Page:Home rule; Fenian home rule; Home rule all round; Devolution; what do they mean?.djvu/15

11 extended Empire as long as they were untrammelled in their local concerns and were not taxed except by their own representatives. The position of most Irish politicians was very similar. The Irish Parliament legislated for the local concerns of Ireland, and it still retained with great jealousy a certain control over the purse which it justly looked upon as incomparably the most important of its prerogatives." The attitude of the Irish politicians at that time is very like that assumed on English and Canadian platforms by Irish Nationalist politicians at the present time when they say they are quite willing to accept a subordinate, but independent Parliament to manage only Irish affairs. They can rely on the precedents of Irish, Scotch, and American history to get rid soon of any pretence of subordination once a vital issue is raised between the Suzerain and Subordinate Parliaments.

Danger of invasion threatened the British Islands. The Irish Parliament enrolled volunteers in 1779. The Volunteers then were loyal to the British Crown, but determined to get rid of the domination of the British Parliament which asserted a right to legislate for Ireland and exercised the detested right of regulating Irish commerce. "In 1775 the Americans issued a special address to the Irish, urging the identity of their interests, and in the same year Chatham asserted that Ireland on the Colonial question was with America 'to a man.' The Presbyterians of the North were fiercely American, and few classes were so largely represented in the American Army as Irish emigrants." In 1910