The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1910-01-01
HON E RULE.
Mr.. John Redmond's Views.

Mr.. John Redmond, on the 18th Feb
uary, 1895, in the House of Commons,
moving an amendment to the address
demanding the dissolution of Parlia-
ment and the submission of the ques-
ton of home rule to the electors said.
in part:
In the year 1886, the home rule uues-
ton, which up to that time had been
denounced, derided and repudiated by
every political party in this House,
suddenly became the foremost in the
empire. A great English political par
ty accepted the policy of home rule;
great English government staked it's
existence on the policy of home rule
and, although that English party, as
result, was divided in its own ranks
and defeated, and although the govern
ment was, as the immediate result of
adopting the policy of home rule
wrecked, the home rule question re-
mained the foremost political question
of the day.
l think no one will question the posi-
ton 1 take up when 1 say that the
policy laid down by the right honorable
gentlemen, and accepted by the entire
Liberal party in 1885, was, that Ireland
blocked the way and that this Irish
question was so vast, and so urgent,
and so pressing that it should be set
tied before any attempt could fairly be
made to deal with domestic reforms or
English legislation.
l will tell the House the one thing
that this Parliament has done for Ire
land. Last session it Increased the tax
alton of Ireland by making Ireland pay
towards the deficit in the budget of last
year sum which represents more than
double the proportion which ministers
themselves admitted was her fair pro-
portion towards the imperial taxation.
We are told that the next election is
not to be held on the question of home
rule, but that there is to be interposed
between the electors and the considera-
ton of the vaster and greater question
from the English point of view even
than home rule-the question which has
been described by the prime minister
as the greatest constitutional question
which the people of Great Britain have
had to consider for over 200 years.
The last stage in this downward
course is the most serious of all, and it
is to be found in the Bradford speech
of the prime minister Gord Roseberry)
in which he declared that the next cleo
ton was not to be held on the subject
of home rule at all. No. He declared
that between the electors and the con-
sideration of this great question there
was to be interposed another question
from the English point of view a far
greater and more wide-reaching ques-
ton, and one which he himself de-
scribed, as 1 have pointed out, as the
greatest question for the last 200 years.
In my view the starting of this House
of Lords agitation means, if it is per-
sisted in, the indefinite postponement of
home rule. l do not take the view that
it is impossible to pass home rule
through the House of Lords as it is at
present constituted. I know from the
history of the House of Lords that it is
the weakest second chamber perhaps in
the world. For my part I think the
whole history of the House of Lords
shows that it has no power permanent
ly to withstand the declared will of the
people in favor of any great reform. 1t
has never done so.
One thing to my mind is absolutely
certain, and that is that if home rule
is to be postponed until the agitation
against the House of Lords which was
started in the Bradford speech be gall
vanised into life and succeeds, few, in
deed, of us who are assembled in this
Parliament can hope to see a Parlia-
meht established in Dublin.