Page:The issue; the case for Sinn Fein.djvu/10

8 "Commons. I don't think we ought to rely too much on the permanent independence of an Irish Party sitting at a distance from their constituencies and legislating, or attempting to legislate, for Ireland at Westminster. But I think it possible to maintain the independence of our Party by great exertions and by great sacrifices on the part of the constituencies of Irelandwhile we are making a short, sharp, and I trust decisive, struggle for the restoration of our legislative independence.'"

There could not be a more striking condemnation of Westminsterism from the lips of Ireland's greatest parliamentary leader. What would he not have said could he have foreseen the Liberal alliance, the pledgebreaking, the jobbing, the £400 a year! "If the young men of Ireland have trusted me," said Parnell at Kilkenny, December, 1890, "it is because they know that I am not a mere Parliamentarian." Ireland, young and old, has since then had good cause to distrust mere Parliamentarianism.

The test of any policv is its practical result. What has Westminsterism got for us? For 47 years we have had an Irish Party, for 118 years Ireland has been represented in the English Parliament. We have given the experiment a fair trial; it is high time to take stock. When the Party started in 1871 our population was 5|" millions; since then over 2£ millions have emigrated; there are now only 4| millions in the country. In 1871 there were 5,620,000 acres in tillage;, now there are less than 4,900,000. In 1871 the poor rate was 2s. 6d. per head, now it is over 5s. In 1871 the taxation of Ireland was £1 5s. 7d. per head; to-day it is about £7. Apply any rational test you like, and find if you can any single good we have got by sending Irish talkers to Westminster. The Irish Party, of course, attribute everything to themselves. But this electioneering dodge—never used by Parnell— is getting a trifle thin. Even Mr. Redmond wrote in 1902: "Despite the efforts .made by Isaac Butt and other Irish members* between 1871 and 1876, nothing was done in the direction of land reform until the Land League came." The Local Government Act of 1898 was drafted secretly by the Government and came as a surprise to the Party; it was even opposed by John Redmond. The Party never asked for Old Age Pensions, and when these were proposed they confined themselves to the remark that if extended to Ireland half-a-crown a week would be enough. Parliament has spent thirty-three years drafting Home Rule Bills; they have all come to nothing. In three weeks Irish Conscription was passed in spite of the Party. Where was Conscription defeated—in Ireland or in Westminster? And if the organised opposition and resistance of the Nation, especially of Labour, made Conscription impossible, does it not teach us that our real power is here at home in Ireland? The Party made vain efforts to secure justice for the Irish teachers. The teachers took the' matter into their own hands and won at once; had they been more determined, they would have done better still. In 1847-'48,* while Irishmen talked in Parliament, Mitchel proposed to do something here in Ireland, to keep our own food here for our own people. Ireland did not realise her true salvation then, and the consequences were terrible. Seventy years later the same gospel is being preached under a new name. Are we going to listen to-day?

Why, indeed, argue against Parliamentarianism at all? Its very adherents have abandoned all defence of it. On 3rd December, 1917. Mr. Dillon said in 'the English House of Commons: "Our position in this House is made futile, we are never listened to." Next day Mr. Devlin declared: "I do not often come to this House, because I do not believe it is worth coming to." These men are merely re-echoing from their own experience the parting words of Michael Davitt as he left the English Parliament (Oct., 1899):—