Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/140

126 To this Mr. Parnell replied as follows:—

House of Commons, June 23, 88.

Dear Sir,—I am much obliged to you for your letter of the 20th inst., which confirms the very interesting account given me at Avondale last January by Mr. Swift MacNeill as to his interviews and conversations with you on the subject of Home Rule for Ireland.

I may say at once and frankly that I think you have correctly judged the exclusion of the Irish members from Westminster to have been a defect in the Home Rule measure of 1886, and further, that this proposed exclusion may have given some colour to the accusations so freely made against the Bill, that it had a separatist tendency. I say this while strongly asserting and believing that the measure itself was accepted by the Irish people without any afterthought of the kind, and with an earnest desire to work it out in the same spirit in which it was offered, a spirit of cordial goodwill and trust, a desire to let bygones be bygones, and a determination to accept it as a final and satisfactory settlement of the longstanding dispute and trouble between Great Britain and Ireland.

I am very glad to find that you consider the measure of Home Rule to be granted to Ireland should be thoroughgoing, and should give her complete control over her own affairs without reservation, and I cordially agree with your opinion that there should be at the same time effective safeguards for the maintenance of Imperial unity. Your conclusion as to the only alternative for Home Rule is also entirely my own, for I have long felt that the continuance of the present semi-constitutional system is quite impracticable.

But to return to the question of the retention of the Irish members at Westminster, my own views upon the point, the probabilities of the future, and the bearing of this subject upon the question of Imperial Federation. My own feeling upon the matter is, that if Mr. Gladstone includes in his next Home Rule measure provisions for such retention, we should cheerfully concur in them, and accept them with good will and good faith, with the intention of taking our share in the Imperial