The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1901-03-16
The Decay of the Green Isle Since the Passage of the
Odious Act of Legislative Union
Home Rule Government Would Have Prevented the Awful
SuRerings Of the Famine Years.
AZ United Nation Now Confronts the British Legislature
with Bold Demand for Justice.

tsDo not unite with us, sir. 1t would
be the union Of the shark with his
prey; we should unite with you only
to destroy you."-Dr. Samuel Johnson.
eff it must be called 'union,' it is
the union of the shark with his prey;
s the spoiler swallows up his victim,
and they become one and inseparable.
Thus has Great Britain swallowed up
the parliament, the constitution, the
independence Of Ireland" Lord By
ron.
"The manner in which, and the
terms upon which, Mr.. Pitt effected
the union, made it the most fatal blow
ever levelled against the peace and
prosperity of Ireland."-S. T. Cole
ridge.
II know no blacker or fouler trans
action in the history Of man than the
making of the union between England
and Ireland."-W. E. Gladstone.
II met Murder on the way,
He had masque like Castlereagh,
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven bloodhounds followed him.
Shelley.
While John Bull has, for weary
months, been exerting all his energies
to create fresh Ireland in South
Africa, he has, all the time, with char
acteristic heedlessness, been ignoring
the Ireland at his own gates-the Mo
he Of the nations whose tears have
been flowing, not for months, but for
at least seven long centuries Of unmiti-
gated oppression and woe, writes Nor
.rison Davidson in Reynolds Newspa-
per. But if John Bull has been trying
to forget Ireland, Ireland assuredly
has not forgotten him. In the parlia-
ment just opened he finds himself face
to face with an Irish opposition more
united than he ever encountered even
in,ithe stirring days Of Charles Stewart
Parnell and the resources of civiliza-
tion."
"Unsettled questions" said wise
President Garfield, "have no pity for
the repose of nations" and Of such un-
solved enigmas not one, perhaps, ever
exceeded the Irish problem in point Of
\ longevity. 1t is as old as Strongbow,
'Nor older, and we get no 'forrader, y
unless the rapid disappearance Of the
population Of the sister isle be regard
ed as true progress.
DR.. Sangrado of Gil Bias fame, It
may be remembered, cured all man.
ner Of diseases by blood-letting, by de-
pleting the life of the body. And so
there are politicians and statesmen,
who avowedly, or more commonly
tacitly, hold that the best way to i'm
prove a country is to get rid of its in
habitants. They make it solitude
and call it political economy, and that
is practically the policy which the ell
lightened predominant partner" has
pursued towards unhappy Ireland for
generation after generation.
Between 1s41 and 1891 the entire
population of Ireland diminished by
42 per cent, and the manufacturing
population by 81 per cent. About the
middle Of the "forties" the inhabitants
numbered over 100000; now they
are, perhaps, under 100000, and our
Unionist Sangrados are as busy with
their lancelets as ever. The virile
youth of Ireland, STRIPPING and maid,
are "going, gone-gone." 1t is Union
list policy to get rid of home rule by
getting rid of the Home Rulers. And
that is craftsmanship at the dawn of
the twentieth. century.
Solitudinem faciunt pacemque ap-
pellant. "They make desert and call
it peace" In the highlands of my be-
loved Scotland that "peace" is now,
alas, all but unbroken.
In extenuation of this palpably in
famous state of things, it may be re-
membered that, in the debate in par
lament $500 on the report of the
royal commission on the financial re-
lations between Great Britain and Ire
land. the chancellor of the exchequer
professed to ridicule the idea that Brit.
ish rule was responsible for the fam.
Inc (1S46-1S49 which then swept off a
million and n Ouartpr of tho irish RI no
in much the same way as in India, al
this very hour, millions Of "blacE
men" are being slowly done to death
by government-manufactured hunger
But in the famine-stricken "forties'
it is indisputable that it was only the
potato that rotted. There was notori
ously plenty of other produce in the
country to have fed twice the popula
ton, if the folks had only eaten it; but