Saxon land pirates might all have used as their own the motto of William III.—“ Recepit non rapuit.” We may also apply to the glorious company of the Chichesters Dean Swift’s free translation of the pious king s motto, viz.:—“ The receiver is as bad as the thief. ”15
possessed by O’Dogherty, a tract of country far exceeding the allotments generally made to northern undertakers.” I dare say this old Carthaginian was an ardent Unionist in his day.
There is another Chichester in our unfortunate history, and this next one was a perfectly developed Chichester Fortescue; he lived and bought and sold at the time of the Union, and in 1799 he was a patriot, voting with Grattan, and in 1800 he was an “ ardent Unionist,” voting with Castlereagh, and Barrington’s Red List tells why he changed—he was “got at” in the interval, and you can all see in the Red List how he was brought over by Castlereagh.
No doubt, your county member, with such glorious antecedents, is true to the traditions of his race, and is a very “ ardent Unionist.” Surely, “ he has the best ground ” in Ulster for his ‘ ardent ’ political convictions; and if any of us had as substantial reasons we might hold Mr. Fortescue’s opinions.
(Voices—“ We will kick him out”—cheers.) ^ So do if you like, and you may do so without doing him any harm, for your “ kick out ” will be a kick upstairs to him, as Mr. Gladstone will then make a lord of him, and send him over as “ Deputy,’’ like the original “felonious land-pirate;” and then, when we get him over here again, we will try to educate him on Irish matters, and if Lord Harrington attends the class, we will educate him too.
His next assertion about our Parliaments is as false as this one about himself is true—“ Ireland never had a Parliament. Why, Lord Harrington himself could not make a more ignorant blunder. The historical fact is, our Parliaments are as old as English Parliaments. Every learned and competent constitutional history in the English language says this—Hallam, Leland, Molyneux, Petyt, Monk Mason, Grattan, Plunkett— in fact every authority says it.
Moreover, the Irish Statutes, running back nearly as far as the English ones, are in our libraries, and anyone can see them in Trinity College any day—“ No old Irish Parlia-ment,”—he might just as well say there was no old Irish Channel!16
We had a Parliament, viz., and a good one, in the time of Edward III., 500 years ago, which when summoned to London refused even that absolute Plantagenet a money bill, “ because that was a matter belonging to the Parliament in Ireland.” O’Neale Daunt remarks, too, that (even after Poyning’s Statute), an Irish Parliament, in the despotic Elizabeth’s reign, refused another money bill “ because it had originated in England.”
These were Irish Parliaments worthy of the name, and good types and precursors of Home Rule Parliaments, and what they did under the Plantagenets and Tudors we will do now.
Moreover, when Mr. Fortescue says that there were no Parliaments except of the Pale and of the Protestant Colony, he makes as outrageous blunders as any man could make; he does not know the real meaning of the term “ the Pale.”
The truth is, there were Irish Parliaments in Ireland more than 300 years before there was a Protestant in Europe. It would be easy to discuss this question at any length, and to give any number of instances from the statutes and from our history; but I must hurry on, only just adding this—that while we don’t rest our case at all on antiquarian discussions, we are not afraid of the discussions. We stand on our right and on our demand; but as history favours us, we are glad to refer to it: and in a few words' here is the history of Irish Parliaments :—
We had a Parliament at Lismore, 1172, under Henry II.
We had thus a Parliament before Magna Charta.
We then got Magna Charta and the other charters of liberty as soon as England got them.
From Henry II.’s time down to the Union we always had real representative Parliaments under Plantagenets, Tudors, Stewarts, and Brunswickers.
Under Edward III. and under Elizabeth our Parliaments flung oijt English money bills.
Under Henry VI., and frequently before and after, our Parliaments passed acts refusing to acknowledge17
English acts, or any authority but the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland; in fact, this was always the case up to Cromwell’s time.
Under Henry VII. a Parliament at Naas was annulled “ because it was only a Parliament of the Pale;” and this shows that the Parliaments and the writs for them were conterminous with the whole extent of the King’s dominion here, according as it extended.
Even the detested and dishonoured Poyning’s Statute was a proof that the Parliamentary service was then universal, for they got this Act passed to get rid of the service; and the exemption from Parliaments, granted as special favors to the Desmonds, <Szc. &c., shows the same. Therefore, I say, that Mr. Fortescue is utterly and ludicrously astray in his Irish history, and that our demand for a National Parliament is nothing new or revolutionary.
Now, as I have been quoting these wonderful revelations of Irish history from Mr. Fortescue’s speech, it is only fair to tell you where I think he got them; for you may guess that it required no ordinary research on his part to come at them. Y ou see he was not going to Bristol with his finger in his mouth, and he had to get up something special and something spicy. But where was he to get it? Where else, except in the family archives? And here is how he did it: Fie took down the volume about that old rascal, Chichester, and he took notes of the “ senseless, false, and criminal ” statements of Chichester’s Attorney-General, Davies—for that lying and servile official, in his celebrated speech, said just what your county member bottled off for the Bristolians; and what is more, the infamous Lord Clare, in his wicked Union speech, copied from the same source. Of course, Davies and Clare knew they were telling plump falsehoods—to use an expression of Petrie, “Nothing but their artfulness can exceed their audacious mendacity.” But I entirely acquit your honourable member of any such capability; he did his best for his employers, and out of his
------blind and naked ignorance
Deliver’d brawling judgments, unashamed.18
There are two of his expressions however true, and let us give him the full benefit of them, viz:—
“With rigid adherence to justice in our treatment of the country, depend upon it all in the end will be well.”
“ There are certain conditions which are necessary, I think, if this union with Ireland is to be maintained, not by the will of the stronger, but by the consent and conviction of the weaker,” viz.: “ respect for Irish interests and Irish feelings upon Irish domestic affairs. (Cheers.)”
This is just what we are saying, and it is just on this ground that we are demanding “ Home Government,” as a matter of “justice and regard to Irish feelings and interests.”
Now, in close, we come to what Mr. Fortescue told the Bristol Liberals about “ Irish Education.” Here, I guess, we shall need some use of the “verifying faculty,” and please call back to mind that he commenced by telling his Liberal audience that he and his Cabinet were “ the Protestants and the Ultra Protestants of politics.”
“ Irish Education is a subject of a domestic character. (This is the truest word in his speech, and if Irishmen do not make it good, they will be placing themselves below the level of every nation in Europe.) I know very well that it is rather a delicate subject in the ranks of the Liberal party, [/ rather think it is/]—but I am not afraid to refer to it in a friendly and enlightened meeting like the present.” [ When he comes here will he talk in this friendly and confidential way to you ?]
“ No reasonable member of the Liberal party need be, in the slightest degree, alarmed as to any treatment the Liberal Government is likely or can possibly give to that subject.” (Hear, hear.) “ Government will not attempt to solve it in accordance with either side of the country. In the matter of Education the State must be supreme.”
“ As to the higher education there is a great want still existing which will have, somehow or other, to be supplied. It is felt most keenly by the Roman Catholics, for they are the parties who have been most left out in the cold. But I am not talking19
of exclusive Universities. I hope we all know that this is not the time of day to propose to establish by the State any ex*
elusive University
Now, I ask any man here present, Protestant or Catholic, is he satisfied with that sort of ministerial mystification? Is the Freeman satisfied with it; is the Mail satisfied with it? Is the Standard or the Daily News satisfied with it ? Are the Roman Catholic prelates satisfied with it? Is the Protestant Synod satisfied with it? Is that the way you would expect a Home Parliament to speak of this most vital question ? Will you give up the education of your children to an alien State and to an alien Minister?
This “ ardent unionist ” and foreign ruler speaks of your children just as heartlessly as if he were speaking of railways, or of purifying the Liffey. But he must be told this, and we tell it to him now, that this very heartlessness of him and of his Cabinet, in such a vital matter, is a reminder and a proof to us of how indispensably we need Home Government; yea, and it is also a gage of battle to us, and we take it up, and we will fight it out with him. We take this opportunity of telling Mr. Fortescue, and we will tell it to him from every Home Rule platform, that “ we repudiate with indignation and reject with disgust ” all of what he said about our Association, and a great deal of what he said about Ireland ; that the Irish People will no longer consent to be pawns on the shifty, tricky chess-board of Mr. Gladstone or of any other foreign minister; and we solemnly repeat to him the words of the Dungannon Convention in 1782— the words that Fox said were the bravest formula he ever heard— the words that got the parliament within the same year:—“ We know our duty to our Sovereign, and are loyal; BUT WE KNOW OUR DUTY TO OURSELVES, AND ARE RESOLVED TO BE FREE.”