Page:Home rule; Fenian home rule; Home rule all round; Devolution; what do they mean?.djvu/38

34 "conditions of Irish life, was even more emphatic. Repeal of the Union, he said, must lead to the dismemberment of this great empire, and must render Great Britain a fourth-rate power in Europe. Lord Althorp, who then led the Whigs in the House of Commons, echoed the argument of Peel, that in the existing state of Ireland a distinct Parliament must necessarily lead to separation; and Lord Grey, the leader of the party, who had in his youth been a strenuous opponent of the Union, declared that the effect of its repeal would be ruin to both countries. That Home Rule in any form in which it is now likely to be attained would be ruinous to Ireland is not difficult to prove. The policy of Mr. Gladstone and the agitation of Mr. Parnell have together so completely shattered the social type which had existed for generations; they have so effectually destroyed all the old relations of classes and all the more healthy forms of influence and reverence by which Irish society cohered; and they have diffused so widely through three provinces the belief that outrage and violence are the natural means of attaining political ends—that Ireland is at present probably less fitted for prosperous self-government than at any period within the memory of man.'"

The Repeal Movement was followed by the absurd Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848. At this period a newspaper called the Irish Felon, published by James Fintan Lalor, one of the seditious writers of the time, appeared. Lalor's articles have had an immense influence on the Home Rule Movement. John Mitchell embraced Lalor's principles with all the passion of his hard, fierce, narrow, but earnest nature. This teaching, adopted by the Fenians Devoy and Davitt, and at their instigation by Parnell, brought into alliance the Agrarian Movement and the Nationalist agitation. Lalor's teaching was this:—"The reconquest of Irish liberties depends on the reconquest of the land. The