FROM THE ARCHIVES:With the long-awaited Home Rule Bill about to be published, The Irish Times set out its views on the coming controversy. -
JOE JOYCE
EASTER, A political interregnum, is behind us, and we stand on the threshold of a momentous crisis in the history of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Unless more urgent issues intervene – we do not say greater issues, for none could be greater – the remainder of the Session of Parliament will be chiefly occupied with the question of Home Rule.
Mr. Redmond’s struggles and schemes and sacrifices of Irish interests have at last prevailed with the Government. It is about to pay the price of the Nationalist Party’s unquestioning support during its six years of office.
On Thursday, the Prime Minister will introduce the Government’s Home Rule Bill. There has been a vast amount of speculation about this measure.
Mr. Redmond has learned a lesson from the fate of the Councils Bill. It is no longer a question of satisfying the Nationalist Party alone, but of satisfying the clearly expressed demands of the Nationalist democracy . . . We attach no special importance to any of the recent “forecasts” of the Bill.
Collectively they suggest what is probably true – the Bill goes still further in the direction of complete separation than its predecessors.
We shall know on Thursday how it proposes to meet the grave and inevitable dangers of separation. We may dismiss any hope that the “safeguards” will be adequate, for safeguards and real self-government are irreconcilable terms. This, then, is the danger which, this week and for many weeks to come, will confront Irish Unionists. It would be foolish to under-rate the gravity of the situation.
We are on the eve of prolonged and, probably, bitter conflict, during which we shall be fighting for the essential things of life and citizenship; during which, also, the course of our national progress will be checked and impaired in many eyes.
Irish Unionists deplore this unhappy prospect. They are in no way responsible for it: their first desire is to live in peace and harmony with their Nationalist fellow-countrymen. But they will not shirk the challenge which the Government has thrown to them. They will go into this fight with the grim resolution of quiet men who have been wantonly assailed.
To-day Ulster will take up the Prime Minister’s gauntlet. It had been expected that the text of the Bill would be published before the great demonstration in Belfast; but, in the absence of that text, the moral of to-day’s proceedings will be all the more impressive.
It is to the fact of Home Rule, and not to the conditions of any Home Rule Bill, that Unionist Ulster is still as firmly hostile as it was in 1886 and 1893.
Nationalist politicians believe, or pretend to believe, that Ulster has weakened in its opposition to Home Rule. They talk of the growth of a new Northern democracy which has forgotten the traditions and ideals of ancient landlordism. These men are living in a fool’s paradise.