The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1920-02-20

Parnell, introduced the first Home
Rule bill, which was defeated. The
second Home Rule bill, also introduced
by Gladstone, was passed by the
House of Commons but defeated by
the House of Lords in 1898.
| The year 1906 saw the birth Of the
Sim Fein party which actively took
up the struggle for Irish autonomy.
On April II, 1912, third Home
| Rule bill was introduced by the As
uuith government. Commons passed
| it, but again the House of Lords We
toed the bill. This bill, which provid-
ed for an Irish parliament with the
Commons elected by the people and
House of Lords to be nominated by
the English government, was again
introduced in Parliament in 1918 with
the same result, even though the bill
bound Ireland much more closely to
England than Canada is bound. Feel
| ing became intense and civil war APP
peared imminent. The chief opposi-
zion to Home Rule came from certain
counties in Ulster, Ireland, and from
the Tory party in England. When,
for the third time, the bill passed the
House of Commons in May, 1914, 1t
automatically became the law, re-
CARELESS Of the Lords. King George
signed the Home Rule bill on Septem-
Der 18, 1914.
Because of listers violent opposi-
ton, bill to amend the new law was
introduced in Parliament in Septen-
Der, 1914. This provided that Ulster
should be excluded from the operation
Of the act for six years. At the end
of that period it should come under
the provisions of the act, unless the
British government ruled otherwise.
At the outbreak of the war, Home
Rule was shelved, and operation of the
act suspended.
When opponents Of Home Rule were
elected to positions in the English
cabinet in 1915, the rage of the Irish
Nationalist knew no bounds, and on
Easter Monday of 1916, the Irish re-
bellion was launched in Dublin. This
was promptly suppressed by English
troops, but only after serious loss OF
life and great damage to property.
Many Sim Feiners participated in the
rebellion.
In May, 1917, Premier Lloyd George
proposed calling convention of rep
resentative Irishmen of all parties to
frame a constitution that should be
submitted to Parliament for approval.
The Sin Feiners refused to send dele
gates, averring that the suspension of
Home Rule was Indicative of the way
England would keep her word. The
other Nationalists accepted, however,
and although the convention adopted
Home Rule plan, the fact that nine
teen Ulster delegates were opposed to
it caused Lloyd George to announce
that there was no substantial agree
ment.
In the elections Of December, 1918,
the Sim Feiners carried % out of 81
districts. In January, 1919, the first
Irish Parliament was held in Dublin,
and requests for recognition of the
Irish republic with Edmund de Valera
as president were sent to the free ma
tons Of the world.
Ireland has population of over
million, covers $4,000 square miles, ~
first class harbors, good climate and
fertile soil. Ireland's commerce with
England amounted to nearly $1,000,-
100000 in 1915. In 1919 the English
Government raised $170,000,000 in
taxes from Ireland and paid out for
administration some $63,000,000. Ire
land has shown a steady decrease in
population since 1841 when the census
showed a population of 8,19G,597.