7
Home Rule ＝ Ireland a Nation.
To understand the Constitutional effect of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland and the meaning of the expression "Home Rule" as an Irish Nationalist aspiration, it is necessary to consider what is now the demand of the Irish party, and what was the position of the Irish Parliament before the Act of Union.
The Nationalist call is "Ireland a Nation." Parnell said, at Castlebar, on 3rd November, 1885:—
"Speaking for myself, and I believe for the Irish people, and for all my colleagues, I have to declare that we will never accept, either expressly or impliedly, anything but the full and complete right to arrange our own affairs, and to make our land a nation; to secure for her, free from outside control, the right to direct her own course among the peoples of the world."
Mr. John Redmond, on 14th November, 1910, on his recent return from America, said:—
"I stand here to-day, as I have stood for the last twenty-five years, for the principle of Irish Nationality."
"The democracy of Ireland will at long last gain their right of self-government. What do we care for material reforms in Ireland? They may fill the stomachs of the Irish people; that will not satisfy their spirits. I say that we have preferred in the past rags and the spirit of liberty rather than be the sleekest slave that ever was fed at the hand of the conqueror. No; we in Ireland are out for the principle of Nationality. Nothing will bribe us from that. We are for 'Home Rule,' and nothing but 'Home Rule.' God save Ireland."—Freeman's Journal, 14th Nov., 1910.
On the pedestal of the statue now being erected to Parnell in Dublin is engraved this quotation from his words:—
"No man has a right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation. No man has a
