Page:Home rule; Fenian home rule; Home rule all round; Devolution; what do they mean?.djvu/36

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and many conditions at once vexatious and humiliating; and we believe that all parties in Ireland would even prefer a measure of total separation with all its risks and evils rather than consent to the ignominious terms of apparent independence and actual political vassalage offered under the Bill."

Archbishop Alexander, then Bishop of Derry and afterwards Primate of the Church of Ireland—a man venerated by all men of all creeds in Ireland said, amid ringing cheers:—

"No rational man could possibly respect or honour the Empire under the baneful power of a constitution like this. There is no safe element in it—no element of finality. Finality, indeed, is a word unknown by the majority of the members of the party who force it on us. As far as we are concerned there will be no finality. You have only to read our resolutions to see that, and as far as our countrymen are concerned they have taken good care to tell those whom it concerns beforehand that there shall be no finality with them."

The English people may be well assured if they desert those in Ireland to whom they are in honour bound, then, undoubtedly, the bitterest opponents of England in the future, wherever their lot may be cast, will be those men and their descendants who shall have been so betrayed. If they remain in Ireland they will spare no effort to sweep away the cobwebs spun by fancy Constitution weavers to enmesh the follies of those that,, wishing to deceive and be deceived, now fly around vote-catching, buzzing of "guarantees," "subordination," "unquestioned supremacy," and such like inarticulations. Those that love Ireland will not brook her degradation, and those that hate England will not suffer her domination. They again will feel that savage indignation which eat into the heart of Swift as he in his time protested against the wrongs Ireland suffered