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' 
 
 HOME RULE 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 ,. ■■ ■--'. _ . ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 ♦ ■■■,,. • 
 > 
 
 -• • DELIVEllEl) BY 
 
 
 I * 
 
 NlCHOLliS FLOOD DAVIN, Q.C., M.P., 
 
 In Montreal on the 17th of May, 1893. 
 
 
 
 »-•' 
 
 TORONTO ; 
 HUNTER. ROSE AND COMPANY 
 
 1893. 
 
 c 
 

 (Ti 
 
 I if' 
 

 HOME RULE. 
 
 I am here to-night as a private citizen — not in a repre- 
 sentative capacity. Indeed Home Rule is a subject in which 
 most of my constituents take little interest, and most of those 
 who take an interest in it are opposed to it. Those who are op- 
 posed to it have no animosity to Ireland. But they have not 
 gone into the question, which is somewhat intricate and easily 
 overladen with false representations and fallacious suggestions. I 
 am here for the purpose of manifesting my personal sympathy 
 with the cause of Home Rule, for nothing but evil can come of 
 the agitation against it, looking at the desperate form it has as- 
 sumed. Such a spectacle as an ex-Prime Minister appealing to 
 passions with arguments based on an order of things, which, 
 whether he or anybody else likes it or not, belongs to the past, 
 and openly inciting to something like rebellion, with the view of 
 alarming the voters in England, has never before been seen in 
 the three Kingdoms. I also wish to appeal to my Irish Protest- 
 ant brethren. I am here as an Irish Protestant to say that no 
 course could be so opposed to their interests as the one some of 
 them are taking in regard to this question. Perhaps there is an- 
 other reason, and it is a characteristically Irish one. There is 
 some danger in the position. Because I dared to say a word on 
 behalf of Home Rule, a hundred guns have been turned on me, 
 But those persons misunderstand the character of Irishmen in 
 Ireland and in Canada, who think they can, without calling forth 
 chivalrous counter action, persecute a man because he says a word 
 according to his lights for the country of his birth. If they think 
 
Irish Protestants and Catholics will stand quietly by while a man 
 who happened to say a word for Ireland on what here is after all 
 only a speculative topic, is hounded down, they are greatly mis- 
 taken. The decree has, however, gone forth that because, without 
 neglect of any duty as a Cinadian, I had broken a lance for Ireland 
 — had merely indicated that I would give Ireland what we have 
 contended for and got for the North- West, I am to be politically 
 killed. But threatened men live long, and my political execution 
 would perhaps entail reprisals. I don't think a chivalrous race 
 would look tamely on, and I might quote the old Cornish rhyme : 
 
 *' And must Trelawny die, 
 And must Trelawny die, 
 Then thirty thousand Cornishmen 
 Will know the reason why," 
 
 and I think there are more than thirty thousand Canadian men, 
 who, if an inquisitorial dispensation, contrary to all the rights and 
 principles and privileges, the spirit and soul of a free community, 
 were dealt out to any public man, would resent it at the polls. 
 
 I plead for Home Rule in the interest of the British Empire. 
 Everybody knows the bitter anti-British feelings entertained by a 
 whole nation of Irishmen in the United States. Everybody must 
 feel that a discontented Ireland is a source of weakness, whereas 
 Ireland ought to be the right hand of England. Already, with 
 the prospect of the triumph of Home Rule, that bitter feeling 
 among the Irish in the States has been greatly toned down. With 
 Ireland at rest, and the millions of Irishmen in America ceasino- 
 in some instances to be hostile to England, and in other cases be- 
 coming friendly— will not the Empire be stronger ? I say, then, 
 I plead for Home Rile in the interest of the British Empire. 
 
 As between a free centralized Government and a federal, per- 
 haps I should myself prefer the free centralized Government if it 
 were successful. But any form of G-overnment before it can be 
 
/ 
 
 allowed to rest unchallenged must succeeiJ. One person will pre- 
 fer an aristocracy, another a monaiehy, another a democracy — 
 this man a unitary, that man a federal Government — but when 
 we come to practical, everyday life, each form must stand or fall 
 by the test of success. An individual may fail, and yet have 
 more merit than his succ3ssful rival, but a watch, however hand- 
 some the case, however famous the maker, which does not indi- 
 cate the time correctly, is a nuisance, and a Government or a form 
 of Government which does not succeed in governing, which does 
 not ^et the confidence of the people, stands condemned. 
 
 The Union has been a miserable failure. It was made under 
 such auspices that God and man forbade the bands ; under such 
 conditions, and with such attendant treachery, that it was doom- 
 ed to miserable incompleteness. Its history, up to the time of 
 Mr. Gladstone's remedial legislation, was a weary record of reiter- 
 ated coercion acts, of uprisings, whiteboyism and Fenianism ; of 
 injustice and oppression. It is a favorite fallacy to represent 
 Home Rule as aiming at the repeal of this Union, at separation, 
 and as a step towards the dismemberment of the empire. Nothing 
 could be more astray, more falf''^. more misleading. You might as 
 well say that a doctor who sef;*. heal a wound, or a sprain, or 
 extract a bullet from a leg, is enga^od in an act of amputation. 
 Is he not rather guarding against amputation ? You have the 
 Union. It has failed. It has not worked. Home Rule is an at- 
 tempt to make it workable, by introducing a principle which has 
 been found successful in the United States and in Canada — the 
 principle of local self-government. Self-government seems to be 
 essential to the well-being of all English-speaking men. I have 
 heard a distinguished British officer, who had lived much in Rus- 
 sia,, say that despotism qualified by assassination was a very good 
 government and suited the Slavs. It may actually be better for 
 them in their present stage than free institutions would be, but a 
 
6 
 
 little more enliglitenment, a few more generations, and we shall 
 find the Slav calling for self-government too. Tlie North-West 
 Territories have not yet been or^^anized into a province. We 
 have, as yet, a sparse population. In the early days, we were 
 wholly governed from Ottawa through a Lieutenant-Governor. 
 We were free. We had trial by jury. We had practically all 
 millions have to-day in Ireland ; and, with representation in the 
 Dominion Piirliament, we had all, and more than all, they have 
 to-day in Ireland. Our position as free citizens of the Dominion 
 was* complete ; yet we were discontented because we had not the 
 management of our own local affairs. We were only a handful 
 of people ; very few Irishmen ; mostly men from Ontario and the 
 lower provinces, with a sprinkling of Englishmen ; yet for a slight 
 reason, because of mistakes made by the Federal Government, 
 through ignorance and distance, I have heard these men use 
 strong, rebellious language. We have had many concessions ; in 
 fact, nearly everything ; but we will never be content until we 
 have all the privileges of: a province. To-day we have in that 
 western country — the home of the buffalo ten or twelve years ago 
 — more control over our local affairs than the millions of the 
 people of Ireland. 
 
 The re])resentatives of the people of Ireland as a fact have no 
 share in the government of her internal affairs. Since the union 
 onl} two or three Irishmen have been members of the Imperial 
 Cabinet. Up to 188G there were two great political parties in 
 Ireland, both equally opposed to the regulation of internal affairs 
 in that manner which the great mass of the people of Ireland de- 
 sired. Ireland as Ireland was divided into Nationalists hostile to 
 every Governinent, and a party which might be called a Govern- 
 ment party, which supported every Government and which looked 
 on itself — ominous words ! — as the English garrison in Ireland. 
 Just as with us a few years ago in the North- West, the whole 
 
 
administration centred in the Lieutenant-Governor and the Min- 
 ster of the Interior — a state of things against which the people 
 fumed and agitated — so to-day in Ireland, the whole administra- 
 tion centres in the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary. 
 When Swift asked why he should wait for an audience of Lord 
 Carteret, when he had nothing to ask and was afraid of nobody, 
 that learned and witty and wise statesman — then Lord Lieuten- 
 ant — replied : — 
 
 My very good Dean, there are few who come here, 
 But have something to ask for or something to fear." 
 
 And the completeness of centralized power in the Castle has 
 given a dark arbitrary character to the Government of Ireland. 
 Just as the Lieut.-Governor of the North-West used to be vested 
 with all the functions discharged in the other provinces by the 
 First Minister and three or four colleagues, so to-day in Ireland 
 the duties which are discharged in England by the Home Secre- 
 tary, the President of the Local Board, the Education Depart- 
 ment and the Privy Council, are all in Ireland dealt with from 
 the Castle. The police, which in England are provided by the 
 municipalities, are all directed from the Castle. The magistrates, 
 stipendiary and otherwise, are all appointed from the Castle. The 
 minuteness of its action when analysed gives results very like 
 absolute monarchies — and look at the effect on Government. 
 When a magistrate or a policeman does anything wrong or un- 
 popular, the odium settles on the Castle. Can you be surprised 
 that such a system has failed to be popular, failed to get the con- 
 fidence of the people ? The confidence of the people ! Why it is 
 a Government founded on distrust. 
 
 To account for the restiveness of Irishmen under a Govern- 
 ment of this sort, a Government against which Canadians would 
 break out in open rebellion, it is said the Irishman is a difficult, 
 
8 
 
 dangerous, incorrigible, excitable, ungovernable person. Does a 
 chantje of climate affect him as it affects no other man ? In Can- 
 ada and in the United States, among our best citizens are Iris,h- 
 men and the descendants of Irishmen. Some of the most success- 
 ful and amiable men in every centre of population on this con- 
 tinent are Irishmen — poaccjible, public spirited, exemplary citi- 
 zens. How comes it that this man, so successful, so useful, so 
 attractive even, everywhere else, is in Ireland an incorrigible 
 monster, unmanageable, insurrectionary, rebellious ? If we ad- 
 mit the truth of the charge, must there not be a local reason 
 (juite outside the man's character ? That Irishmen have been 
 discontented is true. That they are incorrigible, dangerous and 
 rebellious by nature is false. But when one nation conquers 
 another and oppresses it, the conqueror does not stop there ; he 
 gets hireling pens to traduce and caricature the objects of his 
 oppression, and Irishmen have been traduced and caricatured so, 
 that up to a recent period some persons believed they had tails. 
 Even to-day, look at the brutal jaw Punch and Puck have been 
 and are accustomed to give their Irishmen, though there are few 
 races as handsome as the Irish Celts. 
 
 It is a less grave offence to caricature a question, and this ques- 
 tion of Home Rule has been grossly misrepresented by Mr. Cham- 
 berlain, by Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour. But a great deal 
 has been spoken and written about it out of ignorant dislike, 
 which exhibits as much breadth as a Harlem ilat — (I have just 
 returned from New York) — where a dog, I am told, moves his 
 tail up and down, does not dare to wag it sideways, for he is 
 afraid of his life or his tail that he will strike the walls. The 
 question, as stated by the opponents of Home Rule, is stated false- 
 ly. This is not an attempt to repeal the Union, but to make that 
 Union workable, and therefore a more complete Union than it 
 has proved, and therefore, far from looking to separation it looks 
 
 

 
 towards a real Union, held together not by force but drawn closer 
 every day by sentiment. 
 
 When you aak why this Union has not worked, you are face to 
 face with sentiment and with utility — you find the Union in its 
 present form takes no note of a great leading characteristic of the 
 Irish people, and also that it has been a bar in the way of the 
 country's material development, in three ways; it encouraged 
 and fostered the existence of oppression and an oppressive class ; 
 it has rendered the construction of great commercial works expen- 
 sive ; it affords no means whereby special attention may be given 
 by persons on the spot to expedients for the development of the 
 resources of the country. 
 
 We have in Ireland a national sentiment. There it is. I am 
 not now discussing the question, whether it is good that it is 
 there or not ; say it is — say it is not — I don't care which. But as 
 a fact there it is and it has to be dealt with. All that tyranny 
 could devise has been used to break down the national spirit, but, 
 like the shamrock, the nation's emblem, the more it was trodden 
 on, the more it grow. The old Irish tongue — the Erse — has been 
 destroyed, but the national spirit seems indestructible. In the 
 United States we see it living on in families for generations. The 
 Irishman is as weak as other men ; as passionate, perhaps more 
 passionate than other men ; but no blandishments and no tempta- 
 tions have been able to wean him from national attachment. 
 Prior to the great emigrations across the Atlantic, the cream of 
 the Irish people was skimmed away ; the old Celtic gentry were 
 forced from their seats ; the natural leaders of the people were 
 driven out by the penal laws to find employment in France and 
 Spain, and Austria and Italy ; to fight under Catinat, on fields 
 where their forefathers fought under Hannibal two thousand years 
 before ; to rise and shine at Versailles and at Saint Ildefonso ; to 
 distinguish themselves in the rival armies of Frederick and of 
 
10 
 
 Maria Theresa ; to become Marshals of France and Ministers of 
 Spain. Still, the rank and file bereft though they were of leaders ; 
 helpless ; up to the other day oppressed with the most cruel op- 
 pression ; up to little more than a generation ago embruted with 
 ignorance ; resisted all efibrts to crush the national spirit. This 
 national spirit is a fact then that must be dealt with ; it will not 
 down ; and any system of government which deprives it of scope 
 is defective and doomed to failure. The Castle, with its immense 
 power politically, socially : a widowed Capital ; oppression ; pov- 
 erty — all hnvQ been in vain. The elder Lord Lytton, writing of 
 that Irishman who still stands foremost among philosphical states- 
 men — Edmunl Burke, says: 
 
 " And oh ! what sap must through that genius run ! 
 What hold on earth ! what yearning towards the sun ! 
 Which met by granite upward cleaves its way, 
 And high o'er forests bathes its crest in day." 
 
 Language almost identical might be applied to the national sen- 
 timent in Irishmen, rooted in love of country, in pride of race, in 
 national self-respect, and striking up through and over all obstacles, 
 to assert itself and claim recognition among mankind. I say 
 this national sentiment is a fact, and Home Rule, recognizing it 
 and giving it scope, will tend to make the Union workable. 
 
 Now look at the business side — the L^tilitarian aspect of Home 
 Rule. To construct the smallest public work you have now to 
 go across the Channel, appear before Committees of the House of 
 Lords and of the House of Commons, and give enormous fees to 
 London lawyers. Is this sensible ? Is it defensible for a moment ? 
 A director of the Cork and Bandon Railway declared that 
 the cost of getting the Bill through the Parliamentary Com- 
 mittees in London, was equal to the cost of building the road. 
 Consider how much in this last seventv years of material devel- 
 opment such a state of things must have kept the country behind. 
 
11 
 
 A local parliament is required for local emergencies, and specially 
 local works. The effects of local legislation in the third quarter 
 of the eighteenth century, and the extraordinary impetus to the 
 countiy's prosperity imported by Grattan's triumph in 1782, indi- 
 cate the effect Home Rule is likely to have on material develop- 
 ment and commercial i)rosperity. Why Ulster and the great 
 commercial capital of the North should be alarmed it is hard to 
 understand. No law can be passed which will retard tlieii- pro- 
 gress, and if the remainder of Ireland should grow more prosper- 
 ous, must not the prosperity of the North be enhanced ? 
 
 It is worth remembering that the Irish question once out of the 
 road, the Parliament at Westminster will have some time to de- 
 vote to English and Imperial affairs. Now a wc>rd as to objec- 
 tions. I saw that Mr. Balfour said the bill of Mr. Gladstone 
 does not give back to the Irish what they had before the Union, 
 but something very dif][erent. I should think so indeed. The 
 Irish parliament was a parliament of privilege and placemen, a 
 thing that had only a name to live up to 1782, and even after 
 that time had no claim to be considered a free rei)rescntative Gov- 
 ernment of the Irish people. Home Rule recognizes that Ireland 
 in common with Great Britain is governed by a free parliament, 
 but proposes for local purposes to give the Irish people a parlia- 
 ment that shall be thoroughly representative. 
 
 Are the Protestants of the north in danger ? I deny this alto- 
 gether. In the earliest clauses of the bill is one providing spec- 
 ially for the safe-guarding of the religious freedom of the minor- 
 ity and all that pertains thereto. No man of sense, certainly no 
 man who has had an opportunity for a wide observation of poli- 
 tics, can entertain the opinion for a moment that when that legis- 
 lature meets in Dublin, the representatives from the Centre and 
 South of Ireland will not divide into parties. Divide they cer- 
 tainly will, and then the North will exercise a great, a dispro- 
 
12 
 
 portionate power, a power that would have been still further 
 enhanced if, instead of opposing, they had fallen in with the 
 movement. 
 
 As an Irish Protestant, and one with friends among the land- 
 lord class as among other classes, T greatly regret the opposition 
 to Home Rule. It is worse than a ciime, as the Lord Derby of 
 Reform Bill days said — it is a blunder. The Protestant gentry 
 might have placed themselves at the head of the Home Rule 
 movement. Their aid and leadership would have been joyfully 
 accepted. They would have got all the credit of its success. 
 They would have been identified with it. Their action would 
 have tended to bridge the chasm of estrangement between them 
 and the mass of the people. But without counting the cost they 
 have set themselves against it. Other and very different leaders 
 have been developed. Home Rule will be carried in spite of this 
 opposition, and, what with the memories of their oppressions, of 
 their resistance to every popular measure, especially their resist- 
 ance to the disestablishment of the church, the agrarian legisla- 
 tion of Mr. Gladstone, and Home Rule, they will be left absolutely 
 without influence over the people. 
 
 The policy will triumph. If Moses does not take the people 
 across Jordan, some Joshua will. There is no instance in history 
 of a question brought to the ripeness of this one and then fading 
 away. This policy must triumph, now ; and for three reasons. 
 You cannot bring a question to the position Home Rule occupies 
 without havinof convinced more than half a nation, more than 
 half an empire, a majority of the civilized world, that justice is on 
 its side. There is, as a fact, a majority in favor of Home Rule in 
 the three kingdoms, but the majority among English-speaking 
 men in the United States and throughout " Great Britain " is 
 overwhelming. Therefore the strongest motive for upholding it 
 is rooted in more than half a generation of men in the three king- 
 
13 
 
 doms, sure to influence at least as many corning after them should 
 this be necessary. Then, it is a law that an aggressive movement 
 increases in weight and momentum, while the defence of a posi- 
 tion has a tendency to grow slack and falter. Third point, — it is 
 by questions politicians rise. Without questions, a politician is 
 almost like a man breathing in a vacuum. In Roman times the 
 ambitious young patrician or the plebeian lawyer was as glad to 
 get a plundering pro-consul to impeach as a zealous young sur- 
 geon is of finding a subject to dissect; and with us a question is 
 a sine qua non for an ambitious, struggling politician ; so that 
 should Mr. Gladstone pass away, as those foolish and malignant 
 fashionable people who have just disgraced themselves by hooting 
 and hissing the greatest and most venerable figure at this moment 
 among mankind — no doubt pray — and Sir William Vernon Har- 
 court die or prove too feeble, an aspiring spirit, would be sure to 
 rise and lay hold of so inviting a lever for his ambition ; there- 
 fore the policy must triumph. As it must triumph, how foolish 
 for the Irish Protestant gentry and others of my Ijrother Irish 
 Protestants to stand apart from the living stream of Irish poli- 
 tical life. 
 
 Ulster is sometimes pointed to as an instance of a portion of 
 Ireland prosperous and content under the Union. Ves, prosper- 
 ous because contented. And why has Ulster been contented ? 
 Because long before Gladstone's land bills were thought of, Ulster 
 had tenant right, and the majority, for reasons not necessary to 
 enter into here, came to be well satisfied with the Union — but the 
 other portions of Ireland, where the tenant was at the mercy of 
 oppression until the other day, and whether in part or in whole, 
 on this account, difiering in sentiment, and being discontented, 
 need a modification of the Union to produce that content, which 
 in their case, too, will, I believe, be the harbiiiger of prosperity 
 and peace. 
 
14 
 
 Now, I must say, it is singularly unfortunate in Ireland and 
 here, that people who dislike Home Rule have only begun to 
 tight it vigorously when it is on the point of triumphing. Here 
 in Canada we have men who voted for memorials to Mr. Glad- 
 stone, when that statesman was opposed to it. They sent mes- 
 sages across the Atlantic, praying unwilling Prime Ministers to 
 grant Homo Rule, and even those who voted against the motion 
 supported Sir John Macdonald, who voted for it. But now, when 
 Gladstone is doing what they asked him, some get wild, others 
 zealously hostile ; they use violent language ; and though earls, 
 whose ancestors came over with the Conqueror, and, I am told, 
 princes of the blood, and our Governor-General in the near future, 
 are Home Rulers, these people are almost ready to rebel, and, no 
 doubt, they will, especially after dinner, fight — in similes, and 
 will bleed — in metajihor — and die — in song. We kno\A? with 
 what characteristic vigour Mr. Gladstone fouirht against Home 
 Rule. When he was shouting, like his own Achilles, striking right 
 
 and left, 
 
 " In the hot-lit foreground of the fight," 
 
 many of those who are now so very energetic against him were 
 supine in their hostility to Home Rule. What would be thought 
 of the general, who, when a ship is approaching a harbor, and the 
 governor of the town cries out to him to open fire on the strange 
 craft, remains supine — who still remains supine while she is pass- 
 ing the narrows — but who, when she has passed within the har- 
 bour, and is welcomed by the governor as a friendly vessel, and is 
 well protected by batteries, opens a vigorous fire ? But what shall 
 we say of those who, when the ship was becalmed, prayed for a 
 favorable breeze, and long after the breeze sprang up — no doubt 
 in answer to their prayers — ordered frigates to give chase, but 
 only then when the glass reveals her — a tower of sail— about, 
 having successfully weathered wind and wave, to enter port ? 
 
 
15 
 
 The policy will certainly succeed and the union be made a real 
 union. Instead of a frowned-at flag we shall see a welcomed im- 
 perial ensign bearing its triple cross waving in those changeful, 
 beautiful skies, which have looked down on the blood and tears 
 of centuries ; emblematic of the self-respect of those who walk 
 beneath it, while representing the power, pomp and circumstance 
 of nations — of an empire built up alike by Irishmen, Scotchmen, 
 and Englishmen — an empire stretching into every zone and every 
 clime, of which there is scarcely a spot where, if you woke the dead^ 
 side by side with English and Scotch, Irish heroes, who fought and 
 bled and died for this British Empire, would not start to life; and 
 under Home Rule, under self-government, embodying at once 
 national aspirations and proved ideas of utility in governing men 
 
 throughout a satisfied Ireland — a new impulse shall be given 
 
 to industry, to enterprise, to commerce, to art ; hope shall bloom 
 where despair shivered ; content smile where brooding care pursed 
 the brow; in those desolate halls of old renown the mute harp of 
 centuries will be vibrant again, and Justice walk abroad like a 
 sceptred king with Mercy crowned as ((ueen. 
 
 I beg, Sir, to move the following resolution :— 
 " That this meeting, recognising the advantages and privileges 
 of citizenship in the British Empire, rejoices at the jirospect of 
 the success of a policy which, by giving those advantages and 
 privileges in a form acceptable to the ideas and aspiration of 
 millions of men, will ensure the peace and prosperity of Ireland, 
 and cement and strengthen the Empire of which that country 
 forms so important a part."