The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-08-27

your lSIter or Aug. 24. You write of the conditions of the meeting between us as though no meeting had ever taken place.
 must remind you, therefore, that when I asked you to meet me six weeks ago I made no pre- Hmfnary conditions of any sort. You came to London on that in vitaticn and exchanged views with me at three meetings of considerable length. The pro- posals I made to you after those meetings were based upon full end and sympa1hetic consideration of the views which you expressed.
 They were not made in any haSgIing spirit. On the contrary, my colleagues and I went to the very limit Of our powers in en- deavoring to reconcile British and have gone far beyond all prece- dent. and have been approved as liberal by the whole of the civil zed world. Even in quarters which had shown sympathy with the most extreme of the Irish utmost which the empire can reasonably offer or Ireland req sonly expect.
 The only criticism of them I have yet heard outside Ireland is from those who maintain that our proposals have overstepped both warrant and wisdom in tn cir libera1fty. Your letter shows no recognition of this. and further negottaions must. I fear, be flu is made toward acceptance of basis
 You declare our proposals 1n- ~ vo!ve the surrender of Ireland's whole national tradition and re- duce her to subservience. What are the facts7
 Under the settlement we out lined Ireland would control every nerve and fibre of her national existence She would speak her own language and 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 possibly be- tween herself and Great Britain, her best market.
 She would have uncontrolled authority over education and all the moral and spiritual interests of her race; she would have 1t also over Jaw and order, over land and agriculture, over condf- the homes and health of her people, and over her own de- fense.
 She would, in fact, within the shores of Ireland be free in every respect of national activity. na- ttona1 expression and national development. The States of the American Q n, sovereign though they be, enjoy no such range of rights
 Our proposals go even further. for they invite Ireland to take her place as a partner in the great commonwealth of free nations. united by allegiance to the King.
 We consider these proposals completely fulfill your wish that the principle of Government by consent of the governed should ciple of the settlement which your plenipotentiaries are to negotiate. That principle was first developed in England and is the handspring of the represen- tative institutions which she was her throughout the world and is now the very life of the British Commonwealth.
 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 hon. orable to Ireland as to the other nations of which the Common wealth consists.
 But when you argue that the relations of Ireland with the British Empire are comparable in principle to those of Holland or Belgium with the German people, l find it necessary to repeat once more than those are premises which no British Government, whatever its complexion, can ever accept
 In demanding that Ireland should be treated as a separate sovereign power, with no allegi- ance to the crown and no loyalty to the sister-nation of the Com monwealth, you are advancing claims which the most famous na- tionalist leaders in Irish history, from Grattan to Parnen and Redmond. have explicitly dis owned.
 Grattan in a famous phrase de- c1ared that "the ocean protests against union.'' Daniel O'Con- nell, most eloquent perhaps of all the spokesmen of the Irish na- tienal cause, protested thus in the House of Common in 1880:
 Never did monarch receive more undivided allegiance than the present king from the men who in Ireland agitate the repeal of the union. Never was there groSser calumny than to assert that they wish to produce separa- ton between the two countries. Never was there a greater mis- take than to suppose that we wish to dissolve the connection"
 The Premier then quotes a let ter write in 1854 to the Duke of Wellington by Thomas Davis, "a fervent exponent of the ideals of Young Ireland," as advocating the retention of the Imperial Par Hament and the giving to Ireland of a Senate selected by the people, the right of levying customs and excise and other taxes, the mak- ing of roads, harbors, railways, canals and bridges, encouraging manufacturers, commerce., agri- culture and fishing, and the set ting of the poor laws, tithes, tenures, grand juries and fran chises.
 The British Government offer ed Ireland all that O'Connell and Thomas Davis asked, and more; we are met only by an unquali- fled demand that we should rec ognize Ireland as a foreign pow CT. It is playing with phrases to suggest that the principle of gov ernment by consent of the gov ernment compels recognition of that demand on our part, or that in repudiating it we are straining