Page:Home rule; Fenian home rule; Home rule all round; Devolution; what do they mean?.djvu/31

27 while a purely democratic Parliament in which the poorest and most ignorant Roman Catholics would have an overwhelming power would be ruinous to property, to Irish Protestantism, to the maintenance of order, to the connection with England."—Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, vol. ii., p. 102.

Owing to the ardent loyalty and Imperial spirit of the Irish gentry the Irish Parliament supported England with all its power during the great wars at the end of the eighteenth century. Their bearing contrasts splendidly with that of the party which then existed in the English Parliament, the base English minority of that date who were fiercely opposed to the war—that minority which has found its successors in the Pro-Boer party in recent years, and which did, as its successors did, everything in its power to embarrass the conduct of the war and to degrade their country.

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Can it be questioned that if Home Rule is granted now the very existence of the Empire may be still endangered? The Nationalist members would be in a permanent majority in any Irish Parliament, and un-