Skip to main content

Full text of "The Life Of Charles Stewart Parnell Vol - I"

See other formats


Ms. 30]               SPEECH IN LIVERPOOL                     101
English political organisations, but they have never been afraid to lay aside private and local considerations in favour of supporting their fellow-countrymen at home. Our position in Ireland is peculiar. One party says we go too far in the Home Eule agitation, while another party says we do not go far enough. You have been told we have lowered the national flag—that the Home Eule •cause is not the cause of Ireland a nation, and that we will degrade our country into the position of a province. I deny all this. There is no reason why Ireland under Home Rule would not be Ireland a nation in every sense and for every purpose that it was right she should be a nation. I have lately seen in the city of New York a review of the militia, in which five or six thousand armed and trained men took part, at least half of them being veterans of the war. They marched past with firm step, and armed with improved weapons. They were at the command of the legislature of New York, and they could not budge one inch from the city without the orders of the governor. If in Ireland we could ever have under Home Eule such a national militia, they would be able to protect the interests of Ireland as a nation, while they would never wish to trespass upon the integrity of the English Empire, or to do harm to those they then would call their English brothers. It was a foolish want of confidence that prevented Englishmen and the English Government from trusting Ireland. They know Ireland is determined to be an armed nation, and they fear to see her so, for they remember how a section of the Irish people in 1782, with arms in. their hands, wrung from England legislative independence. Without a full measure of Home Eule for Ireland no Irishman would eyer rest content.'