Page:Home rule; Fenian home rule; Home rule all round; Devolution; what do they mean?.djvu/9

 ''"At the last election (in January, 1910), in the most solemn way, the Prime Minister, in speaking to the electors declared that his policy and the policy of his Party -was not what is called Devolution, not the creation of a glorified Council or vestry in Ireland, but that his policy -was the concession of what he called full Self-Government by the Irish people of every purely Irish affair. I do not trust a single man of them, but I say that the Minister who made that solemn pledge would not only ruin himself, but would break up and destroy his Party for a generation if he attempted to violate that pledge, once the House of Lords question -was out of the way; and I say something more. We sometimes hear the phrase Sinn Fein. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe I was the first man in Ireland to use that phrase myself. I say Sinn Fein—trust to ourselves— and I say no matter what any British Minister may do, no matter how base he may prove, or how false to his promises, so long as Ireland stands together, and so long as we can count upon the support of our brethren in America and elsewhere, so long also we may trust to ourselves to see that if any British Minister or any British Party be false to his pledges, that we will be able within one month to drive them from office. Now, I am perfectly confident myself of the future. I believe that the present leaders of the Liberal Party are sincere. Whether they are''