Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/149

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AUSTRALIA AND IRISH HOME RULE
117

now appear to agree with us rather than with his most distinguished follower—no readier means for such dismemberment could have been devised than what we may now fairly enough consider the defunct Home Rule Bill of Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Parnell tells us that he is now opposed to the "dualism" of Mr. Gladstone's abortive measure. At the same time, I do not think that many wealthy Australians will be prepared to follow the example of Mr. Rhodes, of South Africa, in contributing handsomely to the funds of the Irish Parliamentary party, under the conviction that it may become an agency for the "closer union of the Empire." When Mr. Parnell declared that we Australians were "solid on his side," he meant on the side of what he now discards as "dualism." Moreover, it has always been in this light that his revolutionary countrymen, both in Ireland and America, have regarded what was to them at best merely a tentative and half-way measure. Now, as it were by the magician's wand, all is to be changed. Ireland is to have her local or national Parliament, but there are to be Irish representatives in some freshly-constructed Parliamentary body at Westminster. Let me give the