The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1921-08-27
HERE is MORE ABOUT
LLOYD GEORGE
STARTS ON PAGE ONE

futile, unless some definite progress!
is made towards acceptance of {
basis.
You declare our proposals involv;
the surrender Of Ireland's whole ma.
! tional tradition and reduce her to sub.
servience. What are the facts? I'm
der the settlement we outlined Ire.
land would control every nerve and
fiber of her national existence. She
would speak her own language, make
her own religious life; she would
have complete power over taxation
and finance subject only to an agree
! ment for keeping trade and transport
| as free as possible between herself
and Great Britain, her best market
"She would have uncontrolled au-
thority over education and all moral
and spiritual interests of her race;
she would have 1t also over law and
order; over land and agriculture, over
conditions of labor and industry; over
the health and homes of her people
and over her own defense.
she would, in fact, within the
shores of Ireland, be free In every re-
spect of national activity; national
expression and national development.
The states of the American Union,
sovereign though they be, enjoy no
such range of rights.
sour proposals go even further, for
they invite Ireland to take her place
as a partner in the great common
wealth of free nations, united by al
| legiance to the king.
1--WE consider these proposals COM
/ pletely fulfill your wish that the prin-
ciple of government by consent of the
governed should be the broad and
guiding people of the settlement which
your plenipotentiaries are to nego-
! tiate. That principle was first de-
veloped in England and is the main
spring of the representative institu-
tions which she was first to create
1t was spread by her throughout the
world and is now the very life of the
British commonwealth.
1--WE could not have invited the
Irish people to take their place in that
! commonwealth on any other principle,
and we are convinced that through it
we can heal old misunderstanding
and achieve an enduring partnership as
honorable to Ireland as to the other
nations of which the commonwealth
consists.
But when you argue that the rela-
/ lions of Ireland with the British en-
pire are comparable in principle to
those of Holland or Belgium with the
German empire, I find it necessary to
repeat once more that those are prem
Uses which no British government,
whatever it's complexion, can ever ac-
cept.
'In demanding that Ireland should
be treated as separate sovereign
power, with no allegiance to the
crown and no loyalty to the sister ma
lions of the commonwealth, you are
advancing claims which the most IA
nous nationalist leaders in Irish his
tory, from Grattan to Parnell and Red
mond. have explicitly disowned.
'Grattan in famous phrases declared
that the ocean protests against sep
aration and the sea against union
Daniel OConnen, most eloquent, per-
haps, of all the spokesman of the Irish
national cause, protested thus in the
house of commons in 1890:
't Never did monarch receive more UNI
divided allegiance than the present king
from the men who in Ireland agitate the
repeal of the union. Never was there
grosser calumny than as to assert that
they wish TO produce separation between
the two countries. Never was there
greater mistake than to suppose that we
wish to dissolve the connection
The premier then quotes letter writ
ten in 1864 to the Duke of Wellington by
Thomas Davis. "a fervent exponent OF the
ideals of young Ireland as advocating
the retention of the imperial parliament
and the giving to Ireland Of a senate Sc
1ected by the people; the right of levying
customs and excise and other taxes; the
making of roads, harbors, railways, ca
nails and bridges; encouraging manufac-
lures, commerce, agriculture and fishing.
and the settling OF the poor laws ;tithes.
tenures, grand juries and franchises.
THE British government the text of
the reply of Mr.. Lloyd George continues,
Offered Ireland that which O'Connen and
Thomas Davis asked, and more: we are
met only by an unqualified demand that
we should treat Ireland as a foreign
power. 1t is playing with phrases to sug-
gest that the principle Of government by
consent OF the governed compels recog-
milton of that demand on our part, or that
in repudiating it we are straining geo.
graphical and historical considerations to
justify claim to ancendancy over the Irish
race.
There is no political principle. how